INSTITUTIONAL LEARNING WITHIN ICITAP

Introduction

With the end of the Cold War, police forces have found a new place in international security. Drawn into a plethora of internal conflicts, the major Western powers are dialing 911 more and more frequently. As a result of providing humanitarian relief in Somalia’s failed state, ousting dictators in Panama and Haiti, and keeping the peace in Bosnia and Rwanda, the big powers are recognizing the importance of an effective and humane police force to provide the internal security linked to international peace. The United Nations has deployed a growing number of international civilian police in peacekeeping operations; their number grew from 35 in 1988 to 3,600 in 1997. International assistance to foreign police forces has risen while military aid programs have shrunk.

U.S. policymakers now view professional, accountable, civilian police forces as serving several U.S. interests: fostering the rule of law and human rights in new democracies, promoting democratic civil-military relations abroad, confronting expanded international criminal and drug-trafficking networks, as well as providing order in unstable countries. One entity has come to play a central and widening role in U.S. efforts to train and develop foreign police forces: the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP).

Author’s note: The research and writing of this paper were funded by the U.S. Department of Justice ICITAP program. The author is grateful for the generous access to ICITAP personnel and files for this project. Research conducted as a Peace Scholar of the U.S. Institute of Peace and as a National Security Education Program Fellow was helpful in the preparation of this paper.

ICITAP was created in 1986 to help gain prosecution in key human rights cases in El Salvador and to bolster the criminal investigative capacity of Latin American security forces. Beginning with Panama in 1990, however, ICITAP became the principal U.S. agency involved in filling the “institutional gap,” restructuring of the entire law enforcement apparatus of countries in transition.

As the U.N. role in police monitoring and training during peacekeeping operations has expanded over the past several years, ICITAP collaboration with U.N.-sponsored police monitors (CIVPOL) from around the world has grown as well. Although the ICITAP mandate prevents it from doing actual policing in postintervention scenarios, its capacity to build local police forces is increasingly viewed as the ticket to quick military withdrawal following interventions or peacekeeping missions. As the scope of ICITAP activities has widened, so has its geographic reach. In 1996 alone, ICITAP initiated new projects in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and the Croatian province of Eastern Slavonia, with new projects set for Brazil, Albania, Belize, and Liberia.

With the transformation of ICITAP into the most significant bilateral police aid program in the world, an analysis of its past work and the lessons it has learned is warranted. This paper describes the history of ICITAP and how it operates. It then examines in more detail four of its most significant projects: Panama, El Salvador, Somalia, and Haiti, describing ICITAP’s activities and the lessons it drew from each experience. It concludes with some general observations about the possibilities and constraints faced by ICITAP that might inform thinking about police assistance programs more generally.

Before the 1960s, U.S. civilian police generally played a minimal role in U.S. attempts to build and shape foreign police forces. Federal law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) performed limited activities abroad, and these were focused on catching criminals rather than training foreign cops.¹ Furthermore, during this time U.S. law contained no means to compensate local U.S. cops who advised or trained foreign police, thus the State Department arranged training contracts exclusively between foreign governments and private U.S. police specialists, such as the New York City patrolman who advised and trained the Panamanian police in the early 1900s.² Consequently, U.S. police training abroad was carried out almost exclusively by U.S. military and intelligence agencies. Between 1898 and 1930, the U.S. Marines created paramilitary constabulary forces in Panama, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Liberia, and the Philippines.³ In some cases, U.S. officers served as the initial leadership for these forces. After World War II, the military dominated U.S. efforts to create new civilian police forces in Japan, Korea, and West Germany.

In 1962, the Kennedy administration created a civilian foreign police training program whose legacy would shape the creation of ICITAP. The Office of Public Safety (OPS) was established as a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) to improve the capabilities of civilian police and paramilitary forces through “training, technical assistance and equipment.”⁴ During OPS’ 13-year tenure, it would train over a million cops and send some $325 million in equipment overseas.⁵ OPS approaches foreshadowed those of ICITAP two decades later: it drew mainly on U.S. civilian police for trainers and advisers; emphasized the separation of police and military functions; and explicitly conceived of its work as long-term “institution building.”⁶

Yet its mission was explicitly ideological, seeking to counter communism by offering courses in subjects such as communist tactics and ideology.⁷ Its director came from the CIA, and building covert intelligence networks was part of its work, often in countries whose security forces abused human rights.⁸ Based on reports that OPS-provided equipment was used in serious human rights abuses, Congress shut down the program in 1974 and a year later banned all police assistance, with certain exceptions, in Section 660 of the Foreign Assistance Act.⁹ For the next several years, U.S. foreign police training was very limited, consisting mainly of anti-narcotics training.

ICITAP’s authorization grew out of a number of congressional waivers to Section 660 which the Reagan administration sought in the 1980s principally to combat Communist insurgencies in Central America and the Caribbean. These waivers were often the result of hard-fought battles with members of Congress determined not to repeat the OPS experience. Exemptions included authorization for police aid to Costa Rica and the eastern Caribbean, to El Salvador and Honduras, and “antiterrorism assistance” to deter international terrorist acts such as bombings and hijackings.

In 1983 the administration obtained a congressional waiver of Section 660 for the first “administration of justice” (AOJ) program to be administered by AID. Designed to improve the overall systems of justice in Latin America, the AOJ program responded largely to pressure for prosecution in cases where security forces receiving U.S. military assistance were accused of murdering American citizens. Fay Armstrong, a judicial specialist with the State Department in 1985, recounts:

The first “administration of justice” assistance sought to create a small Judicial Protection Unit to protect jurors, judges and witnesses in sensitive political trials in El Salvador. This did nothing, however, to ensure the collection and presentation of evidence to the courts. One State Department official recalls:

As a result of negotiations in mid-1985 involving mainly Jim Michel, on behalf of the State Department’s Inter-American Bureau, and Rob Kurz, a staff member of the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs (chaired by Rep. Michael Barnes, D-MD), Congress expanded the administration of justice waiver of Section 660 to include “programs to enhance investigative capabilities conducted under judicial or prosecutorial control.”¹²

This legislation, Section 534(b)(3) of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA), became the authorization used to establish ICITAP on January 6, 1986. Reflecting congressional concerns about the potential abuse of police aid, ICITAP’s legal mandate was initially limited to developing criminal investigative capabilities only. By late 1987, however, Congress had become sufficiently comfortable with ICITAP to expand section 534(b)(3) to two other critical areas: police management generally and police academy curriculum development. ICITAP was still not to provide direct training in sensitive enforcement areas (such as arrests and use of force) that had been issues in the OPS program, but it could work to ensure that proper curricula were in place in these areas. Beginning in 1990, statutory authority was extended on a country-specific basis to all areas of civilian police development in high visibility situations, such as Panama, El Salvador, and Haiti. This broader authority, now codified as FAA section 660(b)(6), permits assistance “to reconstitute civilian police authority and capability” in nations “emerging from instability,” authorizing ICITAP training of “cops on the beat” and all specialties within a police force.

