Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses

by Mark Curtis

  It was understood that with the Indonesian army having disposed of the rebels they were 'free to deal with the communists', the British Ambassador in Jakarta wrote.37 The other main US and British policy was to resume arms exports to the Indonesian military. This enabled them to develop closer relations with key political figures in Indonesia who would act as a counter to Sukarno supporters and Communists. The strategy paid off, with horrendous results. In 1965-1966, these same generals conducted a campaign of slaughter against the PKI, leaving up to a million dead, and finally dislodging Sukarno from power.

  A February 1959 policy statement by the National Security Council, stated that the US should:

  maintain and strengthen . . . ties with the Indonesian police and military establishments; and increase their capability to maintain internal security and combat communist activity in Indonesia by providing appropriate arms, equipment and training, on a limited but continuing basis . . . [The US should] give priority treatment to requests for assistance in programs and projects which offer opportunities to isolate the PKI, drive it into positions of open opposition to the Indonesian government, thereby creating grounds for repressive measures politically justifiable in terms of Indonesian self-interest.38

  In conducting the covert operation, Britain and the US actually strengthened the forces they were opposing. The war was a gift to Sukarno, the nationalists and the Communists, who consolidated their positions as a result. The US role had ceased to be covert when a US pilot was captured and his papers displayed to the world's press, which enabled Indonesian government ministers to claim with some justification that they were being attacked by the US.

  A secret British memo said that the war had made 'Indonesia increasingly vulnerable to economic penetration by the Sino-Soviet bloc'. Ambassador MacDermot, meanwhile, noted in July 1958 that 'the United States has lost much ground as a result of the rebellion' and that the Indonesian Cabinet has 'been quick to seize upon Russian offers for help'. Soviet military aircraft, cargo ships, tankers and other equipment 'have already arrived and Russian progress here during the last year has been astonishing'.39

  London's backing of separatists to destabilise Jakarta did not end in the late 1950s. In 1963 and 1964, Britain reactivated the policy it had promoted in 1957-1958, supplying weapons and support to rebels in Kalimantan, Sumatra and elsewhere. But again this was only temporary and by January 1965 planners were stating that 'in the long term, effective support for dissident movements in Indonesia may be counter-productive in that it might impair the capacity of the army to resist the PKI'.40 By 1966, Suharto was firmly in control – since then, the good guys have been in power in Jakarta and our enemies have therefore become those who challenge them.

  12

  VIETNAMESE: SECRET

  SUPPORT FOR US

  AGGRESSION

  What was the British role in the most sustained use of firepower against a country in history? British academics have been silent on this (as far as I am aware) even though the files have been declassified for some years. I know of only one detailed study, which covers the period 1961-1963 only, by a German journalist.

  As one generation of people is being politicised by the invasion of Iraq, a previous generation was politicised by the defining issue of those times, the unprecedented US onslaught on Vietnam. What the protesters of the 1960s could not have known, however, is what British officials and ministers were doing behind closed doors to support the US aggression.

  The declassified British files on the Vietnam war are little short of a revelation. They show that Britain backed the US at virtually every stage of military escalation, and also played its own important secret role in the war. These documents show that Britain is complicit in US aggression and shares some responsibility for it.

  During the war the US used 15 million tons of munitions, twice as much as in the Second World War. Between 2 million and 3 million people, perhaps even more, are estimated to have died.1 The wholesale destruction of villages and killing of innocent people was a feature of the war from the outset, as was widespread indiscriminate bombing. The actions and objectives of the US and its local allies have been well documented by Noam Chomsky and others, while the political and social background to the war has been analysed notably by historian Gabriel Kolko.2 These analyses undermine the false framing that still appears to dominate much of modern discussion: that the US was engaged in a noble cause that went badly wrong.

  Background to the war

  After France had been defeated in 1954 in its brutal eight-year attempt to reconquer Vietnam, the Geneva Accords temporarily divided Vietnam between North and South at the 17th parallel and envisaged elections in 1956 mat were meant to lead to unification. Trie northern half of the country was under the control of the Communist party. What the US subsequently confronted in South Vietnam was a liberation movement – the Viet Minh, designated 'Viet Cong' by the US – calling for reunification with the North, a foreign policy of neutrality, major land reform to benefit the rural poor, the overthrow of the US-backed regime of Ngo Dinh Diem and abolition of the US economic monopoly and bases in the South.

