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On the occasion of the Geneva Conference (from May to July of 1954), the belligerent powers and other nations representing the West or the East negotiated on a solution. Apart from a cease-fire agreement the Geneva Accords of 1954 planned the temporary partition of Vietnam along the seventeenth parallel surrounded by a demilitarised zone. The French and the Vietnamese fighting under French command were to go south of the demarcation line and the Vietminh would go north. Elections for the reunification of the country were scheduled for 1956 under the supervision of an International Control Committee. Both sides were prohibited from joining a military alliance. Therefore the newly independent Indochinese nations didn't join the SEATO (Southeast Asian Treaty Organization) which was founded in September of 1954 and would legitimate future American intervention in that region.
The U.S. endeavoured to maintain a friendly non-Communist regime in South Vietnam and to prevent a victory of the Communist party through the elections. 14 of 25 millions Vietnamese lived above the seventeenth parallel and Ho Chi Minh had broad popular support in the South as well. When the French had granted independence to the State of Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem became South Vietnam's prime minister heading a fragile pro-American government. The U.S. not only supported the Diem regime but also committed itself to a major aid program for South Vietnam (more than $1 billion in economic and military assistance from 1955 to 1961). American aid helped the nation to survive its economic crisis and increased the standard of living there, but it also implied Vietnamese dependency on the U.S. Encouraged by the French and Americans about 900,000 northerners, chiefly Catholics, crossed the border to the South that was predominantly Buddhist. The government in Saigon was destabilized by two sects (the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hoa) that were settled in the Mekong Delta maintaining their own armed forces and another organization named the Binh Xuyen with an army of 25,000 men. Diem refused to concede them an autonomous status in their territories which they had during French control. In 1955 his army succeeded in fighting the oppositional forces that had united against him. After solidifying his control over South Vietnam (but still lacking the approval of the population) Diem with American backing blocked the scheduled elections aware of the superiority of the Communists. The United States took on from France, whose forces gradually withdrew from the country, the responsibility for the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) and provided a Military Assistance and Advisory Group for its training. Ngo Dinh Diem became increasingly unpopular with the people of South Vietnam by replacing the village councils with Saigon-appointed administrators. By 1956 the regime had incarcerated 20,000 opponents into so-called "reeducation centers" while revolutionary activity in the South was still growing. In 1959, Diem launched a program of forced relocation of the villagers ("agroville" program) in order to protect them from the influence of hostile guerrillas and eventually had to abandon it after spawning opposition among the rural population.
In North Vietnam, the Communist party (Lao Dong) led by Ho Chi Minh had to solve massive reconstruction problems in the years after Geneva. Politically there was a development to a centralist government of the single party organized by the example of the Soviet Union. The Communists carried out a land reform program which already had begun during the war and eliminated all opposition by executing thousands of dissidents until 1956. Subsequently they began a phased collectivisation of the agriculture and the nationalization of the industry. In 1959, the Lao Dong was willing to authorize armed conflicts in the South aiming at the reunification of both parts of Vietnam. Directed by Hanoi, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam was founded by southern revolutionaries in 1960. The NLF not only consisted of Communists, but it was rather a coalition of all those that were in opposition to Diem.
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