Viet Cong: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:06, 5 September 2005

Revision as of 12:45, 9 September 2005

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[[Image:FNLflag.PNG|thumb|right|National Liberation Front (NLF) flag]]The '''National Front for the Liberation of Southern Vietnam''' ([[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]] Mặt Trận Dân Tộc Giải Phóng Miền Nam), also known as the '''National Liberation Front''' (NLF) and as ''Front National de Liberté'' (FNL), was the primary rebel organization fighting the [[colonialism|colonialist]] [[France|French]] regime and later the US-backed [[Republic of Vietnam]] during the [[Vietnam War]].

The NLF claimed that it was a national front of all elements opposed to the existing government, whether communist or not. Its military organization was known as the '''People's Liberation Armed Forces''' (PLA). U.S. soldiers came to refer to the NLF as "Viet Cong,", (VC) from the Vietnamese term for Vietnamese Communist (''Viet Nam Cong San''). The term "Charlie" was [[NATO phonetic alphabet]] symbol for the letter "[[C]],", in reference to "communist.".

=== Organization ===

The NLF was nominally independent of the [[North Vietnam|North Vietnamese]] armed forces and not all NLF members were Communists. However, as the war with the Americans escalated North Vietnamese personnel increasingly formed the miltary [[Staff Officer|staff]] and [[officer corps]] of the NLF as well as directly deploying their own forces.

[[United States |American]] soldiers and the South Vietnam government typically referred to their [[guerrilla]] opponents as the "'''[[Viet Cong]]'''".

In classic tactics of [[partisan]] warfare NLF aimed to create '"liberated zones'" within South Vietnam, and the US/ARVN response - breaking up traditional villages and moving peasants to fortified hamlets - proved to be largely self-defeating, certainly in terms of public opinion in the United States itself.

In [[1969]], the NLF formed a provisional [[Republic of South Vietnam]] which took power briefly after the fall of [[Saigon]] in [[1975]] and before the reunification of the country under the leadership of the [[Communist Party of Vietnam]] as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in [[1976]]. By this time non-Communist influence in the NLF had been eliminated.