  According to Gabriel Kolko, author of perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of the Vietnam war, the history of Vietnam after 1954 'was only incidentally that of a civil war'. Rather, 'it was essentially a struggle between a radicalised Vietnamese patriotism, embodied in the Communist party, and the United States and its wholly dependent local allies'.3

  Land reform lay at the root of the war. By the time of the Geneva Accords, the Communists in the South controlled at least 60 per cent of the territory and had begun a major transformation of the land system affecting most of the population in one way or another. This revolution by the Viet Minh movement had redistributed huge areas of land to previously landless peasants and those who had supported the resistance to the French, much of it transferred at the expense of the French and the largest Vietnamese landowners. In the North, land reform, which had mobilised the poorer peasants in opposition to the French, had enabled the landless and poor peasants to improve their position radically. The transformed land system was 'essentially equitable' in the North, Kolko comments.4

  The land measures begun by the Diem regime in South Vietnam in 1955 were essentially a counter-revolution aimed at abolishing the Viet Minh reforms and returning to the traditional peasant-landlord structure to disenfranchise the poor. At the root of the war in South Vietnam lay both this landreform programme and the sheer repression and terror of the Diem regime, which killed thousands of people in the late 1950s.

  By 1961 hundreds of thousands of hectares of land had been taken back by the Diem regime. The Communist party in the North backed the creation of the National Liberation Front (NLF) in South Vietnam for achieving unification and for promoting its political programme through the whole country. By the early 1960s large-scale upheavals in the rural areas of the South increased as Communist party members began to take over many villages, mobilising people and calling for land for the peasants. The NLF's land-reform programme was immensely successful in engaging a large percentage of the peasantry to participate directly in the process of land redistribution and giving them a stake in the success of the revolution. This helps explain the widespread popularity of the NLF.

  The US's major fear was that the revolution in Vietnam would spread, threatening US security and business interests elsewhere in the region. 'The fall of Indochina would undoubtedly lead to the fall of the other mainland states of Southeast Asia', the US Joint Chiefs of Staff had argued in 1950. 'Major sources of certain strategic materials' as well as communications routes were at stake. If Vietnam 'fell', the 'principal world source of natural rubber and tin, and a producer of petroleum and other strategically important commodities' would also be lost in Malaya and Indonesia.5

  That the US and South Vietnam had violated the Geneva Accords – which required nationwide elections to be held in 1956 – was recognised by British officials. The Foreign Office noted in pri
vate that:

  The United States government . . . supported and encouraged the efforts of the South Vietnamese government to ignore the political provisions of the Geneva Agreements and to consolidate an anti- communist regime in the South.6

  The British recognised in private the 'historical distortion' that the US was putting on the Geneva agreements in public. British policy, like that of the US, was to back a divided Vietnam and to oppose what it recognised as Ho Chi Minh's call for 'free general elections throughout the country'.7

  It was also recognised by British planners that the liberation movement in the South was popular, certainly much more so than the Diem regime. The British ambassador, Harry Hohler, said that the greatest rival to President Diem was the President of North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh: 'more than any other, he commands the following and respect which could give him power in South Vietnam'. Foreign Office official Edward Peck confirmed the British opposition to democracy in the country by writing that 'the most sinister alternative [to rule by Diem] is of course the probably still popular appeal of Ho Chi Minh'.8

  The British military attaché wrote in a report in February 1963 of the contrast between security arrangements between Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi and Diem in Saigon. 'When Ho Chi Minh travels no extra precautions are observed and he mingles freely with crowds as he wishes. A strange contrast to Saigon, with several armed police always on each corner'.9

  In May 1961 a British embassy official was told by the US ambassador that one problem with the introduction of full democracy in the South was that 'fully elected village councils if introduced now might merely facilitate the transfer of control to the Communists'. It was understood by early 1962 that the Viet Cong were in control of the 'majority of villages in South Vietnam' and that they were winning 'the battle for minds of the peasantry'.10

  Another crucial issue was the extent to which the Southern liberation movement was controlled from the North. In public. British (and of course US) leaders continually said that Hanoi was simply directing the 'communist insurgency' in the South, refusing to concede that this was primarily an indigenous liberation movement. But what planners understood in private provides a more accurate picture. In June 1961, for example, Edward Peck noted that 'our current assessment is that most of the insurgents come from inside South Vietnam itself and that there are only relatively few contacts with the North'. Another official said that Britain lacked 'any real proof that the trouble in S. Vietnam is directed from N. Vietnam'. However, 'on the other hand, US intervention in S. Vietnam is open for all the world to see'.11

  By November 1961, Peck was noting that 'undoubtedly, some supplies, propaganda and cadres come down through the country [from North Vietnam] but the idea of a thickly populated line of communication is nonsense'.12

  This date is important since it coincides with the US intervention in South Vietnam. It shows that at this time, British officials did not view the 'insurgency' as directed from outside, but more logically as an indigenous rebellion. In public, however, this was never conceded throughout the long years of the Vietnam war. British officials consistently backed the line that the US was fighting externally backed 'aggression', which was itself an important source of diplomatic support to Washington and helped the US to misrepresent the conflict.

