Trouble in the Hills

South Viet Nam's most formidable fighting men are the aboriginal tribesmen whom the French called montagnards --hill people. Deadly hunters with crossbows and poisoned arrows, the more than 500,000 montagnards live in the vast "high plateau" that extends across one-third of the country. They are darker and tougher than the lowland Vietnamese, who consider the montagnards racially inferior, and scornfully refer to them as moi, or baboons. To protect them from land-grabbing lowlanders, French colonial administrators in effect made the central highlands a tribal reservation. When the French pulled out in 1954, lowlanders once again drove the montagnards ever deeper into the jungle--and into the arms of the Communist Viet Cong.

Tribal State. In an ambitious attempt to win over the montagnards, U.S. military advisers in 1962 started a program to train and arm them so that they could defend their villages from guerrilla attack. More than 9,000 were schooled by U.S. Special Forces instructors, who found them to be fierce, loyal fighters, extremely useful in cutting Communist Viet Cong supply lines in jungle-covered mountains; most came from the relatively civilized Rhade (pronounced Rah-day) tribe. However, when the hated lowlanders from the Vietnamese government gradually took over the program, racial tension mounted in the training camps, and montagnards started defecting in ever-larger numbers. Rueful U.S. officers shrugged: "Hope we don't find ourselves fighting these montagnards." They may have to do just that. Last week some 500 rebellious Rhade warriors from five training camps swooped on strategic Banmethuot, a provincial capital 160 miles northeast of Saigon.

They killed some 50 Vietnamese officers and men and seized a radio station, broadcasting demands for an autonomous tribal state. Finally, at the urging of U.S. Colonel John F. Freund, a French-speaking Special Forces adviser whom they trusted, the rebels withdrew and agreed to present their grievances to Premier Nguyen Khanh, who had immediately flown to the area.

Flatly refusing to discuss autonomy for the montagnards, Khanh said to an American: "That would be like your Sioux Indians seceding from America." But Khanh allowed that the tribes men's "righteous aspirations" -- for better schools and medical facilities, tribal representation at the top government level, replacement by Americans of all Vietnamese officers in their training camps -- would be met. Even so, the restive montagnards still remained a major threat.

Endless Circle. No sooner had Khanh returned to Saigon than he was faced with another threatened coup against his increasingly ineffectual regime. The latest challenge came from the disaffected band of younger officers, including Air Force Commander Nguyen Cao Ky, who only two weeks earlier had saved Khanh from the third military rebellion since President Ngo Dinh Diem's assassination last November. They gave Khanh until Oct. 25 to purge six generals -- including one member of Khanh's ruling triumvirate --whom they accused of seeking compromise with the Communists and neutralism for South Viet Nam.

Many officials wondered whether the rolypoly Premier would last long enough even to meet that deadline. Nor were they reassured by the regime's announcement, after a month of back stage bickering, that it had selected a 17-man High National Council to put the reeling nation back on the road to political stability and representative government. Vietnamese critics complained bitterly that the council consisted entirely of "mastodons," their term for men without power or prestige. Said a U.S. official: "It's like being in an endless circle with no way stopping and no hope of making a fresh start. But maybe. just maybe..."

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