He also encouraged the different armed groups to join together and form a more powerful and effective resistance organisation. Ho Chi Minh agreed to supply the guerrilla units with aid. Le Duan returned to inform his leader that Diem's policy of imprisoning the leaders of the opposition was so successful that unless North Vietnam encouraged armed resistance, a united country would never be achieved. In 1959, Ho Chi Minh sent Le Duan, a trusted adviser, to visit South Vietnam. He argued that the opposition forces in South Vietnam should concentrate on organising support rather than carrying out acts of terrorism against Diem's government. Ho Chi Minh was initially against this strategy. In 1959, an estimated 1,200 of Diem's government officials were murdered. At first they were not in a position to take on the South Vietnamese Army and instead concentrated on what became known as 'soft targets'. The year following the cancelled elections saw a large increase in the number of people leaving their homes to form armed groups in the forests of Vietnam. Some came to the conclusion that violence was the only way to persuade Diem to agree to the terms of the 1954 Geneva Conference. When it became clear that President Ngo Dinh Diem had no intention of holding elections for a united Vietnam, his political opponents began to consider alternative ways of obtaining their objectives.
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