  As for whether it was really the Soviet Union and China which was behind the uprising in South Vietnam, the Foreign Office stated in June 1962 that 'the Russians do not welcome a war in Indo China and we do not believe that the Chinese would intervene unless they felt that the security of North Vietnam was directly threatened'.13

  South Vietnamese President Diem was recognised as being dictatorial and unpopular and received the strong backing of the British as well as U S governments. "The Diem regime lacks popular support', the Foreign Office said in July 1961. It was 'a clumsy and heavy-handed dictatorship which is conspicuously lacking in popular appeal'. Numerous files refer to Diem's 'rigid and autocratic rule', 'authoritarian and uncompromising nature' and his 'extreme over-centralisation' of power.14

  Even more extreme was Diem's brother and right-hand man, Nhu, who 'attaches every bit as much importance to the apparatus of a police state as the most enthusiastic advocate of the social order of "1984"', as the British ambassador put it. It was Nhu who, according to a Foreign Office briefing paper, was 'primarily responsible for the authoritarian and quasi-fascist tendencies of the Vietnamese government'.15

  The April 19 61 elections won by Diem were recognised as being 'ceitainly rigged' while by 1962 there was 'growing corruption at every level, the inevitable result of prolonged foreign subsidy' – from Britain's key ally, that is. Overall, British planners knew that 'the regime here is absolutely dependent upon the Americans for survival'.16

  In fact, the Diem regime was responsible for inflicting sheer terror on the population. A 1972 study prepared for the Pentagon states that:

  There can be no doubt that innumerable crimes and absolutely senseless acts of suppression against both real and suspected communists and sympathising villagers were committed. Efficiency took the form of brutality and a total disregard for the difference between determined foes and potential friends.

  It is estimated that more than 10,000 had been killed by the Diem regime by 1957 and about 66,000 killed between 1957 and 1961.17

  'We are committed to backing Diem to the end', the British embassy noted in July 1961, reflecting British public statements which did not mention the frank admission in the files as to Diem's dictatorial and repressive features.18 The reason was that the British, and the Americans, apparently believed that Diem was the only counter to 'communist intervention'.

  In December 1961 Ambassador Hohler sent an extraordinary letter to Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home, saying that:

  We should not be too greatly moved by complaints that the Vietnamese authorities are holding large numbers of individuals in detention camps. At the worst period in Malaya we had over 10,000 people in detention without trial.

  He recommended that the Diem regime should improve its 'information services' and that Britain should help. One Foreign Office official noted that Hohler's despatch was 'largely an apology for President Diem' who has surrounded himself with 'evil and powerful advisers'. At this time British officials were aware that there were around 30,000 political prisoners in South Vietnam.19

  British and US support for Diem lessened only after it became clear that Diem was refusing to accept US (and British) advice on how to win the war. He thus became a liability, and eventually had to be overthrown.

  Support for US intervention

  British interest in backing the US was not only to support its ally; the fear was also that the 'fall' of South Vietnam 'would be disastrous to British interests and investments in South East Asia and seriously damaging to the prospects of the Free World containing the Communist threat'. Britain's commercial interests in Vietnam itself were very modest, with exports averaging only around £2 million a year in the early 1960s.20

  Britain welcomed the US 'counter-insurgency' plan submitted to Diem in February 1961, partly since it was based on proposals by Britons, Robert Thompson and Field Marshall Gerald Templar, both 'counter-insurgency' experts who had plied their trade to ferocious effect in the war in Malaya. This plan called for an increase in the South Vietnamese army of 20,000 troops to deal with the insurgency.

  But the first major escalation was the US intervention of November 1961 when the Kennedy administration sent helicopters, light aircraft, intelligence equipment and additional advisers for the South Vietnamese army. Soon after this the US air force began combat missions.

  "The administration can count on our general support in the measures they are taking', Foreign Secretary Douglas-Home said. It was clearly understood in various memos by British ministers and officials that this intervention was a complete violation of the 1954 Geneva Accords which put limits on the number of US military forces acceptable in Vietnam and which was now being superceded.21

  Brit
ain had a particular responsibility to uphold this international agreement since it was a co-chair of the Geneva Accords, with the Soviet Union. But the British connived with the US and promised not to raise the issue. 'As co-chairman, Her Majesty's Government are prepared to turn a blind eye to American activities', the Foreign Office secretly stated. Douglas-Home wrote to Secretary of State Dean Rusk to tell him 'to avoid any publicity for what is being done', i.e., in the November intervention. He 'assured Mr Rusk that he will turn a blind eye to what goes on'.22

  British planners had hoped that the US would not openly commit combat troops to South Vietnam for fear of the international repercussion of Vietnamese being killed by Americans, and that the reaction in Vietnam itself would be 'unfavourable'.23 But they immediately acquiesced. 'The United States government is determined to prevent the fall of South Vietnam to the Communists and this policy is supported by HMG', the Foreign Office noted in March 1962.