They are the eye and ear of the commander of KFOR, being tasked with supplying the leaders of the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo with various important pieces of information. For this reason, their slogan is “Feel the pulse of Kosovo”.
The Hungarian Liaison Monitoring Team (LMT) serving with the sixth rotation of the HDF KFOR contingent is based in Podujevo. The task of the LMT is to keep contact with the leaders of the settlements, the representatives of companies and the headmasters of schools in the area of responsibility (AOR). During the liaising work they gather information that may be fed into the COMKFOR’s decision-making process.
“The LMT is the COMKFOR’s eye and ear in the AOR, so it receives its detailed tasking orders from the commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission”, Capt. Attila Ivánfalvi told us. The officer assigned to the Hungarian LMT adds that the team is made up of six soldiers who are helped by two English-Albanian-Serbian interpreters in their work. Their office room is located in the office building of the leader of Podujevo municipality.
“We think we’ve managed to develop very good relationships with the local people, and we’re lucky to have their trust”, the captain says, adding that the people of Kosovo definitely like the Hungarian soldiers, perhaps in part owing to the fact that many citizens of the country had worked or studied earlier in Hungary.
One way of maintaining contact is to supply the primary schools functioning in the area of responsibility with various publications and stationery. Recently they distributed the “For You Magazine”, KFOR’s journal for civilians as well as pens and notebooks among the schoolchildren and headmasters.
“This way we are trying to popularize KFOR among the children of Kosovo”, WO Zsolt Vasvári, the operations (S3) officer of the Hungarian LMT tells us. He also reveals that being published in the area of responsibility, the magazine reaches out to a lot of young people and luckily, it has a wide readership. This is no accident, as it focuses on topics which are popular with today’s youth in Kosovo. Among others, it includes articles on fashion and sport, and the children can find a full-figure poster of the current local teen star – a singer – inside the journal.
Besides, the Hungarian soldiers can use the school visits to get an update on the problems in the life of the educational institutions and the development projects that the headmasters would like to see implemented in their own schools during the next period”, WO Vasvári told us.
(Ministry of Defence; Zrínyi Media)
