• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

South Vietnam - Civil Self-Defense Force /
People's Self-Defense Force

The Civil Self-Defense Force should not be confused with the Self-Defense Corps - the Popular Forces - though sometimes discussions are a bit unclear as to which formation is under discussion.

Concurrent with the post-1968 expansion of the Vietnamese armed forces were significant increases in the paramilitary forces. The greatest expansion in supported levels occurred in the local militia, which rose from 1 million in 1969 to more than 4 million by 1970. It should be noted that the militia forces were at best part-time personnel, and their organization, the People's Self-Defense Force, represented an attempt to involve all levels of the population in the war effort, whatever their military value.

The general mobilization decree of 19 June 1968 called for drafting 17-year-old boys and men from 39 to 43 into civil self-defense units. The South Vietnamese government announced a general mobilization and the interim period of mobilization by decree came to an end. Henceforth, personnel in the military service would serve an indefinite period as long as a state of war existed. All males between the ages of sixteen and fifty would be mobilized; those between eighteen and thirty-eight would serve in the armed forces (including the Regional and Popular Forces), and other age groups would serve in the new People's Self-Defense Force, a part-time, local militia. The government now had the confidence and the stability both to enact and enforce these strong measures.

In most cases the draft was not necessary, for young boys and older men were quick to volunteer in order to have a voice in their local unit's organization. And in many units the teen-age girls and women, who are not subject to the draft, volunteered in such numbers that they constituted the majority of the members of the People's Civil Self-Defense Force.

On June 28, 1970 President Nguyen Van Thieu in a nationwide address through radio and television networks dealt with the RVN achievements in everyfield during the past few months, which will be served for the impetus to annihilate all the enemy structures in South Viet-Nam. The President still made it known that hamlet and village security will be strengthened so as to push ahead the development projects at all grass root levels. the President told about the government efforts to reorganize the RVNAF structure and the administrative machinery of the Republic. According to President Thieu, the RVNAF counted 500,000 regular, 275,000 regional and 235,000 popular forces, aside from over three million civil self-defense (CSD) members. Out of the CSD strength, over 500,000 were equipped with weapons "Such a CSD force," the President said, "when fully armed organizations and serve as significant permanent force in rural areas able to cope with any aggressive attempts of the enemy at the start."

The South Vietnamese president took the initiative relative to the Self-Defense Corps. In July, he placed the program directly under his prime minister, who formed a National Peoples Self Defense Committee chaired by himself. By the end of 1968, some 1,000,000 people were members of such groups and nearly half of them had received training. The government had distributed some 173,000 weapons. In I Corps, for example, at the end of October, nearly 106,000 of the civilian population had joined the Self Defense Corps with 16 percent armed. At the end of the year, the number had increased to 225,162 with 10 percent of them armed.

Since the Tet offensive about one million PCSDF members had been recruited across the country, not only in the hamlets, but in urban neighborhoods as well, to provide an alert force and anti-infiltration screen. In Hue, for instance, there were 18,000 civilians standing guard in eight-hour shifts, each guard passing his weapon to the man or woman who relieves him. Hue, so badly damaged in the Tet offensive, may he attacked again. But thanks to the People's Civil Self Defense Forces, never again will it be attacked by surprise.