On 11 May 1961, President Kennedy sent 400 Green Beret âSpecial Advisorsâ to Vietnam to train the South Vietnamese in counter-insurgency warfare. Up until this time, the South Vietnamese and the US had placed the onus of their activity in countering the insurgency by beefing up and training the conventional South Vietnamese forces. However, this excluded large numbers of the ethnic and religious minorities of the country.
Both the early SF advisors and the CIA believed a paramilitary force of minorities would greatly expand South Vietnamâs counterinsurgency efforts into remote areas. The largest of these minorities, the Montagnards, a French word meaning âMountain Manâ had always been treated with contempt by the government and lowland Vietnamese which made them prime targets for Communist propaganda and recruiting.
These Mountain tribes people controlled vast areas of the countryside and could have easily been swayed or coerced to the Communist side of the conflict. The initial SF foray into the counter-insurgency realm with the Montagnards took place with the Rhade (pronounced Rah-day) tribesmen in a small village called Buon Enao.
The Special forces advisors went on to train these mountain tribes into effective fighting forces.
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