The “Eyes and Ears” of KFOR
Szöveg: Capt. Piroska Kozák | 2016. november 28. 9:00The 15th rotation of the Hungarian Defence Forces KFOR Contingent (KFOR-15 HUNCON) deployed to Kosovo more than three months ago. The contingent comprises a Hungarian Liaison Monitoring Team (HUN LMT), which is formally assigned to the contingent but operates in the subordination of the KFOR Joint Regional Detachment Center (JRD-C). Its area of responsibility is Podujevo municipality, extending over 633 square kilometers. There are 75 communities here, including a major town, with a total population of 130,000 according to a recent survey.
The information gathered by the LMTs supports COMKFOR’s situational awareness and feeds into his decision-making process that determines the conduct of operations.
The HUN LMT is composed of nine soldiers, most of them having deployed to Kosovo from the staff of the HDF Civil-Military Cooperation and Psychological Operations Centre. In their area of responsibility, they liaise on a daily basis with leaders of governmental, non-governmental and international organizations, religious leaders and of course with the populace.
As an important element of this activity, the members of the HUN LMT recently distributed “4You" magazines among pupils in a municipal school. This magazine is KFOR’s official bilingual Albanian–English publication, a color-printed monthly intended for schoolchildren. The issues of the magazine greatly help the students with learning language and also popularize KFOR.
As a result of the work done by earlier rotations, the population now trusts the soldiers of the LMT, and has got used to their everyday presence. Thanks to this, the local people openly provide the teams with useful information, which is a great asset to KFOR’s activities.
Recently, COMKFOR Maj.-Gen. Giovanni Fungo visited a Kosovan-Serbian border checkpoint in the area of responsibility of the HUN LMT, where the station commander introduced the border crossing point, the border guards’ job, and the COMKFOR met with the mayor and police chief of Podujevo.
After the meeting, in the company of the mayor and the police chief, he went to see a renovated pedestrian bridge in the town center. Following the event, the COMKFOR praised the personnel of the LMT for their precise professional work done during the organization process.
