|
Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo (IPA: , ), also known as Albert Thảo (1922–1965), was a communist agent of the Viet Minh (and, later, of the Vietnam People's Army) who infiltrated the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and also became a major provincial leader in South Vietnam. In 1962, he was made overseer of Ngô Đình Nhu's Strategic Hamlet Program in South Vietnam and deliberately forced it forward at an unsustainable speed, causing the production of poorly equipped and poorly defended villages and the growth of rural resentment toward the regime of President Ngô Đình Diệm, Nhu's elder brother. In light of the failed "land reform" efforts in North Vietnam, the Hanoi government welcomed Thao's efforts to undermine Diem. During the First Indochina War, Thảo was a communist officer in the Vietminh and helped oversee various operations in the Mekong Delta in the far south, at one point commanding his future enemy Nguyễn Khánh, who briefly served the communist cause. After the French withdrawal and the partition of Vietnam, Thảo stayed in the south and made a show of renouncing communism. He became part of the military establishment in the anti-communist southern regime and quickly rose through the ranks. Nominally Catholic, Thảo befriended Diệm's elder brother, Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục—the devoutly Roman Catholic Ngô family strongly favored co-religionists and had great trust in Thảo, unaware that he was still loyal to the communists. He went on to serve as the chief of Bến Tre Province, and gained fame after the area—traditionally a communist stronghold—suddenly became peaceful and prosperous. Vietnamese and US officials, as well as journalists hostile to or supportive of Saigon, misinterpreted this as a testament to Thảo's great ability, and he was promoted to a more powerful position where he could further his sabotage. Thảo and the communists in the local area had simply stopped fighting, so that the communists could quietly recuperate, while Thảo would appear to be very skillful and be given a more important job where he could do more damage. Through intrigue, Thảo also helped destabilise and ultimately unseat two South Vietnamese regimes—Diem's and the military junta of Khánh. As the Diệm regime began to unravel in 1963, Thảo was one of the officers planning a coup. His plot was ultimately integrated into the successful plot and his activities promoted infighting which weakened the government and distracted the military from fighting the Viet Cong insurgency. Throughout 1964 and 1965, as South Vietnam was struggling to establish a stable state after the ouster of Diệm, Thảo was involved in several intrigues and coup plots which diverted the government from implementing its programs. In 1965, he went into hiding after a failed attempt to seize power from Khánh and was sentenced to death ''in absentia''. Although this coup also failed, the subsequent chaos forced Khánh's junta to collapse. Thảo died the same year he was forced into hiding; it is believed that he was murdered after a bounty was placed on his head. After Vietnam was reunified at the end of the Vietnam War, the victorious communists claimed Thảo as one of their own and posthumously made him a one-star general. ==Early Vietminh years== Born Phạm Ngọc Thuần, Thảo was one of eleven children of a northern Vietnamese Roman Catholic family. At the time, Vietnam was a French colony. The family held French citizenship but opposed French colonialism. His father, an engineer, once headed an underground communist organisation in Paris, which assisted the Viet Minh's anti-French pro-independence activities outside Vietnam. After attending French schools in Saigon, Thuần changed his name to Thảo and renounced his French citizenship. In his high school years at the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat, Thảo met Trương Như Tảng, who later became a high-ranking member of the Viet Cong, a communist guerrilla organisation in South Vietnam. Tảng described Thảo as "my dearest friend" and recalled that they had "spent endless hours talking about everything under the sun. We were closer than brothers." Thảo spent his teenage years obsessed with his motorcycle. Despite being educated at an upper-class school that served children of French colonial administrators and privileged Vietnamese—French was the medium of instruction and Gallic culture and history a major part of the curriculum—Thảo was attracted to nationalist politics. He participated in Hồ Chí Minh's revolutionary campaigns for Vietnamese independence and joined the Vietminh. In September 1945, Hồ declared independence under the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) following the withdrawal of Imperial Japan, which had seized control of the country from France during the Second World War. At the time, there was a power vacuum, as both Japan and France had been decimated by the war. There was an outbreak of nationalist fervour in Vietnam; Tảng and Thảo joined the Vanguard Youth, an impromptu independence militia. Tảng was assigned to be the leader of the local unit, but he left the movement soon after, leaving Thảo in command. During this period, Saigon was regularly engulfed in riots. In 1946, France attempted to reassert control over its colony and conventional military fighting broke out. Thảo served with the Vietminh in the Mekong Delta in the far south of Vietnam during the war against French rule from 1946–54. He almost met his end before he had started; he was apprehended by the local communists in Mỹ Tho, who saw his French-style dress and mistook him for a colonial agent. They tied him up and chained him to a block of stone before throwing him into a river to drown. However, Thảo broke free of the weight and swam to safety. Thảo proceeded further south and deeper into the Mekong Delta to the town of Vĩnh Long, where he was again arrested by the local Vietminh. Just as Thảo was about to be executed by drowning, one of the communists realised he was a brother of one of their comrades. Thảo was released and rejoined his family, who lived in the region. As a leader of the resistance, Thảo was allocated the responsibility of indoctrinating the 1947 batch of recruits with Vietminh ideology. One of Thảo's students was his future enemy, South Vietnamese General and President Nguyễn Khánh. This group became the 410th Battalion and went on to fight near Cà Mau, the southernmost part of Vietnam. By 1949, Thảo was in charge of the Vietminh espionage apparatus around Saigon and organised the guerrilla companies in the countryside. Thảo was also involved in procuring arms. Filipino traders brought arms into southern Vietnam in return for rice, shrimp, pork, gold and banknotes. Following the French defeat in 1954 at Điện Biên Phủ, Thảo helped evacuate communist fighters from South Vietnam and Cambodia in accordance with the terms of the Geneva Conference. Under these Accords, Vietnam was to be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel pending national elections to reunify the country in 1956, and military personnel were to be evacuated to their respective sides of the border. In the meantime, Hồ Chí Minh's Vietminh controlled the north under the DRV while the south was under the French-sponsored State of Vietnam. However, Thảo remained in the anti-communist south when Vietnam was partitioned and made a show of renouncing communism. He became a schoolteacher and later worked in a bank, as well as the Department of Transport. He consistently refused to turn in the names of his former comrades, claiming that they were merely patriots fighting against the French and were not communists. At the same time, one of Thảo's brothers had been appointed as North Vietnam's ambassador to East Germany, having served as vice chairman of the Vietminh's Resistance Committee for the South during the war against the French. In October 1955, Prime Minister Diệm ousted Emperor Bảo Đại in a referendum to determine the form of government of the State of Vietnam. "Republic" received almost 99% of the vote and "monarchy" received a little over 1%. Diệm declared himself president of the newly proclaimed Republic of Vietnam. He scrapped the national elections, citing the fact that South Vietnam was not a signatory to the Accords of the Geneva Conference. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Phạm Ngọc Thảo」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|