Operation Sunrise

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Military history records no less than four events called Operation Sunrise.

1. A British air attack on German ships in the French ports of Brest and La Pallice on 24 July, 1941. The attack failed and cost the Royal Air Force seventeen aircraft.

2. A series of secret negotiations conducted in March 1945 between representatives of the Nazi Germany and the USA to arrange a local surrender of German forces in northern Italy alternatively known as Operation Crossword.

3. The first major forced relocation of Vietnamese peasants into “strategic hamlets,” in the six provinces surrounding Saigon begun in April, 1962. Strategic hamlets were designated villages which could be defended by government forces. By moving peasants into these hamlets, the government could protect them from Viet Cong terrorism and provide them other government services. By December 1963, over 11,000 hamlets were designated as “strategic.” People outside the hamlets were assumed to be supporters of the Viet Cong. Often the relocation effort was seen by the peasants as severance of their ancient ties with the land and forcing them to live under government surveillance.

The strategic hamlet program was aimed at denying the guerrillas the support of the people and was the philosophical descendant of a similar tactic developed by the British during the Boer War. The British called their centralized locations “concentration camps.”

4. Operation of OSCE's ALBA mission