Operation Gordian Knot

The Operation Gordian Knot (Operação Nó Górdio) was the largest and most expensive Portuguese military campaign in the Portuguese overseas province of Mozambique, East Africa. It was performed in 1970, during the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974). The objectives of the campaign were to seal off the independentist guerrillas' infiltration routes across the Tanzanian border and to destroy permanent guerrilla bases in Mozambique. Gordian Knot was a seven-month campaign employing ultimately thirty-five thousand men, and was almost successful since it destroyed most guerrilla camps located in northern Mozambique's countryside and captured large numbers of rebels and armament, forcing the FRELIMO insurgents to retreat from their outposts in the territory.

Read more about Operation Gordian Knot:  Independentist Guerrilla, Brigadier General Kaúlza De Arriaga, The Operation, Aftermath

Famous quotes containing the words gordian knot, operation, gordian and/or knot:

    Turn him to any cause of policy,
    The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
    Familiar as his garter.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.
    Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)

    Turn him to any cause of policy,
    The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
    Familiar as his garter.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of his enthusiasm, and there are now men,—if indeed I can speak in the plural number,—more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest of sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)