page_title: Counter-insurgency
section_title: Population control
hierarchical_section_title: Counter-insurgency / Tactics / Population control
caption_attribution_description: English: South Vietnamese "Strategic Hamlet".
context_page_description: A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency is defined by the United States Department of State as "comprehensive civilian and military efforts taken to simultaneously defeat and contain insurgency and address its root causes".
  An insurgency is a rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents. It is "the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify or challenge political control of a region. As such, it is primarily a political struggle, in which both sides use armed force to create space for their political, economic, and influence activities to be effective."
  Counter-insurgency campaigns of duly-elected or politically recognized governments take place during war, occupation by a foreign military or police force, and when internal conflicts that involve subversion and armed rebellion occur. The most effective counterinsurgency campaigns "integrate and synchronize political, security, economic, and informational components that reinforce governmental legitimacy and effectiveness while reducing insurgent influence over the population.
context_section_description: With regard to tactics, the terms "drain the water" or "drain the swamp" involves the forced relocation of the population ("water") to expose the rebels or insurgents ("fish"). In other words, relocation deprives the aforementioned of the support, cover, and resources of the local population.
  One of the earliest examples of the strategy was applied by the British Empire during the Second Boer War; to segregate potential Boer supporters from Boer Commandos, scorched earth tactics were used to destroy Boer farmland while Boers were shipped abroad or confined to concentration camps converted from refugee camps for displaced Boers. The tactic was later refined in the Briggs Plan during the Malayan Emergency, when predominantly Chinese rural population centers with suspected Malayan Races Liberation Army sympathizers were gutted and their populations transferred to enclosed and guarded "New Villages" to control and monitor population activity; to improve local support for the British, New Villages were equipped with adequate basic amenities, including running water, electricity, and health and education services.
  A somewhat similar strategy was used extensively by US forces in South Vietnam until 1969, initially by forcing the rural population into fenced, secured villages, referred to as Strategic Hamlets, and later by declaring the areas people in the Strategic Hamlets had come from as free-fire zones to remove the remainder of the population from their villages and farms. Widespread use was made of Agent Orange (which was first used on a large scale by the British during the Malayan Emergency), sprayed from airplanes, to destroy crops that might have provided resources for Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops and their human support base. These measures proved ineffective, since Phạm Ngọc Thảo, who oversaw the program, was a communist agent and sabotaged the implementation of the hamlets. This allowed Viet Cong activists and sympathizers to infiltrate the new communities. In any event, the Vietnam War was only partly a counter-insurgency campaign, as it also involved conventional combat between US/ARVN forces, Vietcong Main Force Battalions, and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).
  According to a report of the Naval Postgraduate School:
  Among the most effective means are such population-control measures as vehicle and personnel checkpoints and national identity cards. In Malaya, the requirement to carry an ID card with a photo and thumbprint forced the communists to abandon their original three-phase political-military strategy and caused divisive infighting among their leaders over how to respond to this effective population-control measure.
caption: A strategic hamlet in South Vietnam c.1964
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