Highland Reconciliation

Bamboo flutes tweedled, brass gongs thrummed, and Montagnard maidens twisted ceremonial copper bracelets round the wrists of President Nguyen Van Thieu, Premier Tran Van Huong and other South Vietnamese dignitaries. Stoically, the visitors sipped from the brimming urns of mnam kpie, a sour-tasting homemade rice wine. Then they moved on to lunch in the comfortable former summer residence of exiled Emperor Bao Dai, in the highland provincial capital of Ban Me Thuot. The Saigon dignitaries, together with a host of American officials, were joining in ceremonies marking what they hoped would be the end of a tribal rebellion. It was a gala occasion, albeit marked by a certain sense of dej`a vu.

Viet Nam's Montagnards have never mixed well with the Vietnamese, who tend to scorn them as savages. French colonial authorities generally left the Montagnards alone. Few Vietnamese display much interest in or knowledge of the roughly 1,000,000 tribesmen living in the remote, heavily jungled high plateaus. The Montagnards take a lot of knowing, for they comprise an extraordinarily complex ethnolmguistic mixture numbering at least 20 tribes and many more splinter groupings. They have for centuries resisted the cultural influences of the Sinic and Hindu peoples that have flooded into the IndoChinese peninsula. Saigon leaders, from President Ngo Dinh Diem through General Nguyen Khanh and Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, had gone through similar ceremonies previously in attempts to rally the Montagnards to Saigon's cause--without success. Instead, Montagnard sentiments gradually coalesced around an organization known as FULRO (Front Unifie de Lutte des Races

Opprimees, or The United Front for the Struggle of Oppressed Races).

Determined Drive. FULRO's strength has been considerably augmented by troopers trained by U.S. Special Forces teams, which since 1963 have been turning tribesmen into skillful jungle fighters in increasing numbers. Once trained and equipped, the "yards" (short for Montagnards) displayed an unhappy tendency to join FULRO when their enlistment was up, feeling that the Saigon government posed more problems for them than the Viet Cong. Last year .Saigon officials mounted another determined drive to bring FULRO over to their side, and the Ban Me Thuot ceremonies testified to the partial success of that effort.

At least 2,500 FULRO troopers agreed to end their rebellion, in return for pledges of better treatment from the Saigon government. Thieu promised that they would "be accepted with equality. You have returned in justice because your aspirations have been met." The Montagnards will be given a voice in the provincial governments and be allowed their own military units. But there was a distinct cloud over the ceremonies: FULRO Leader Y Bham Enuol, who had reportedly given full assent to the agreement, was the prisoner of a splinter group of FULRO dissidents in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. Without Y Bham, who is venerated by Montagnards, the chances of a genuine reconciliation in the highlands remained tenuous at best.

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