The particular conditions that gave rise to ICITAP have heavily shaped its activities and structure: its staff until recently was drawn almost exclusively from personnel from U.S. investigative agencies (e.g., the FBI and DEA) rather than local police; its work has focused on Latin America and the Caribbean; it remains sensitive to congressional concerns about human rights; and developing criminal investigative and forensics capabilities remains the core of most of the smaller country projects, which are not discussed in detail here.

ICITAP has been something of an orphaned child of the U.S. bureaucracy. Partly because of the negative image of its old OPS program, AID remained deeply reluctant throughout the 1980s to be affiliated with police assistance programs, even in the face of the Reagan White House’s repeated attempts to expand police aid.¹³ Thus in contrast to OPS, ICITAP was not housed within AID. Yet this situation created a dilemma. The Pentagon was prohibited from engaging in foreign law-enforcement training, and the State Department had limited operational capabilities to deliver foreign aid, AID’s purpose.¹⁴ Furthermore, the FBI declined when asked to oversee the new police component of the administration of justice program, reportedly because its officials feared association with another OPS experience.¹⁵

Consequently an unusual arrangement was adopted whereby a small program, ICITAP, would report directly to the Deputy Attorney General. In an arrangement which continues to date, ICITAP was placed under the administrative and operational authority of the Justice Department, receives its funding from AID channeled through the State Department, and receives policy guidance from the State Department.¹⁶ Because of this institutional arrangement, ICITAP responds to numerous pressures and bureaucratic tendencies. In the words of one congressional staff member, “It’s not as if ICITAP has its own agenda. It’s always being driven by everyone else’s agenda, pulled and pushed by various political factions usually on a very short-term basis.”¹⁷ Moreover, there are important differences in interests, cultures and commitment among the various agencies which have some voice in ICITAP’s activities: the State Department, the Justice Department, AID, the FBI, and ICITAP itself.¹⁸

ICITAP fundamentally implements policy rather than formulating it. Decisions to initiate or end ICITAP projects generally lie with policymakers outside ICITAP, and there are no formal guidelines for such decisions. In large projects linked to high-profile U.S. foreign policy initiatives (such as Panama, Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia), ICITAP has sought a role and helped shape its own activities, but the timing and nature of ICITAP’s programs derive principally from interagency discussions involving the White House, the Defense Department, the State Department, and the Justice Department. For lower-profile projects such as those in the Andes, the Eastern Caribbean, and much of Central America, the original impetus for ICITAP involvement might come from local government officials, the U.S. Embassy, ICITAP’s own proposals, AID, or the State Department, but ultimately some agreement between State and Justice must materialize. In all cases, local governments are consulted, and a process of harmonization occurs between what the U.S. Government is willing and able to provide and what the host government is interested in receiving.

ICITAP is the only U.S. program established specifically to address the developmental and training needs of foreign law enforcement agencies. Yet it is not the sole provider of U.S. police assistance. Under some dozen exceptions to the Section 660 ban, myriad U.S. agencies conduct foreign law enforcement training, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the FBI, the State Department Diplomatic Security Service, the U.S. Customs Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard, the Defense Department, and the U.S. Marshals. The number and complexity of U.S. police assistance programs make it impossible to calculate how much money is spent or how many students are trained in any given year. In the most comprehensive attempt yet to account for U.S. police aid, a U.S. General Accounting Office study found that 125 countries received at least $117 million in police training from U.S. agencies in fiscal year 1990.¹⁹ While ICITAP often coordinates with other U.S. agencies, it has only recently begun to conduct joint training and development activities in conjunction with other agencies of the U.S. Government.

Nor is ICITAP necessarily the largest U.S. provider of police aid. In the General Accounting Office study, the ICITAP FY 1990 budget was $20 million; State Department’s antinarcotics aid totaled over $45 million; antiterrorism assistance was $10 million; and the Defense Department spent over $11 million in military assistance for training police forces in Central America and the Caribbean, plus $30 million for training and equipping antidrug police in Mexico and the Andes.²⁰ These other programs tended to be extremely technical and operational, focused on specific U.S. military or law enforcement objectives. Whereas many ICITAP projects are similarly technical in content, it is capable of having a more far-reaching impact by addressing the overall structure, management, doctrine and curriculum of national police forces, especially in larger projects.

Since its inception, ICITAP work has expanded greatly in size and scope. It opened with only a director and a deputy director, grew to 6 program staff by 1988, to 22 by late 1990, and to 51 by 1997, including staff based abroad.²¹ ICITAP staff also reflects a healthy degree of diversity: of its 51 employees, 23 are women, including the current ICITAP director, and 20 are of minority races and non-U.S. nationalities. ICITAP opened its first field office in Panama in 1990, and by 1997 had seven such offices in Panama, El Salvador, Bolivia, Colombia, Haiti, Guatemala, and Honduras. In addition, ICITAP drew on a growing number of short-term and long-term contractors and sub-contractors who perform the bulk of ICITAP’s training and advising around the world. For instance, at the height of the biggest ICITAP project to date, it employed some 300 people in Haiti including advisers, instructors, interpreters, and support staff. Subcontractors are generally selected by ICITAP staff and hired through contracting agencies on the basis of their background in federal, state, or local law enforcement as well as their language skills and areas of expertise.

