In the month of April 2009 the Folgore Parachute Brigade will arrive in Afghanistan with all its available strength.
An impressive deployment with all its 'attack' and support units:
- 8th Parachute Engineer Regiment Folgore
- 183rd Parachute Regiment Nembo
- 186th Parachute Regiment Folgore
- 187th Parachute Regiment Folgore
- Brigade Headquarters and Logistics Departments
The Parachute Brigade deploys the Command and Task Forces of Regional Command West and the Italian contingent in Kabul.
In the course of the mission, paratroopers are engaged in operations against Taliban guerrillas and are involved in several firefights, attacks with IEDs buried in the ground or with car bombs.
Has the first fallen the 14 July 2009roadside improvised explosive device (IED) killed the 1st Maj. Par. Alessandro Di Lisio, effective at8th Par. Guastatori Folgore Regiment and injured other military personnel, including, seriously, the 1¨C Major Par. Simone Careddu.

It will be a summer of 2009 hot, very hot on the Afghan front.
The Folgore deployment, under the command of the Colonel Par. Aldo Zizzo, will change the fate of what now seems to be a distant mission to be archived.
It should be remembered that at that time, the Folgore had three top-level officers in Afghanistan in three key strategic posts:
The Parachute Incursor Div. Gen. Marco Bertolini as ISAF Chief of Staff, the Parachutist Brig-Gen Rosario Castellano such as Commander of the Folgore Brigade e Commander Task Forces Regional Command West and the multinational contingent in Herat, and indeed, of the Parachutist Colonel Aldo Zizzo , Commander of ITALFOR XX and the 186th Parachute Regiment Folgore.
The conformation and status of the brigade, with the three battalions of the manoeuvre regiments deployed on the front line, supported by one of the Army's best engineer corps (8th Rgt,) and the high level of preparation of the troops, at an all-time high, will yield unprecedented results in the fight against the Taliban.
The change of pace
It's 2008 Americans push. The security bubble in the area under Italian control must be increased.
The Wikileaks dispatches do not lie:
It will be our prerogative to convince Italy to assume a more important role than in the western region, where security conditions are deteriorating'.
A few months pass since the missive, and The Folgore arrives. The mission becomes Combat, for all intents and purposes. For the special forces was from before, for 'conventional' forces now becomes so.
We do not wish to offend the other specialities of the Italian Army, which have in any case contributed with a very high sacrifice, even of human lives, to the Afghan cause, and which, with the ISAF mission, have grown enormously, but the mission really changes, data in hand, with the arrival of Colonel Aldo Zizzo's men.
The objective is one: increase the security bubble in the area under the control of the Italian contingent. The mode is one only: flush out the Taliban by 'neutralising' them house by house. We struggle to maintain political correctness while writing this text. There is a problem in Italy and we all know it.

We are obliged, for constitutional reasons, to call any military operation a 'peace mission'.
But there is war in Afghanistan. And the paratroopers, a little scrupulously, a little romantically, know that their time has come, whatever the cost, even the supreme sacrifice.
For our rulers, the Folgore is nothing more than an extremely sharp foreign policy tool.
The famous Prussian general and writer Carl Von Clausewitz argued that 'War is but the continuation of politics by other means. War is not, therefore, merely a political act, but a true instrument of politics, a continuation of the political process, a continuation of it by other means'..
Never was a phrase more apt in this context. But the paratroopers are fine with it. It's been fine since 1942, it's OK today.
El Alamein Base (Farah), base Tarquinia (Shouz) and base Tobruk (Bala Boluk) will represent three crucial points that will be of paramount importance in the success of the mission. The three Regiments, deployed between Herat, Kabul and Farah will deal a heavy blow to the Taliban and in the numerous firefights the fundamentalist militia will be forced to severely moderate their fighting ardour.
The Folgore paratroopers will be the first Italians to be filmed in combat in Afghanistan (6 October 2009), thanks to RAI journalist Nico Piro. Images never seen before and discordant, indeed, with the peace mission label given to the Italian mission in Afghanistan.
The toughest day, however, is 17 September 2009. Six paratroopers fall after an attack with an explosive charge of over 150kg near the Kabul airfield.
Shot straight through the heart, the Parachute Brigade went ahead anyway because VILE SPRING, NOT THE FOLGORE.
Continued ...