ON THE day that US military commander Gen Stanley McChrystal, in a leaked report, suggested that the US mission in Afghanistan would “likely result in failure” unless troop levels were increased, Italy yesterday held a solemn and dignified state funeral for the six Italian paratroopers killed in a suicide car bomb attack in Kabul last Thursday.
Concern about the fate of the 3,300-strong Italian contingent in Afghanistan provided an unwelcome counterpoint to the mood of national mourning during yesterday’s funeral service in the Rome basilica of St Paul Without The Walls. Even as the haunting tones of the Last Post, played by a military bugler, resounded around the silent basilica, an unidentified man calling himself a messenger of peace grabbed the microphone to shout: “Peace Now”.
The interloper was quickly removed but later there was another manifestation of concern about the Afghan mission.
As prime minister Silvio Berlusconi made his way out of the basilica, he was greeted by a lone voice in the otherwise silent crowd, shouting: “Pull them out of there, how many other deaths are we going to have to suffer?”
Mr Berlusconi, state president Giorgio Napolitano and the speakers of both houses of parliament sat at the front of the basilica, close to the mourning relatives of the victims. Applause greeted the coffins of the six men as they were carried into and out of the church on the shoulders of colleagues from the Folgore paratrooper regiment.
The six coffins were laid out in front of the altar, each one adorned by a photo of the dead man and a Folgore military beret. One of the soldiers, a 26-year-old, looked absurdly young in his photograph, but at the same time quietly serious and seemingly proud of his military uniform. Three of the dead soldiers were just 26, while the other three were 32, 35 and 37 years of age.
One of the most moving moments in the service came when PDL deputy Gianfranco Paglia, himself a former Folgore paratrooper who was paralysed as a result of combat wounds suffered in Somalia, read a prayer to his comrades.
The service began with a message from Pope Benedict XVI who said he was “profoundly saddened” by the deaths.
In his sermon, military chaplain Vincenzo Pelvi issued a passionate defence of the role of international peacekeeping missions, saying: “If a state is incapable of protecting its own population from persistent, serious violations of human rights, or from the consequences of a humanitarian crisis, be it provoked by man or nature, then the international community is called on to intervene, to explore every possible diplomatic path and to boost even the slightest signs of democracy and a desire for reconciliation.”
Six years ago, a similar state funeral was held for 19 Italians killed in the southern Iraq town of Nasiriyah.
While there were fewer being mourned yesterday, there was the same sense of shared pain.
Banners in the church from the regions of Basilicata, Campania and Puglia served as reminders, too, that all the six dead men were southern Italians, for whom the army was a lifeline out of a difficult socio-economic environment.
As the coffins made their way out of the basilica, the state paid a last tribute with a flyover from the “Frecce Tricolori” jets, trailing a smokescreen of the red, white and green of the Italian tricolour.