In its first year, 1986, ICITAP received $1.52 million for its regional (known as “Latin American and the Caribbean,” or “LAC regional”) projects. The LAC regional Administration of Justice (AOJ) authorization for ICITAP was broadened in 1987 to three principal missions: enhancement of professional capabilities to carry out investigative and forensic functions; assistance in development of academic instruction and curricula for law enforcement personnel; and improvement of administrative and management capabilities of law enforcement agencies, especially those pertaining to career development, personnel evaluation, and internal discipline procedures.

As security priorities evolved with the decline of the Cold War, ICITAP was increasingly called upon. Pursuant to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 and the International Narcotics Control Act of 1990, ICITAP initiated specialized training and assistance in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. The Urgent Assistance for Democracy in Panama Act of 1990 contained funds for ICITAP to provide civilian law enforcement training in Panama. That authority was continued under Section 124 of Public Law 102-266 and extended to El Salvador by Section 122, authorizing ICITAP to develop a new, national civilian police force, a central requirement of the 1992 Peace Accords. The East European Democracy Act of 1989 and the Freedom Support Act of 1992 provided the authority for ICITAP to conduct projects in the newly established and developing democracies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Congress has authorized other ICITAP programs as well.

In 1996, the ICITAP annual budget topped $30 million, a 20-fold increase from 1986 (see chart). In 1996, new projects were approved for South Africa, Liberia, Belize, and Brazil. Proposals were pending for new projects in Albania, Cambodia, Estonia, Jordan, Mexico, and Lebanon. Ongoing work continued in Bolivia, the English-speaking

Caribbean, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Panama.

ICITAP Early Years: 1986-1989

Early ICITAP projects reflected the experience and abilities of its influential founding director, FBI Inspector-in-Charge David J. Kriskovich. On loan from the FBI until his retirement from ICITAP in 1994, Kriskovich was hired based on his experience in developing a 4-week course in criminal investigations known as the “Caribbean Police School” in 1981 and his experience training the Special Investigative Unit in El Salvador in 1985.²² ICITAP’s original activities were limited to Central America, the Dominican Republic, and the English-speaking Caribbean. Activities were divided between “training” and development.” By 1989, the agency was conducting training off a menu of approximately a dozen courses, including criminal

investigations and interview techniques, forensics, police management, and violent personal crimes.

ICITAP “development” activities included the transfer of equipment, the sponsorship of regional police or forensics conferences, the provision of internships to serve for 2 or 3 weeks with law enforcement agencies or forensics facilities in the United States, and the bolstering of foreign police departments’ institutional procedures. In the Caribbean, for instance, ICITAP assisted efforts to get police forces in locations such as Barbados and Jamaica to comply with the standards of the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies.

During this early phase, ICITAP developed a reputation for quick action and professional delivery of courses. Kriskovich was a tireless organizer of regional networks of police investigators and information exchange. He also maintained a willingness to discuss ICITAP programs openly with Congress and nongovernmental organizations at any time. Given the highly charged atmosphere in Washington over U.S. policy in Central America throughout the 1980s, this accomplishment was no small feat. As Rob Kurz, who was instrumental in drafting ICITAP’s mandate in 1985, said in 1997:

Although human rights groups maintained a skeptical attitude about ICITAP at the time, their skepticism was due mainly to the nature of the public security forces and governments with which the U.S. Government was affiliated rather than actions of ICITAP.²⁴ ICITAP’s reputation as a “clean” agency also derived from the exceptional congressional scrutiny to which its operations were subjected.²⁵

As time passed, ICITAP shortcomings became more apparent. Its design, planning, and evaluation of programs were very poor. According to one State Department official:

Second, insufficient attention was paid to the legal and cultural context in which training took place. While ICITAP used Spanish-speaking instructors, most courses were simply translated versions of courses taught in U.S. law enforcement academies (“off-the-shelf” courses). Thus ICITAP gave instruction on combating “crimes” that turned out to be legal activities in the country in question and courses that reflected the accusatorial U.S. legal system while the legal systems involved were inquisitorial, drawn from Spanish and French traditions. In the latter systems, judges, rather than police officers, play a dominant role in criminal investigations.

Third, much of the training took place outside a context of institutional development. During ICITAP’s first few years, “development” was conceived narrowly as improving material conditions for recipient criminal investigative units (e.g., better equipment), enhancing police standards, and providing professional career development for police trainees.²⁷ In practice, this meant ICITAP tended to offer discrete courses from its menu at the request of host governments. But, such activities could be blind to the broader context, and their benefits washed away by factors outside the specific training program itself.²⁸ As ICITAP’s current deputy director puts it, “We learned that just going out and doing a couple of courses doesn’t work because when you go back 6 months later you may not find a trace of the training that was done.”²⁹ ICITAP would later adopt an “institutional development” approach involving local police leadership to ensure that training fit into an overall plan, that standard operating procedures existed and corresponded to training, and that the overall institutional environment would preserve rather than undermine the training. In 1990 such an approach was, in the words of ICITAP’s current director, “not yet invented.”

Panama: ICITAP’s First "Whole-Force"

The biggest and most difficult shift in ICITAP’s institutional history commenced with the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989. U.S. troops defeated Manuel Noriega’s Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF), and the elected government of President Guillermo Endara chose not to reconstruct the military but instead to build a civilian-controlled “Public Force” consisting of an air corp, naval corp, and a new civilian police force. As described in this volume by Gray and Manwaring, U.S. policymakers were eager to remove U.S. troops from public security roles but faced a lack of public order following the invasion. Without any advance notice, ICITAP was tasked in January 1990 to draw up a 2?-year plan to assist in development of police services in Panama. Special congressional authority was quickly approved in the Urgent Assistance for Democracy in Panama Act of February 7, 1990, which authorized ICITAP for the first time to train street cops. The Inter-American Affairs Bureau of the State Department subsequently granted ICITAP $13.2 million for the initial project.

