Viet Cong

Viet Cong
Participant in the Vietnam War
The flag of the Viet Cong, adopted in 1960, is a variation on the flag of North Vietnam.
Active	21 July 1954 – 2 July 1976
Ideology	Communism Marxism–Leninism Left-wing nationalism Vietnamese nationalism Ho Chi Minh Thought Anti-revisionism
Groups	National Liberation Front for Southern Vietnam Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG) People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam (PLAF) Alliance of National Democratic and Peace Forces Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN)
Leaders	PLAF Commander Nguyen Huu Xuyen  (1961–63) Tran Van Tra  (1963–67, 1973–75) Hoang Van Thai  (1967–73) COSVN Party Secretary Nguyen Van Linh  (1961–64) Nguyen Chi Thanh  (1964–67) Pham Hung  (1967–75) NLF Nguyen Huu Tho, chairman Huynh Tan Phat, vice-chairman Phung Van Cung, vice-chairman Vo Chi Cong, vice-chairman PRG Nguyen Huu Tho, president Huynh Tan Phat, prime minister Mme Nguyen Thi Binh, foreign minister Tran Nam Trung, defense minister Truong Nhu Tang, justice minister
Headquarters	Mimot (Memot), Cambodia (1966–72) Loc Ninh, South Vietnam (1972–75)
Area of operations	Indochina, with a focus on South Vietnam
Originated as	Viet Minh
Became	Vietnam Fatherland Front
Allies	North Vietnam, Soviet Union, China
Opponents	South Vietnam United States United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO)
Battles and wars	See full list

Việt Cộng (Vietnamese: [vìəˀt kə̂wˀŋm]), also known as the National Liberation Front, was a political organization and army that operated in South Vietnam and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. It was allied with North Vietnam and fought against the armies of South Vietnam and the United States. It had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized peasants in the territory it controlled. Many soldiers were recruited in South Vietnam, but others were from the North. During the war, communist leaders and anti-war spokesmen insisted the Viet Cong was an insurgency indigenous to the South, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of Hanoi. Although the terminology distinguishes southerners from the northerners, the communist forces were under a single command structure set up in 1958.

North Vietnam established the National Liberation Front on December 20, 1960 to foment insurgency in the South. Many of the Viet Cong's core members were volunteer "regroupees," southern Viet Minh who had resettled in the North after the Geneva Accord (1954), which ended the Indochina War between Vietnam and France. Hanoi gave the regroupees military training and sent them back to the South along the Ho Chi Minh trail in the early 1960s. The Viet Cong called for southern Vietnamese to "overthrow the camouflaged colonial regime of the American imperialists" and to make "efforts toward the peaceful unification". The Viet Cong's best-known action was the Tet Offensive, a massive assault on more than 100 South Vietnamese urban centers in 1968, including an attack on the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The offensive riveted the attention of the world's media for weeks, but also overextended the Viet Cong. Later communist offensives were conducted predominantly by the North Vietnamese. The organisation was dissolved in 1976, when North and South Vietnam were officially unified under a communist government.