Word: kosovo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...There is a general feeling among KFOR [the arm of NATO patrolling Kosovo] forces that the attitude of the 3/504th is that they are out for a fight," an unidentified Army major told the investigators...
Even before the U.S. Army released its report into the abuse of civilians by G.I.s in Kosovo, the word was out: A tiny knot of American soldiers had harassed and assaulted Kosovar civilians because the troops had prepared for war and had not been adequately schooled in peacekeeping. "As a result, the [U.S. troops] experienced difficulties tempering their combat mentality for adapting and transitioning to the Kosovo [mission]," Col. John Morgan III concluded in a report released Monday at the Pentagon. "In [this] environment, the unit's overly aggressive tendencies were manifested in practices such as the unit slogan, 'Shoot...
...report is certain to fuel arguments by Republicans that sending in elite fighting units like the 82nd to perform rent-a-cop missions like those in Kosovo dulls their fighting edge, saps morale and can lead to embarrassments like those detailed in the report. But the soldiers' protestations of ignorance of the regs don't hold up under scrutiny. NATO rules required each to carry a blue pocket card detailing how civilians were to be treated. "Use the minimum force necessary to accomplish your mission," it began. "Treat everyone, including civilians and detained hostile forces/belligerents, humanely." Even combatants aren...
...True, the guilty were only a dozen or so members of the storied 82nd Airborne Division, but the blame for the tawdry details seeps far higher up their chain of command. Their woes didn't come after a year of boring peacekeeping duties in southeastern Kosovo, but rather began shortly after the 3rd Battalion of the 504th Parachute Regiment arrived in the Balkans last September. Once deployed to the town of Vitina, the soldiers morphed, figuratively if not literally, into cops, poised delicately between the minority Serb population and Kosovar Albanians eager for revenge against the horrors wrought upon...
...told investigators. "Everyone in the squad has done things like put their arms around females when they are walking by us and talk to them in a flirting manner," Private First Class Joshua Robertson told investigators. Plainly, the Army provided inept intelligence to these troops before sending them to Kosovo. "I really thought we were coming over here to do some type of damage," one unidentified soldier said, "but when we got over here, the people were really nice...