ICITAP was wholly unprepared for the tasks thrust upon it and received intense criticism, especially from the U.S. military. At the time the agency consisted of only a small staff of FBI agents on loan and a few regional language specialists. ICITAP staff backgrounds centered on criminal investigations and police management. None of the staff specialized in city policing, rural policing (a major requirement in Panama), midlevel police management, erecting a training academy, or designing the curriculum, policies, procedures, and selection criteria for any cops other than detectives. In fact, ICITAP’s mandate had precluded it from engaging in providing training in patrolling and use of firearms that would be required in Panama. Expecting ICITAP to help reduce the “deployment” and “enforcement” gaps, U.S. military officers were shocked to discover that ICITAP would have fewer than ten staff in Panama, far from the number required to place police advisers and mentors in cities and provinces around the country.

ICITAP’s job was complicated by decisions about the composition of the new Panamanian police forces. Panama was the first country after the Cold War in which U.S. policymakers confronted the “demobilization dilemma” common to transitions from authoritarian rule. Because pre-existing security forces are generally associated with the prior authoritarian regime, they often lack popular legitimacy or have been involved in repression and human rights violations. This was precisely the case in Panama. Preserving such a force can sully the reputation of a new civilian regime and perpetuate problems of police corruption, human rights violations, and an authoritarian or militarized law enforcement approach. Yet demobilizing such a force brings its own problems. Creating a new security force from whole cloth takes years and money, and periods of transition are often accompanied by a dramatic rise in violent crime. Furthermore, former policemen and soldiers, organized and trained in the use of firearms, might easily turn to crime and destabilize a nascent democracy whose new police lack experience. This “dilemma” has no cost-free answers.³⁰ The Endara Government, facing imminent U.S. troop withdrawal, chose to address the dilemma by cashiering many senior-level PDF officers, transforming the remaining soldiers into the cops of the new police force, and opening a civilian training academy whose graduates would, over a period of several years, gradually supplant former military personnel.

ICITAP began its work, therefore, by developing a 3-week “transition” course to orient the majority of former PDF personnel toward basic policing skills for a democratic society. For the long term, ICITAP created a new Police Academy, provided instructors, and helped organize the new Panamanian National Police (PNP) and a separate criminal investigations service known as the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ). ICITAP sought to address corruption and abuses by creating an Office of Public Responsibility (OPR) for the new police forces.

Because of ICITAP’s lack of preparedness for the tasks in Panama, the U.S. military played an important role in maintaining public security and in standing up the new police force in the first months of 1990. U.S. infantry and military police units began to provide public order a few days after the invasion. In January 1990, a U.S. Military Support Group was activated and the 16^th Military Police assigned to train the new police. U.S. policymakers sought to remove the military from these roles, and their frustration grew because ICITAP was extremely slow to organize transitional training for the new police, even slower to organize an academy, and was never able to provide field training in the cities and countryside. The 3-week transition course for former PDF members was not initiated until May 1990, and the 1991 target of 5,000 course recipients was not met until September 1992. ICITAP had no permanent project director in Panama until June 1990.

Consequently, U.S. forces did the bulk of the work with the vetted and renamed Panamanian police in the first months after the invasion. Prohibited by the Urgent Assistance for Democracy in Panama Act from conducting training in Panama, U.S. Special Forces and reservists patrolled rural areas and conducted joint patrols with Panamanian police in the two main cities, serving as an important means of monitoring and evaluating police performance.³¹ The Defense Department also provided vehicles and other equipment for the police.

ICITAP drew many lessons from this experience. Despite its poor start, ICITAP laudably maintained a firm conviction that institution building cannot be done effectively overnight. It recognized the need for long-term support in Panama, although the program’s duration (now in its 8^th year) has recently drawn criticism for lack of its own “exit strategy.”³² ICITAP had to make many adjustments in the course of the program (e.g., a “Model Precinct” program was terminated, and a scarcity of academy candidates from rural areas forced a relaxation of selection standards). The agency also learned the benefits of establishing internal control units to maintain the quality and credibility of police counterparts. The OPRs of both the PNP and the PTJ have dismissed some 150 officers and turned their cases over to judicial prosecutors. Later in the project, AID and ICITAP began integrating PTJ detectives and prosecutors in a pilot project aimed at improving criminal case management.

Panama’s approach to the “demobilization dilemma” showed ICITAP the problems of utilizing former members of militarized and corrupt security forces. Although popular acceptance of the PNP has improved in recent years, Panamanians knew that the police were the same personnel as before, only with different uniforms. One 1992 poll showed that 64 percent of all Panamanians distrusted the police, while only 26 percent held confidence in them.³³ Although corruption within the new police force is reportedly not as institutionalized as under Noriega, it remains widespread. In addition, U.S. military troops were forced in December 1990 to help suppress a coup attempt led by former PDF officers which the PNP was unable to handle.³⁴ Whereas the PNP handling of riots has improved,³⁵ both the new police and the academy suffered from extremely high turnover of leadership—six and five directors, respectively—in their first 4 years.

The Panama experience also revealed the importance of field mentoring in whole-force police development and ICITAP inability to provide sufficient experienced cops to accompany and guide newly deployed police officers. In most countries with established police forces, newly trained officers benefit from pairing with experienced officers who provide ongoing on-the-job training. Some police departments have field training officers who instruct rookie cops. Wholly new forces obviously lack such experienced “mentors.” Panama revealed for the first time the importance of field training in filling the institutional gap facing U.S. policymakers in peace operations: the U.S. military is neither an appropriate nor a politically acceptable tool for conducting sustained field training; ICITAP resources, mandate, and history leave it ill prepared to do so; and no U.S. agency could readily locate the hundreds of police field trainers with the requisite language skills and availability. UNCIVPOL can probably best provide the numerous personnel required for this role. However, they are selected more for the monitoring skills needed for the enforcement gap than for mentoring skills, and are often withdrawn anyway before the institutional gap is adequately filled.

For ICITAP, the Panama experience also showed the limits of training outside an “institutional development” context. Building police institutions demands more than delivering technical skills. It requires attention to the legal framework, organizational leadership, and the development of institution-wide policies. According to current ICITAP Director Janice M. Stromsem:

To ICITAP’s credit, it would incorporate many of the lessons of Panama in its programs in El Salvador and Haiti.

