It is always interesting to see which countries supported IFOR and later SFOR on the Balkans mid of the 1990s. A great example are the contingents of Finland and Sweden, which both supported the NATO mission as non NATO member states at that time. Both nations operated as part of the Nordic Polish Brigade, which included as the name already says, all NATO and non NATO member states from Northern Europe which supported IFOR/SFOR.
Beside Sweden and Finland, also Poland, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sent troops to the Balkans. Interestingly all mentioned nations (Except Denmark) were future NATO member states. Poland joined the alliance in 1999, the Baltic states in 2004 and Sweden and Finland recently.
The Swedish and Finnish contingents were compared to US, British or French ones small and included just units on battalion size. Finland sent a Engineer Battalion and Sweden a Mechanized one. But it was a great example of the willingness of both nations to support the alliance actively in peacekeeping missions on the Balkans, in this case Bosnia Herzegovina.
The photos show Finnish made Sisu 6x6 APC`s in use of both, Finland and Sweden, plus a Swedish soldier armed with the Ak 5, a improved Swedish version of the Belgian FN FNC rifle. The Ak 5 was at the time when the photos were made, the standard one of the Swedish Army.
Both contingents remained in Bosnia and were from late 1996 on part of SFOR which replaced IFOR. The late 1990s saw some replacements and changes among the Finnish contingent, until SFOR ended in 2004.
At least for me it`s interesting to see which nations participated among such multinational missions, beside the well known players. So expect some more posts about that topic in the future. For example in Somalia during the early 1990s, or Iraq in 2003.
