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)
“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“When my lover came to bed,
the knot came untied
all by itself.
My dress,
held up by the strings of a loosened belt,
barely stayed on my hips.
Friend,
that’s as much as I know now.
When he touched my body,
I couldn’t at all remember
who he was,
who I was,
or how It was.”
—Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.)