El Salvador and ICITAP

Shortly after the Panama invasion, ICITAP had the opportunity to apply these lessons in a second “whole force” development project in El Salvador. U.N.-mediated peace accords signed in January 1992 ended the civil war between the U.S.-backed Salvadoran Government and the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas. A central part of the accords was reform of the armed forces, including their removal from public security functions. Three military-controlled security forces with reputations for human rights abuses were dissolved and replaced by a single new police force, the National Civilian Police (PNC). A separate National Public Security Academy (ANSP) was also created. In an unusual arrangement crucial to convincing the guerrillas to lay down their weapons, 20 percent of the new force could be composed of former FMLN combatants and an equal number could be vetted members of the former National Police. The remainder would be new recruits with no combat history.

Although ICITAP had provided assistance since 1986 to detectives from various security forces, the accords created vastly expanded roles for the agency.³⁷ First, ICITAP participated in a commission with Spanish police advisers and Salvadoran government representatives to design the curriculum for the ANSP. ICITAP trained half the first class of PNC supervisors in Puerto Rico in 1992 and contributed the bulk of international aid (some $10 million out of $13 million in the first 2 years) to the costs of materials and instruction at the ANSP.³⁸ ICITAP continues to fund several instructors at the ANSP, including retired federal and local U.S. law enforcement agents and a few Chilean carabineros. ICITAP also provided technical advice to the leadership of the PNC which continues to date, as well as a separate project in support of the new criminal investigations division of the PNC. As of March 1997, ICITAP maintained an FBI project manager in El Salvador, five U.S. teaching fellows who provided training or advice on instruction, five Chilean carabinero instructors, and five advisers to various divisions of the PNC.

ICITAP accomplishments were significant, and its role was viewed positively by the government as well as the former guerrillas.³⁹ ICITAP helped recruit, vet, and train the target number of 5,700 basic recruits and 240 officer-level candidates, roughly meeting an ambitious 2-year transition timetable. ICITAP continued supporting an accelerated training pace at the ANSP, and as of March 1997, ICITAP had trained over 12,000 recruits, 200 supervisory level officers, 2,000 trainees in specialized courses, 30 instructors, 800 field training officers, and 40 forensic lab technicians. Ultimately, ICITAP was critical in the creation of a self-sustaining academy, which has served as a model for neighboring countries. ICITAP also played a crucial role in developing policies and procedures for the PNC and contributed more than any other donor to PNC material needs such as vehicles and communications equipment. Although ICITAP helped initiate an Inspector General for the PNC and two internal control units, these were not fully effective. Some human rights groups argue the United States might have done more to prevent the corruption and abuses that emerged after full PNC deployment.⁴⁰

The El Salvador project represented ICITAP’s first extensive collaboration with the United Nations. In general, the relationship proved positive. Police issues were included in weekly coordination meetings between the U.S. ambassador and the U.N. head of mission. ICITAP and U.N. instructors achieved a division of labor in instruction at the ANSP, as did ICITAP and European Union advisers to the PNC. Additionally, some 300 UNCIVPOL provided field training for newly deployed PNC agents where ICITAP did not have the manpower.

The relationship was not without tensions. ICITAP was familiar to the Salvadoran Government through its prior training. In addition, the United States was a more significant donor to the police project than all others combined, providing $25 million through ICITAP between 1992 and 1997, with $7 million more obligated as of this writing. Yet the accords named the United Nations the transitional coordinator of international support. ICITAP placed its instructors at the ANSP via a bilateral agreement rather than through the United Nations, and U.N. officials complained that ICITAP did not cooperate enough with the U.N. principal technical adviser.⁴¹ One well-placed U.N. official subsequently suggested that international efforts to develop the police would have benefitted if all assistance had been channeled through the United Nations and that the international community might thus have spoken with one voice in exercising leverage with the Government.⁴² The United States, and particularly ICITAP, held a significant financial stake in the project, sometimes disagreeing with U.N. positions, and sought to avoid being subject to the notoriously slow U.N. bureaucracy. In the end, these problems did not alter the fact that the ad hoc relationship worked acceptably well.

El Salvador yielded several lessons for ICITAP. First, the project underscored how important the political aspects of ICITAP’s work are and how important politically skilled project managers can be. The attention and contention surrounding the development of the ANSP and the PNC within the Salvadoran peace process placed unusual demands upon ICITAP. Like Haiti after it, El Salvador had a high profile in U.S. politics, and members of Congress and human rights groups scrutinized these two projects like no others. ICITAP learned the benefits of its open-door policies, winning critical praise for its work in both countries from international human rights groups.⁴³ The fact that the ICITAP project manager from 1991 until 1996, FBI agent Robert Loosle, was not only technically skilled but also politically astute proved extremely helpful in dealing with obstacles to police development which were quite often political in nature.⁴⁴

ICITAP also learned the importance of exercising, as part of the U.S. Embassy team, diplomatic and political leverage in its dealings with local government officials. It is difficult to walk the road between heeding the judgment of local officials on the one hand, and ensuring that propitious conditions for police development prevail on the other. In El Salvador, elements of the Government itself were resistant to agreed-upon police reforms. As the paper by Stanley and Loosle shows, without exercising some leverage, the international community could well have squandered its substantial investment in the PNC and the ANSP. Because ICITAP project manager Loosle occupied the post for 6 years, the U.S. ambassador was able to take advantage increasingly of his experience and judgment on such matters. Such longevity and influence have their risks as well, of course.

The presence of other bilateral donors and the United Nations provided ICITAP with an opportunity to examine its own advantages and disadvantages with respect to these actors. ICITAP learned the value of having language-capable field monitors and trainers who can provide on-the-job training, capabilities ICITAP does not possess. It also benefitted from hiring long-term foreign instructors for the first time. According to Stromsem, El Salvador was also the “first time we saw the difficulties of working with CIVPOL and the U.N.” The inefficiency and lack of top quality CIVPOL personnel led to less than desired results.

