The Strategic Hamlet Program (Ấp Chiến lược ) was a plan implemented by Operation Sunrise in 1962 by the governments of South Vietnam and the United States during the Second Indochina War (1955-1975) to combat the communist insurgency in South Vietnam by pacifying the countryside and reducing the influence of the communists among the rural population. The plan was first recommended in November 1961 by Sir Robert Thompson, a veteran of the Malayan counter-insurgency effort and then head of the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam. Similar initiatives were implemented as early as 1952 under French colonial rule under the term “protected villages”.
