Neat!

I like the Leupold sporter scope on the sniper rifle the guy is shooting through the wall.

Balkans 3.0

Interesting optic that the last photo has, of the female sniper with the bolt gun.  Dual eye pieces and single large objective.  Never seen that before.

She was a pretty infamous Sniper.

 

I have a Croatian friend who was in the war.  Basically, when the war began he was in high school and him and his buddies who were the equivalent of a little league soccer team got together to defend their neighborhood from Serbs.  That grew into them fighting full time for years.  He has scars all over him, there wasn't really any break, or leave or R&R in our sense.  When the war came around your area, you picked up a gun and fought until it went somewhere else.  His stories sound like some kind of medieval fight but with AKs, grenades and RPGs.  

His most surreal story is of sheltering in a small Catholic church and getting shelled by an APC that pretty much took the church down around him and his squad.  He said after the fighting stopped, him and all his friends were all wounded, somehow not dead and there was hardly one stone laying flat on another, but there was a marble pillar with a statue of Mary that was standing right in the front near where the altar had been. Not even a scratch on it.  All his stories are weird like that.  He hates Clinton for not helping the Croatians for years, then when the Croatians finally started getting the upper hand, making them stop their offensive.  

One of Arkan's Tigers showing old woman who's better.

That does not look like much fun.

might want to put a graphic warning in the title OP, what with the dude holding a head in one of the pictures

Looks like thugs with guns on all sides


I know nothing about this conflict, off to google I guess

Honestly I think you'll end up coming back around to your first statement.  It's a convoluted situation with bad guys all over the place, but the Serbs were particularly bad.

What's the story?

Pretty much.

Genocide
Corruption
Old wounds and grudges
Muslim issues
WW 2
Rape , pillage , and plunder

All the good stuff you know. Really makes you yearn for the days of Tito.

That kind of shit has been on again, off again since 1100.

That whole area is a mess. I've tried several times to figure out who are the good guys and bad guys and i haven't been able to. Seems like all sides will do anything they can to take advantage of the situation.

I'm still pretty sure the only reason it was news in the US is to deflect attention away from Monica.

This.  It's amazing how Tito held that country together and how fast it fell apart when he kicked.  

Slovenia was pretty atrocity free but it was short sharp and ugly (10-day War).  Croatia went pro right off the bat by having it's senior military leaders coached by American PMCs (teach the teachers).  Everything after that just went ugly.

One of my CUCV's last deployments was to the Balkans.

I hope we never have to experience anything like this.

My GF and her family were there when shit was getting real. One story she told me was when a bunch of foreign muslim fighters/soldiers came to their town and took all the males, including her dad, captive. They lined them up and were about to execute them when the muslim in charge changed his mind and let them go. After that they got the hell out and spent the next few months trying to get out of Serbia, into Montenegro and then eventually to the US.


She said it reminded her of some scenes out of Fear the Walking Dead a couple weeks back


 

What kind of grenade launcher is that on the bottom pic?

https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/2nnwpy/a_top_sniper_codenamed_arrow_loads_her_gun_in_a/



 

Here's a little view from our side of that mess. These were taken during my 2000 deployment to Kosovo.

Some of the guys from my platoon, racked out in the back of an LMTV after a patrol:


Camp Able Sentry, Skopje, Macedonia:


Protesters burning tires to block the road in Klokat:


The kids of Llodova, they followed us as we patrolled through town. When we stopped to visit with village elders, the villagers brought us drinks and cigarettes. In exchange, we stopped at the little store in town and bought all of the kids ice cream.


Leaving our firebase in Zegra, going on patrol in the mountains:


Some gear left behind by some Serb MUP (paramilitary police) after they tried crossing the border. Guys from our company were within 3 feet of them, safeties off, grenades ready, and the Serbs had no idea. Once an Apache flew nearby, they left their shit and ran back to the border.


One of the local kids outside our firebase, wearing my kevlar and LBV. He was a little pimp and kept us entertained for hours.


We were driving down a mountain road at night when the truck slid and started going downhill. That little tree is the only thing that stopped us from tumbling over the steep hill. I was in the seat behind the driver.


Firing a 60mm Illum round on a counter-smuggling operation along the border.


Playing soccer with the locals before our firebase was built:


The platoon RTO and my right hand man (I was the platoon FO.), doing the rucksack flop, with my M4, LBV, and radio next to him.


A view of the hills during a route clearance mission, checking a mountain pass for land mines:


Summer in the mountains south of Zegra:


Doc on a patrol, with his "Camebak":


Doc getting ready to board a Chinook to go from Camp Able Sentry to Urosavec. He had to sit down, put his arms through his ruck's straps, and have three guys pull him to his feet:


1st Platoon (Bohica), Abu Company, 1st Bn (Leader) / 187th Inf (Rakkasans), 3rd Bde, 101st ABN DIV (AASLT) at Firebase ABU, Zegra, Kosovo

Nice

I have one of those Serbian Police shirts

 

Thanks for sharing.

My barber is from Croatia. He's adamant that the only reason that European countries come to agreements is to keep from killing each other. He also says that without the U.S. exerting pressure, few deals would be made. "Europe would be a much different place without this country" he says.

"we should be more like Europe" -idiot
"Europe should get through a century without a genocide" -me