At the same time, the United Nations generally proved more agile in detecting political and human rights problems, in part due to its mandate and staffing advantages in these areas. In the case of the integration of the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) and the old Anti-Narcotics Unit into the PNC, the United States and ICITAP clung to units in which they had a vested interest longer than they should have, as Loosle and Embassy officials now acknowledge.⁴⁵ While the United States turned out to be better positioned to weigh in with Salvadoran officials on these problems, the United Nations was quicker to recognize them.

ICITAP also drew lessons from the nature of the peace process in El Salvador. The presence of a detailed peace agreement had its advantages and disadvantages. According to ICITAP’s Stromsem:

ICITAP’s next big project, Somalia, would show the negative side of not having a peace agreement.

Building a Police Force in Somalia

ICITAP involvement in Somalia illustrates the importance of political context in the failure or success of police training programs. Its involvement in Somalia came late in the international community’s 1992-95 high-profile intervention, only after the Clinton administration had announced its decision to pull out all U.S. troops following the killing of 18 U.S. Army Rangers in October 1993. Prior to ICITAP involvement, the U.S.-led United Task Force (UNITAF) had taken steps to reconstruct a police force that had numbered over 15,000 before civil war broke it apart, leading to informal, regionalized, clan-dominated policing.⁴⁷ By March 1993, a 5,000-member “Auxiliary Police Force” comprising former Somali National Police members had been reassembled in the southern UNITAF-controlled zone, reporting to a Police Committee named by the main Somali factions.⁴⁸

ICITAP’s first involvement was a 5-day evaluation of the Auxiliary Police Force in March 1993. Like the 2-week U.N. evaluation conducted a month earlier by a police technical team, the ICITAP evaluation concluded that the auxiliary force enjoyed a “positive reputation” and could form the basis for a reconstituted national police force comprised of former members of the Somali National Police force.⁴⁹ Unlike police forces in Panama, El Salvador and Haiti, the Somali force had enjoyed widespread legitimacy among diverse groups, had relatively modern equipment, and was seen as professional and apolitical.⁵⁰ However, the ICITAP March evaluation cautioned that the potential to rebuild the police force was contingent upon three factors: high levels of international funding for equipment, buildings and training; reconstitution of the other elements of the justice system, which were wholly inoperative at the time; and a change in the dangerous security environment prevalent in Somalia.⁵¹ In the end these conditions were not met before police assistance was undertaken.

No action was taken by ICITAP until U.S. policy shifted in response to the killing of 18 U.S. Rangers in October 1993. At that time the Clinton administration announced U.S. forces would withdraw by March 1994, and U.S. policymakers called in ICITAP to ensure that a Somali police force would function after U.S. forces departed. In December 1993, the United States pledged $12 million for a 1-year ICITAP police training program, $6 million for the judiciary, and $25 million in Defense Department excess equipment, mainly vehicles.⁵² Unfortunately, it was not until Congress approved authority for the Somalia police program on February 27, 1994, that ICITAP project manager Mike Berkow could depart for Somalia and begin the program.⁵³ By then U.S. troops were packing to leave, and the Auxiliary Police Force, now nominally totaling 8,000, had suffered setbacks. The outbreak of renewed conflict had rendered the Police Committee more politicized and less effective. In Mogadishu and other regions, an initial high degree of motivation and discipline had given way to demoralization and significant disintegration of the force.⁵⁴ In some provincial areas the police continued to function, producing a bizarre situation of fairly effective police working with no elected national government and weak or nonexistent local councils.⁵⁵

Part of the problem was UNOSOM II’s insufficient attention to reconstituting the Somali police. Although the resurrection of a police force had been the international community’s “ticket out” of Somalia from the beginning,⁵⁶ the police were a low-level U.N. priority with little U.S. involvement after UNITAF handed over the peacekeeping baton to UNOSOM II in May 1993.⁵⁷ Total CIVPOL in Somalia grew from three in May 1993 to only 22 by March 1994, when ICITAP arrived. Although their primary task was training rather than monitoring, CIVPOL personnel were unable to carry out any significant activities because they lacked the funds for classrooms, teaching materials, transport, food, and housing for students.⁵⁸

ICITAP threw itself into reconstituting the Somali National Police and considered its activities positive. Yet the plug was pulled on the ICITAP program in June 1994, only 4 months after it had begun. ICITAP built a provisional training center in Baidoa and another at the U.N. compound in Mogadishu, carried out three 21-day “refresher” courses for some 176 police officers, and completed nine other courses in arms-handling, convoy escort, and police station administration.⁵⁹

The context called for unusual skills from ICITAP staff. In claiming portable buildings for classrooms that had been abandoned by the U.S. Air Force, project manager Berkow had to dodge factional gunfire, negotiate away three trailers in exchange for perimeter security from Romanian U.N. troops, and locate a forklift and a truck to personally load and haul away the buildings.⁶⁰ ICITAP also began refurbishing police stations with invaluable assistance from U.N. military forces, who also provided all transportation to police students attending ICITAP courses.⁶¹ Such ad hoc collaboration between ICITAP and the United Nations, however, was largely at the initiative of ICITAP staff and individual U.N. military field commanders. Overall coordination between U.N. and U.S. efforts in Somalia was poor.⁶²

In the end, ICITAP did not complete much of its 1-year program. It spent less than one-fourth of its $12 million budget and never initiated longer term activities such as establishment of a permanent academy or development of specialized units. According to Berkow, “We never accomplished half of what we had planned. We never got to long-term institution building. We were using two provisional stations which everybody recognized were only temporary.”⁶³ Over three-fourths of ICITAP’s Somalia budget was transferred to the Haiti project. The $25 million of excess stocks from the Defense Department, including 353 vehicles, 5,000 M-16s, 5,000 .45-caliber pistols, and 1.2 million rounds of ammunition, sat in a warehouse for months, not claimed or distributed by UNOSOM by ICITAP’s departure in mid-1994.

ICITAP training programs were closed because the security situation made them unsustainable.⁶⁴ At the time, instructors wore flak jackets and dodged stray bullets that whizzed through their classrooms. Following a 3-day firefight near the police training center in Mogadishu, the United States pulled all nonessential personnel from the country, including all ICITAP personnel.

