The Montagnards of Song Re-A Story of Chemical Genocide

THE USE OF herbicides in Vietnam to destroy crops has the secondary effect of creating refugees-displacing the people whose lives depended on the crops as a food source. Most of the crop destruction has been in the Central Highlands, where the population is largely Montagnard tribesmen, an ethnic minority in Vietnam. The crop spraying has a catastrophic impact on the Montagnard people; the story that follows tells of the Song Re valley in Quang Nai province, a highland valley Meselson's group looked at closely.

Before the American Chemical Corps came in August of 1970, 70,000 Montagnards lived and farmed in this valley. In August, the Chemical Corps operations staff decided that the Song Re valley was a VC/NVA crop production area and that the crops should be destroyed to prevent their consumption by "enemy" forces.

The officer responsible for the operation took Meselson's group on a tour of the valley and explained the reasoning that led to this decision:

The targeted area of the valley had only a very low population density, according to the officer, much lower than appeared on 1965 maps of the region.

The area under cultivation had expanded strikingly in recent years, suggesting to the military that the VC/NVA was using surplus crops to feed its troops.

The cultivated area was judged much larger than that needed to support the small indigenous population.

The existence of numerous terraced rice fields indicated the existence of VC/NVA crop growers, since the Montagnards who lived in the valley did not practice terracing.

Meselson's group surveyed the sprayed area of the valley a few days after the crop destruction operation. Their observations were exactly the opposite of the rationale given by the Chemical Corps for the spraying:

Meselson's Herbicide Assessment Commission took detailed aerial photographs of the valley, then counted the visible dwellings in the area which was sprayed. They found a high population density throughout the target area. The spraying covered approximately 1000 acres, and within this region the HAC found more than 900 dwellings, enough for approximately 5,000 people. These dwellings were built in typical Montagnard style. The population density, then, was 180 persons per square kilometer, a high density for highland Vietnam.

Comparing the aerial photographs with maps of the region made in 1965, the HAC found that the boundaries of the fields being cultivated were the same as they were five years ago. In addition, the fields looked well-established, not as if they were of recent origin.

Survey of the maps and photographs showed approximately 800 hectares of land were being used to grow crops. (A hectare is about two and a half acres.) With 900 family dwellings in the area, the average of one hectare per family is a minimal amount of crop land; enough for sustenance but certainly not surplus.

The Green Beret field manual, Department of Defense publications on the Montagnards, and Saigon officials all told the HAC that the Montagnards of Quang Ngai have a long history of rice growing on terraced fields.

The Chemical Corps arguments for spraying were simply false. The chemical crop destruction in the Song Re valley destroyed food which would have fed the civilian Montagnard population, not VC/NVA soldiers. Was this particular mission a mistake? The HAC was told by the chemical staff officer that this crop destruction mission was particularly effective and well planned.

WHAT HAPPENED to the people who lived in the Song Re valley before the crop destruction? They are now living in government refugee camps, driven from their land and unable or unwilling to return.

Before the spraying began, the target area in the valley was subject to "maximum suppressive fire," a procedure used by the Seventh U.S. Air Force to protect the spray planes-slow-flying C-123's-from ground fire. This procedure involves application of 300 per cent saturation bombing with cluster bomb units, an application which leaves someone on the ground less than a one per cent chance of not being hit, assuming the bombs were dropped randomly.

That was before the spraying. The Montagnards in Quang Nai are members of the Hre tribe, and are animists, believing in the presence of spirits in nature. For the Hre, poisons are particularly powerful evil spirits, and treatment of the land with herbicides is a manifestation of an evil spirit. The land has fallen under a curse, and according to tradition will be abandoned. The homes, crops, and even lives of the Montagnards were destroyed by the Chemical Corps spraying operations, and their folk beliefs intensified the tragedy.

The Montagnard religion prevents the people from returning to their land and trying to farm again-assuming the chemically treated ground will permit crop growth.

THE EVIDENCE indicates that the crop destruction program is widespread, that cases like that of the Song Re valley are not exceptions, and that the Montagnard people are being systematically destroyed. In Quang Nai and Quang Tin provinces, the food scheduled for destruction in 1970-71 was estimated for the Commission at 14,575 metric tons. That is enough to sustain around 50-70,000 people for a year. The targeted areas of those two provinces are the upland regions where the Montagnards live. The total Montagnard population of those two provinces is just under 70,000.