Does the PRG control any territory?

First, there are liberated areas of Vietnam which, except for the military occupation by American troops in '66, have remained liberated territories since 1945. The last issue of the Far East Economic Review has shown them. If you go back and look at General Giap's book, Dienhienphu, he produces a map of the military situation at the end of the battle of Dienbienphu, which shows the liberated territories of South Vietnam. These spots, these leopard spots that he's got on his map in 1954, are precisely those spots which appear on the maps today. These are areas where the Saigon administration has never had in its control. There's been over 20 years of liberated control in these areas, so there is territory.

The second thing is that the result of the war has been to take Vietnam off the rolls as an undeveloped country in terms of statistics of being a rural country and has urbanised it fantastically by bombing the people into the cities, and I think these people constitute, if not a territorial base, then a popular base of support for the PRG. When these people are allowed to return to the free fire zones, which after all were their homes, then the enlargement of leopard spots of PRG controlled territory will increase.