The ICITAP Somalia program was unusual in that it sought to rebuild a pre-existing police force rather than create a new force. Presumably this task should have been easier; however, this proved not to be the case because of a second unusual aspect of the Somalia operation: it was an attempt to construct a police force in the absence of a government or legitimate political authority. Perhaps too late, it was determined that an internationally supported police force, no matter how professional and popularly accepted, is unsustainable in the absence of a governmental structure to support it.

Haiti and ICITAP

The remaining funds for Somalia were quickly transferred to the next crisis spot, Haiti. ICITAP involvement in Haiti began in 1992, when it was asked to draw up plans for a long-term police development project should a political settlement be reached to restore civilian rule. In January 1993, ICITAP drew up a 5-year plan to develop a completely new civilian police in Haiti, where a corrupt and unpopular military had long controlled public security. In August 1993, after the Governors Island Accord was reached between exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the de facto military government, then-Associate Director Jan Stromsem and two other ICITAP advisers went to Haiti and helped Justice Minister Guy Malary draft a police law for a planned new police force. After Malary was gunned down by military henchmen in October 1993, ICITAP left the country to await the ouster of the military government.

In September 1994, 2 days after U.S. troops landed in Haiti, ICITAP began the largest program in its history when Stromsem and four other ICITAP personnel arrived by military transport. In contrast to Panama, ICITAP involvement in Haiti was carefully planned in advance. Determined not to repeat the Somalia debacle, Pentagon officials hosted interagency working group meetings on Haiti starting in August 1994 that included ICITAP representatives. The Joint Staff would allow no military “mission creep” into institution-building functions or policing duties in Haiti. The Defense Department wanted no U.S. casualties if force was to be used at all and as speedy a departure as possible.

Consequently, the State Department, working with ICITAP, developed a plan to provide interim public security should U.S. intervention render the Haitian Armed Forces inoperative. ICITAP’s long-term plan for a new police would not address the deployment or enforcement gaps. Based on its experience in Panama, ICITAP strongly preferred to avoid the use of former army personnel for the new Haitian National Police. The working group recommended a three-step program. U.S. forces would neutralize the Haitian Armed Forces and fill the initial deployment gap, field an Interim Public Security Force (IPSF), and develop a permanent, new Haitian National Police (HNP) force to fill the institutional gap. President Aristide directed that no more than 9 percent of the new HNP could be composed of former army personnel.⁶⁵

U.S. and Haitian policymakers addressed the demobilization dilemma by using mainly vetted members of the Haitian Armed Forces for the IPSF and by discouraging their membership in the basic level of the new HNP. Some 3,000 IPSF members were drawn from the 7,000-member army, vetted by two groups of Haitian and U.S. Government officials (including ICITAP) and sent through a 6-day transition course developed and delivered by ICITAP. In addition, ICITAP designed and delivered a 21-day course for 1,089 refugees in Guantanamo, Cuba, 900 of whom were incorporated into the IPSF along with ex-army members.

The State Department organized a force of 920 International Police Monitors (IPMs) from 26 countries to perform monitoring tasks that are often carried out by UNCIVPOL. Former New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly headed this force. ICITAP provided a 3-day orientation to the IPMs and their 300 interpreters in Puerto Rico prior to their deployment. When the U.S.-led Multinational Force gave way to the UNMIH in March 1995, some 300 CIVPOL took over the monitoring function.

At the same time ICITAP was carrying out the transition course, it was selecting a site for the new HNP Training Center and devising a recruitment drive with the Aristide Government. Between February 1995 and February 1996, ICITAP would train more than 5,000 basic-level cadets, drawing upon instructors from France and Canada as well as the United States. Concerns by U.S. policymakers about the admission of former army soldiers were eased when only some 20 or 30 met the entrance requirements of the ICITAP-run academy, although ultimately some 730 IPSF members drawn from the army were passed into the HNP by Aristide.⁶⁶ Because of the rush to deploy the HNP before the then-scheduled departure date for UNMIH of February 1996, the United States decided to open an ICITAP-run training center at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, to expand upon the limited space of the HNP Training Center.

ICITAP expressed its deep reservations about the symbolism of conducting training at a U.S. military base. Nevertheless, the program was carried out, with the positive result that training was completed more quickly and the negative result that many Haitians suspect that HNP cadets somehow came under the influence of U.S. military or intelligence services.⁶⁷ At its peak, the Haiti effort employed over 300 ICITAP trainers and interpreters and other personnel on the two campuses, with over 3,000 cadets in training. In 1996, ICITAP completed courses for senior-level and midlevel supervisors. It also initiated specialized training in crowd control, narcotics, criminal investigations, and SWAT team tactics. Several of these courses involved collaboration with UNCIVPOL instructors. ICITAP also provided advisers to the HNP Director, the Inspector General, and other divisions of the HNP, and helped develop policies and procedures for the new force. ICITAP assistance included vehicles, communications equipment, and other materials.

As in Somalia, the U.S. military both facilitated and posed difficulties for ICITAP’s work. As ICITAP trained the IPSF and began setting up the police academy for the long-term police force in late 1994, U.S. Special Forces and U.S. Military Police filled the immediate deployment gap. They supervised, monitored, accompanied, and offered minimal arms training to IPSF members. ICITAP was also heavily dependent upon the military for logistics support, relying upon military transport for concrete, building materials, and a truck to haul pre-fab trailers for housing at the police academy. Despite inevitable breakdowns in logistics, the coordination between the Pentagon and ICITAP was improved in Haiti over prior operations.⁶⁸ For example, ICITAP placed a staff member in Norfolk at the U.S. Atlantic Command headquarters to coordinate shipments of materials. On the other hand, Joe Trincellito, ICITAP/OPDAT Haiti Operations Director, described how the “exit strategy syndrome” undermined institutional-building objectives:

Circumstances in Haiti and the effective management of the enforcement gap helped avert a widely feared repeat of the Somalia debacle. Attacks on U.S. personnel were few, and public order was generally well preserved during the period of heaviest international involvement: the period of U.S. operational control (September 1994-March 1995) and the full U.N. peacekeeping operation (March 1995-February 1996). This period coincided with both the remainder of the Aristide presidency and the tenure of the Interim Public Security Force, although the IPSF held little legitimacy in the eyes of the public. Many failed to show up for work or stayed in the stations for fear of public wrath. As Trincellito said:

