Report guest lesson 11-05-2017 Doortje Verspagen A2F

Our guest speaker was a veteran, called Maarten. He is 38 years old. Maarten is
married and he has 3 kids. He was a professional soldier from 1997 to 2000. He did 2
missions in total:
Mission SFOR 4 in Bosnia from may to November 1998
Mission KFOR in Kosovo from 1999 to 2000
After those missions he became veteran.

He talked about a few things. The first one was a question What is a veteran. The
meaning is: all soldiers serving the Kingdom of the Netherlands in warfare, or similar
situations, such as peace missions in international context. He also told something
about the background on recent conflicts in Europe (Balkans). Field marshal Tito had
firmly controlled the region Yugoslavia till he died. After he died some chaos started,
because there was no one who took the lead. Everyone wanted to be higher in range. In
1992 the UN intervention mission (called UNPROFOR) started. Soldiers from over 25
countries were deployed to keep the conflict parties apart.

The third thing he talked about was the position of others. When you do a mission, like
he did, you are 6 months away from home. In some missions you can go to home in
between. Than you have the opportunity to go two times one week, or you go one time
for two weeks. Maarten chose for the one time two weeks, because otherwise he had to
say goodbye more often. Furthermore you do not have the opportunity for contact with
home. You have no internet, but you can only write letters. The only bad thing with
letters is that you can get an answer after a month. Some other things are that you
sleep in a tent together with six others, and you need to work 6-7 days a week. Of
course you also do some nice things in between, but most of the time youre working.

Article about Kosovo

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008, after years of
strained relations between its Serb and mainly Albanian inhabitants.

It has been recognized by the United States and major European Union countries, but
Serbia, backed by its powerful ally Russia, refuses to do so, as do most ethnic Serbs
inside Kosovo.
After the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Serbia responded to separatist
pressure from Kosovo by launching a brutal crackdown on the territory's Albanian
population, which was only brought to an end by Nato military intervention in 1999.

Until 2008 the province was administered by the UN. Reconciliation between the
majority Albanians, most of whom support independence and the Serb minority remains
elusive.