OOC: I'm on it, Ming. I'll have to go back and update things later, but what the hell, let's roll.
1999 (Part 2)
Canada's year for the Forces would be noted by the end of one peacekeeping mission, the opening of another, and the escalation of what was the biggest peacekeeping mission in the world at that point.
1999 opened with the end of what had been at one time the biggest peacekeeping mission in history. After the 1998 elections went off without a hitch, the United Nations decided to close out the UN mission in South Africa - the job was done, and the Federal Republic of South Africa, the economy of which was growing like a weed and the old racial problems were dying away. The UN formally announced the end of UNMISA on January 18, 1999. The next day, South Africa's new President, Steven Biko, addressed the United Nations, thanking all of those who had done so much to ensure South Africa's revival in the 1990s. "The nations of the world came to our aid when we needed it, and for that, on behalf of the people of South Africa, I thank you for your sacrifices. If the debt can be repaid one day, I give you my word now that it will be."
The last Canadian units in South Africa were 1,500 men from the Calgary Highlanders, who departed Johannesburg for home on Febuary 14, 1999. Their heavy equipment - mostly Grizzly and Bison APCs - was offered to the SANDF, but the South Africans sent the equipment home behind the troops. Two months later, however, Canuck troops were back in South Africa - a few of them, anyways.
Noting that Canada's goals with its new equipment procurement meshed well with those the SANDF, the South Africans offered to donate 75 of their Rooikat 105 armored support vehicles to the Canadian Forces. This offer was considered, and in April twelve heavy weapons experts flew to South Africa to test the Rooikats. What they found was impressive. The Rooikat, which was capable of 120 km/h onroad and 60/km/h off of it, packed a massive 105mm gun, which used standard NATO ammo, and had highly sophisticated fire control, which allowed the gun to be accurately fired even at high speed. The troops called it "the troop tank", as it had been designed to keep up with faster-moving infantry units. Impressed, the twelve urged the acceptance of the vehicles. Despite some opposition from the Reform Party - the objections of which were loudly shouted down by the Conservatives - the vehicles were accepted. They entered service for the CF's infantry regiments in 2000. They were so effective that 75 more were ordered in 2003.
With South Africa dying away, the attention to shifted to the Balkans. That mess had been simmering for years after the Dayton Accords of 1995, but it opened up again in 1999 when the Yugoslav territory of Kosovo earnestly attempted to break away from the rump Yugoslavia. Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milsoevic ordered the Serbian Army to end the revolt, and the army and many militias moved into Kosovo. The violence spread rapidly, and by March 1999 dozens were dying every day.
Not wanting to see a repeat of the Balkan Wars which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and realizing Kosovo's demographics were far divided from those of the rest of Yugoslavia, NATO ordered Milosevic to back down. Milsoevic angrily refused, and on March 24, Operation Allied Force began.
Warrior wasn't in on this one - it was off Peru making a transit to the Pacific at the time - but the Canadian Forces were there, in strength. CF-14s were among the aircraft assigned to air defense, and CF-18s and CF-187s were among the aircraft dropping bombs, though the CF-14s did drop basic iron bombs themselves on a number of occasions. Their work was exemplary, dropping 14% of the bombs dropped in the entire war and shooting down three Yugoslav MiG-29s, but the biggest event of the year went down on May 26, and had only a little to do with the Air Command.
Reconaissance and intelligence-gathering leading up to the campaign had repeatdly tracked down the locations of several high-ranking genocide leaders, most notably Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, both wanted by international courts. Now the chief of the Canadian Forces and having a distrinct memory of the pain he saw and suffered in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire was not about to let these men get away, and he proposed a mission to go in and get them. Telling the authorities, though, was fraught with peril - somebody would undoubtedly tip off Karadzic and Mladic. They needed to go in themselves.
Charest made the call himself - go for it. Defense Minister Campbell agreed, and Dallaire began planning for it.
On May 10, the two turned up in the town of Foca. Dallaire got this intel within hours, and drew up his plans with the American Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark. As these two were wanted, Dallaire's plan was easily approved - and Clark would say later, "he wanted to go after them like an angry pitbull. He wanted them badly."
On the night of May 25, 525 men of the Canadian Special Air Service took off in nine C-130H Hercules aircraft and flew from Aviano, Italy, to Foca, Bosnia, where they parachuted in. As they arrived, so did CF-187 fighters form the AF, which had left from Aviano shortly after the Hercules had. They provided cover while the Canadian troops cleared out any Serb militiamen and caputed Karadzic and Mladic. Two MiG-23s of the Srpska's air forces were shot down by the CF-187s, and the Hercules landed on a nearby road cleared out by the forces. The aircraft picked up the teams and took off, heading back to Aviano. They were refueled over the Adriatic before landing back in Italy.
The mission was a success, though ten men died and twenty-eight were wounded. One of the CF-187s was struck by a Serb SAM and crashed in a house, killing both crew members instantly. The daring raid seriously angered the Bosnian and Yugoslav governmments, but the response from both NATO and Canada was little more than a shrug. Karadzic and Mladic were both turned over to the International Courts, and both were charged with genocide. Karadzic ultimately hung himself in his cell, but Mladic was convicted of crimes against humanity on May 15, 2005, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The operation also awed the media. "Our Boys Get the Murderers of Bosnia" was the headline of the National Post, while the Toronto Sun was even more simplistic: "Gotcha, Punks." While a few pointed out that the Forces had violated international law in the raid, almost nobody cared - the crimes of Karadzic and Mladic were well-known, and many who had been victims of the two Serbian murderers openly cheered Canada's raid. In Washington, the response was both being impressed with the ambitious raid, and questions as to why the United States didn't do it themselves. "We got upstaged on our mission by the Canucks!" Growled Congressman Pete Hoekstra, Republican of Pennsylvania. "How did we let that happen?!"
OOC: Part 3 to come......
