Text and photo: Lt-Cdr. Rune Berge

 A two-rotor Chinook helicopter, dropping off a load of building supplies, was the only disturbance
 to the peace at Observation Post Bravo at Mijac this weekend. "We ain't seen nothing lately," Specialist Eric Vazquez and Specialist Paul Hiltibidal says.

MIJAC: 2nd Lt. David Hodges feels confident that nobody gets past him and his platoon at Observation Post Bravo at Mijac unnoticed. "`Right now, nobody's crossing the border,"' he says to the KFOR Chronicle.

Deployed right on the doorstep to the war-tormented mountainous, northern part of the Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, US platoons working shoulder to shoulder are doing what they
can to stop weapons being smuggled from Kosovo to the ethnic rebels fighting in FYROM.

"If you ask me if we are serving our purpose here, the answer is yes."

Platoon leader, 2nd Lt. David Hodges feels confident that nobody gets past him and his platoon at Observation Post Bravo at Mijac unnoticed. "`Right now,  nobody's crossing the border." he says.

The platoon leader from the 1st Battalion of the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, part of the 82nd Airborne, strongly rejects the harsh FYROM criticism recently of KFOR not doing enough to control the Kosovo side of the border. He feels confident that they are in control of
the territory under their watch in Multi National Brigade East (MNBE).

 "We provide sufficient protection in this area," he says.  This is also what the platoon leader tells his FYROM army colleagues on his daily visits up the hill.

 "We let them know what we know, and they let us know what they know. We do co-ordinations, but that's all. I don't conduct operations with them," he says, standing only a few meters away from the FYROM army border checkpoint at Mijac. The only movement visible on the other side comes from a yellow-and-red sunburst flag blowing in  the wind.

Above him the Stars and Stripes fly high, and only the sun sends heat his way. Everything is so quiet that the sounds of birds singing can be  heard echoing through the valley. For sure, all is quiet on the eastern front.

  "We have detained personnel here, but right now,  there is hardly any traffic in this area. Both the
   villages close by are empty at the moment, but  there were some shots fired when we entered the
  area," he tells, adding that one man was detained after that incident.

Also, a couple of weeks ago, his unit was involved in close combat in the nearby village
Debelde. Two of five suspected members of a guerrilla team operating in the border area got
wounded in that incident.

 Where it all started

"I enjoy staying here in Kosovo, here I actually get to see some green grass," Sgt. Gary Thompson says. Coming from Oman before Kosovo, he prefers patrolling the FYROM border to patrolling in the deserts of Oman.
 

Apart from giving information, and offering surveillance from the air, KFOR, the almost
45,000 strong NATO-led force in Kosovo, are doing what they can to help defuse the ethnic
conflict on the other side, without setting foot into FYROM.

  That's also why Hodges is the only one in the platoon that actually has permission to cross a few
meters on to the other side of the border. The rest have to settle with standing watch on a ridge
that looks down into the Macedonian town of Tanusevci, the place that all the FYROM fighting's
started some weeks ago.

 But out of reach doesn't mean out of control. Although NATO has rejected the idea of going into
 FYROM, or changing the mandate of KFOR, more troops have been sent to the border for
 increased patrols to stop any illegal traffic. This has successfully been accomplished by using
 night-vision equipment and surveillance from US Apache attack helicopters.

 In addition to that, the Pentagon approved this week to send several Air Force Predator
unmanned surveillance planes to monitor the Kosovo-FYROM border. In this way, KFOR can be
fed constantly with real-time images from the border.

And more is to come. The NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson's request for approximately
1,000 more troops to bolster border patrols, has been answered with promises of re-enforcement
from several nations already participating in KFOR.

The proof

Some proof of what KFOR is achieving controlling the border could be seen this week at Camp
Bondsteel, the main U.S. base in Kosovo. Tuesday US soldiers detained 13 men near the town
of Sasare in a weapon seizure, but 12 of the men were released because they weren't holding
 weapons at the time they were caught. The cache of weapons however, containing more than
 9,000 rifle rounds, 24 mortars and 240 hand grenades, never arrived where ever they were
planned to arrive. KFOR Chronicle covers this seizure in a separate article.