jumped into a drop zone guarded by Moroccan troops and there it is... all show and NO go!!!
Posted on 10/06/2004 10:08:38 AM PDT by 11th_VA
STANOVC, Serbia and Montenegro, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Hundreds of French troops parachuted into Kosovo on Wednesday in the first major operational drop by the French military since intervention in Zaire in 1978.
The mid-morning calm in open meadows north of the U.N.-governed province's capital, Pristina, was shattered by the thunder of seven Transall C-160 planes arriving at the end of a five-hour flight from bases in France.
Arching low over cornfields, they emptied their human cargo, filling the skies with the dirty-white canopies of 361 French paratroopers, each with combat rifle and 50 kg of equipment strapped to his back.
The units included marines, signals, a medical team and an Air Force squadron.
Their 200-metre (600-feet) jump into a drop zone guarded by Moroccan troops marked the start of a 2,000-strong reinforcement of the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force ahead of a general election in Kosovo on Oct. 23.
"It was an excellent drop," remarked a breathless Corporal David Suzanne, the sloping fields around him dotted with soldiers lumbering to their collection point.
A KFOR spokesman said it was France's first large airborne operation since 1978, when French paratroopers were deployed in war-torn Zaire in Central Africa.
"For the French army it's a very important operation," said Colonel Yves Kermervant.
German and Italian troops will deploy to Kosovo by land from Albania and Greece over the coming week, as part of KFOR's one-month reinforcement, a precaution triggered by ethnic riots in March in which Albanian mobs attacked minority Serb enclaves.
That spasm of violence, resulting in 19 deaths and 800 homes damaged or destroyed, caught NATO and Kosovo's United Nations administration by surprise. The alliance rushed 2,000 extra troops to the province, but it was after the fact and criticism was stinging.
"We're here so the elections can go ahead in a safe environment," said the paras' commanding officer, Captain Eric Dinechen.
"This demonstrates that Kosovo is still an operational theatre," said another French officer, who asked not to be named.
The deployment will temporarily raise the total strength of the five-year-old peacekeeping mission to 20,000.
Ethnic Albanians make up over 90 percent of Kosovo's two million population and are virtually unanimous in their demand for independence from Serbia.
The issue of the province's final status is expected to come to a head in mid-2005 for the United Nations and the major Western powers which authorised NATO's military intervention in 1999 to stop Serb repression of Albanians.
((Writing by Douglas Hamilton; Editing by Janet Lawrence))
What effect will they have on the drug and other black market operations that are actually harming France? We suspect none.
What effect will they have on the drug and other black market operations that are actually harming France? We suspect none.
Do the Froggies get to count this as a combat drop?
jumped into a drop zone guarded by Moroccan troops and there it is... all show and NO go!!!
The US Army dropped an entire Italy-based brigade into northern Iraq under combat conditions--no ally-protected LZ--and it generated less of a stir at Reuters than did this Froggie practice drop.
77 days of fate in the History of Mankind
http://www.sramota.com/nato/
The French are making a preemptive surrender.
"The French finally figured out that it's the Serbs that really need our help?"
What an interesting thought, since this country hasn't figured it out yet.
The entire team was skeptical of the French reasons for blocking our entry into the Monastery. We arrived at the site as a caravan that included our bus and four United Nations vehicles containing a squad of 18 uniformed Ukrainian policeman assigned to protect us. It was obvious to even the untrained eye that this was a visit authorized by the United Nations. Our guards were heavily armed, wore United Nations blue berets with the UN logo clearly visible on their vehicles and uniforms. As a group we came to the conclusion that the French just did not want us to see the horrible damage to the monastery they had allowed. The French knew we were on a schedule for the day and believed that eventually we would just give up and go to our next stop.
We didn’t, and they were eventually forced to allow us in. The damage to the Devic Monastery clearly had both ethnic and religious connotations. The entire complex was first looted, with even the meager belongings of the nuns being stolen. Church artifacts considered of monetary value were stolen, and then the icons, some of them very ancient, were smashed. The chapel alter was defiled and burned as were the contents of all the buildings. The buildings themselves burnt to their shells and the roofing collapsed . No effort was made to extinguish the flames … the French simply watched the destruction , either not understanding the historic value of the building to humanity or simply having no interest in preservation of the world’s culture.
Read more under KOSOVO FACT FINDING MISSION – AUGUST, 2004 by William J. Murray, Chairman – Religious Freedom Coalition
They did this without getting a resolution from the UN first? There's going to be hell to pay.
No problemo..it's a white parachute!
yer a sick, sick bunny...
and I love ya for it-don't EVER change!
freaking hilarious comments ping
"This demonstrates that Kosovo is still an operational theatre," said another French officer, who asked not to be named. "
Then why are the French going there? Don't they usually wait until the conflict is over?
To do their job in Kosovo, they're going to need vehicles. And they could just as easily have matched up with the vehicles at the airport instead of having someone drive them out to BFE just so they could get another pip on their jump wings.
The 206 Russian VDV desantniki who jumped onto and secured the Pristina airfield at Kosovo did a pretty good job of it, and so long as the French aren't under fire, they might as well get a little good training in such operations- you don't really see that much of mass jumps these days. Mors ex-coellum.
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