Southeast Asia: How Not to Supervise a Peace

(2 of 2)

Mobile Monuments. Nor was there much the ICC could do about growing infiltration into the South. "If 550,000 U.S. troops cannot stop the infiltration," explains a Canadian today, "how could any international peace force with limited means be expected to control it?" In 1962, an Indian-Canadian majority report condemned Hanoi for infiltrating men and material into the South, while finding Saigon guilty of a "de facto military alliance" with the U.S. Both actions were in contravention of the 1954 agreements. Later, an Indian-Polish majority report inveighed against U.S. bombing of North Viet Nam. No one heeded any of the complaints.

By last spring, all the ICC's fixed teams in ports and transportation centers of the North as well as the South had been withdrawn. There were no more investigations. In Viet Nam, as in Laos and Cambodia, the ICC was constantly broke. In Saigon, its rickety Citroëns with their tattered ICC flags had become mobile monuments. At one point this year, the ICC in Viet Nam was so badly squeezed for funds that Aigle Azur, the French air charter that provides the battered, ancient Boeing 307 Stratoliners for the weekly commission flights linking Saigon, Pnompenh, Vientiane and Hanoi, refused further fly-now, pay-later trips.

ICC operations in Laos are, if anything, an even greater farce. There has been no commission investigation in that kingdom since 1965. Only in Cambodia, where the war occasionally spills over the border—as it did at Prey Toul—has there been a measure of ICC success. The commission's presence has probably deterred the Communists from more blatant use of their Cambodian sanctuary, while discouraging the U.S. and the South Vietnamese from striking across the frontier in hot pursuit of Communist forces.

The ICC accepts its failures with a dignified stoicism—perhaps still hopeful that it may be given an important new role once the present war ends. U.S. planners do not rule that out—but only if the commission can be thoroughly restructured and strengthened to guarantee genuine compliance on all sides.