Still faced with the possibility of a conventional attack across the demilitarized zone, President Diem was reluctant to commit his regular military units to a problem which seemed to demand police-type operations. Seeing no clear-cut threat, he relied on the Village Self Defense Corps and the Civil Guard to maintain order in the provinces. Poorly led and equipped, and trained primarily in urban police methods, the paramilitary forces proved unable to prevent the diffuse terrorist attacks. In the 12-month period between July 1957 and July 1958, for example, some 700 more South Vietnamese officials reportedly died at the hands of Communist terrorists.[3-3] The Viet Cong terror-propaganda campaigns continued apace throughout 1958. The occurrence of the first attacks on U.S. facilities in Saigon and the initiation of an anti-American propaganda campaign near the end of that year, moreover, indicated that the Communists were broadening the scope of their activities. By this time, the internal disturbances were beginning to assume the dimensions of a concerted guerrilla movement in several of the country’s more heavily populated regions, including parts of the important Mekong Delta. Near the close of 1958 President Diem finally began ordering regular military units into the provinces with instructions to eliminate the Viet Cong and restore government control. The very nature of the enemy, however, tended to render such government operations ineffective. Essentially, the Viet Cong derived their strength from the clandestine political structure which agents had established in portions of the countryside. Interwoven into the social fabric of the hamlets and villages, this political infrastructure, as it later came to be called, served a dual purpose. It was both the machinery by which the Communists exercised control over the population and a vital base of support for the growing guerrilla forces, providing the Viet Cong with men, food, intelligence information, and refuge.