The perspectives of Italian international missions

13/05/14

"Italy is ready to side with international forces, even if a front opens up in Ukraine. The current geopolitical situation proposes challenges and threats to which we are able to respond with capacity and professionalism, without ever weakening our support for NATO ”.

On the leading role that the Italian armed forces are holding and will continue to play in the international missions, the army corps general Pietro Pistolese, of the carabinieri weapon, has no doubts.

His 49 years of career in Italy and abroad give him a picture of the crisis areas that have formed over time and that continue to open up on several fronts, based on which talk of "dismantling" missions abroad appears, as he himself states, "risky and premature".

Speaking in Campobasso during the training meeting promoted by the Molise journalists' order concerning the "profession in crisis scenarios", Pistolese does not avoid any question on the various international scenarios.

"Even on the Afghan front, the situation certainly cannot be considered stabilized. So the presence of Italy and its role will, yes, be revised in terms of modality and entity, but certainly not questioned ". With regard to Kosovo and its alleged pacification, the general recalls that" there are still hatred outbreaks ethnic and religious that can explode at any moment "and that, therefore," this should be kept in mind in future debates on the Kfor mission.

Despite having culture and experience on all crisis areas, General Pistolese is a careful observer, in particular, of Middle Eastern dynamics.

Among the positions held abroad there are, in fact, those of commander of the carabinieri contingent and deputy commander of the international peace mission "Temporary International Presence in Hebron" (1994 – 1997); as a security advisor to the EU Mission for the election of the President and the Palestinian National Autonomy Council in the 1996; as commander of the European Border Assistance peace mission in Gaza (2005-2008).

The general, who has just returned from Israel, takes stock of the ongoing talks between Israelis and Palestinians, wished by US Secretary of State John Kerry. "From one negotiation to another, nothing has really changed. Yet the parts deal with the 1993, "recalls Pistolese.

In less than an hour the general reconstructs the agreements signed over time and the illusions they have created regarding a possible pacification. We move from Oslo I, signed in Washington the September 13 1993 between Rabin and Arafat, which started the peace process, at the other moments that had made peace seem "at hand". In December of the 95, hope resurfaced when the Oslo II treaty was signed in Washington. Then the revival seemed possible when the Israeli army withdrew from Bethlehem and other major cities in the West Bank. The stages of the peace process and the moments in which this has stalled are so many.

"Each time, for a step forward, two have since been made - says the general - and perhaps, despite the intense work of the diplomats, peace can only come from below, when both peoples will finally be convinced of its necessity and the need to get it as soon as possible ".

Daniela Lombardi

(photo of the author)