Down Go the Hoa Hao

SOUTH VIET AM

As if to celebrate the first anniversary of his coming to power, Premier Ngo Dinh Diem struck three heavy blows last week against the Hoa Hao (pronounced Wha-How), the second of his country's rebellious warlord sects. Diem sent in two nationalist infantry divisions and four amphibious groups against the Hoa Hao, a rowdy private army of dissident Buddhists who run their own feudal entity--and squeeze the peasants with taxes--in rice-rich western Viet Nam. Premier Diem first offered the Hoa Hao a chance to integrate themselves into the national army and form a peaceful political party, but the Hoa Hao replied by raiding Diem's outposts and blowing up bridges. Ba Cut, commander of the Hoa Hao army, who wears his hair neck-long in protest against the Geneva Treaty, threatened to behead Ngo Dinh Diem as a warning to those who did not fear the mighty Hoa Hao.

Behind a brisk barrage from 105-mm field guns, Diem's nationalists, led by a 27-year-old colonel, stormed three Hoa Hao headquarters, forcing the chocolate-colored Mekong River, skittering black pigs and yellow dogs along with the scurrying Hoa Hao. The nationalists lost 40 killed and wounded, but the show was soon over. Only a few hours after the Diem barrage began, one-third of the Hoa Hao laid down their arms and Commander Ba Cut fled for the hills.

"We get good training, fighting the Hoa Hao," exulted one of Diem's young commanders. "We keep ourselves in shape, while the Communist army stays idle." It was hardly that much of a victory for a dissension-torn country: civil wars do not a country make. But winning them is a necessity for Diem if his regime is to last.

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