Some 20 alleged political killings occurred in this period, some of which implicated members of the IPSF and the Palace guard. These grave human rights violations nevertheless represented a vastly lower number than during the military regime. Later, human rights groups praised the aggressive work of the new HNP Inspector General’s office, describing it as part of “revolutionary” efforts to exact police accountability.⁷¹ Drawing on the experiences of places like El Salvador, ICITAP made a concerted effort to erect an internal oversight unit quickly. ICITAP officials report that the Inspector General’s office is more developed and functional than the internal oversight mechanisms in Panama and El Salvador at comparable stages.⁷²

More difficult than filling the enforcement gap was the construction of a new institution capable of handling public security without significant international back-up. Although a CIVPOL force of roughly 300 and a military presence of some 1,300 U.N. soldiers remained in Haiti from March 1996 though late 1997, the HNP increasingly assumed responsibility for public security during this time. The new force is considered more trustworthy and humane than its predecessor, but it was deployed throughout the country with insufficient training and a dearth of equipment such as radios, vehicles, and even paper and pencils. Human rights groups point out that the police force has not won the full support and trust of the population and that its members are responsible for dozens of unjustified killings and instances of torture and beatings of prisoners.⁷³ On the other hand, people clearly recognized the improvement over the previous military-run “police” who engaged in systematic brutality and carried out deliberate political murders.

A significant negative factor in the HNP’s performance was the deployment of all 5,200 recruits before midlevel supervisors or senior police directors had been trained. ICITAP had planned to select and train midlevel supervisors from among the best and most educated of the recruits; however, other recruits did not respond well to supervision from their peers with whom they had just completed basic training. A lack of discipline and supervision was prevalent. After deployment, some entire rural delegations initially abandoned their posts for the city. ICITAP was prepared to train top-level commanders, but the Haitian government failed to fill many of these positions, and it was unclear whether those appointed would remain on the job long. ICITAP staff foresaw the negative consequences of this leadership vacuum, and its Director now believes that the agency should have been more forceful in articulating the consequences of this decision to the Haitian government and other U.S. authorities.⁷⁴ Ultimately it was not until April 1996, after President Rene Preval took office and appointed a new director of the HNP, that ICITAP training for senior commissioners began.

One of the results of the Haiti project is that ICITAP was left in a better position to influence U.S. policy decisions regarding police development. It was involved in higher level meetings than at any time in its history. It was also given a seat on the NSC-led interagency Executive Committee which coordinated preparations for the U.S. intervention and subsequent assistance. As Stromsem reported, “Because our judgment often proved correct on the Haiti project, now they [U.S. policymakers] tend to listen to us when we identify a problem.”⁷⁵ “Whole force” police reform opportunities are rare, however, and ICITAP’s ability to shape both police development and U.S. policy are likely to be diminished in their absence.

One area where ICITAP judgment proved prescient was its refusal, prior to the 1994 intervention, to train a Presidential Security Unit (PSU) that would provide President Aristide personal bodyguard service. ICITAP, citing the lack of professional qualifications of many members who had been handpicked by President Aristide for their personal loyalty, “screamed bloody murder” at the pressure to train the unit, according to one ICITAP official.⁷⁶ In the end, the unit was trained by State Department Diplomatic Security personnel in the United States and, after Aristide’s return, given follow-on advice and training by a U.S. advisory unit stationed in the presidential palace and funded by the State Department. In August 1996, the head of the PSU and several other members were implicated in the murders of two right-wing opponents of the government. Moreover, President Preval reported being powerless to fire those accused, and a special U.S. contingent was flown in to provide security for Preval while a purge of some 20 PSU members was undertaken. ICITAP refusal to train the PSU before certain conditions had been met illustrates its own learning from prior situations and shows the costs of delivering training out of expediency.

The Presidential Security Unit illustrates another lesson drawn by ICITAP from the Haiti experience: the difficulties of fostering discipline and accountability in a new force when there exist multiple police units, separate selection procedures and different lines of authority. Haiti’s police law created a single national police force, the HNP. But the process of Aristide’s restoration to power led to factions within the HNP and units outside the control of the HNP’s director. Tensions over integration and authority occurred among several identifiable groups: the 5,200-plus ICITAP-trained Haitian National Police; the 100 “Regina police,” trained at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police center in Regina, Canada, of whom less than half remain in the HNP; the roughly 730 ex-military members who remained in the IPSF when it was transferred by decree in December 1996 into the HNP; the 900 “Guantanamo” police who remained in the IPSF; and the Presidential Security Unit.⁷⁷ For example, many of the ex-military and Regina police were more loyal to their political allies than to their HNP commanders. ICITAP has argued consistently for unified hierarchical control, merit-based selection standards, and the extension of the Inspector General’s authority to all security forces. Yet the difficulties of integrating these multiple groups and units continue.

Despite some problems in coordination, the relationship among ICITAP, the United Nations, and other bilateral donors has probably been as smooth in Haiti as anywhere. Initially there was confusion over the division of labor between the United Nations and ICITAP; as Stromsem put it, “We thought we were doing training, and so did they.” For the first time, ICITAP attempted to deploy its own field trainers with the first deployed group of cadets. However, ICITAP ultimately would not have been able to field sufficient personnel, and UNCIVPOL assumed the job as planned. ICITAP and other U.S. agencies have complained that since the French delegation assumed command of the CIVPOL unit in February 1996, CIVPOL became less aggressive in “mentoring” new agents in the field, preferring classroom training instead.⁷⁸ But in general, a high degree of communication and coordination was worked out, especially after HNP Director Pierre Denize assumed strong leadership in coordinating international donor meetings. As Trincellito describes it:

As the ICITAP Haiti project adjusted to a less frenetic pace in 1996, it was besieged with projects in a number of other countries. Most prominently, ICITAP became increasingly involved in Bosnia. Annex 11 of the 1995 Dayton Accords provided for the training of civilian police forces in accordance with international human rights standards and deployment of a 1,721-member, U.N.-run International Police Task Force (IPTF). In early 1996 the IPTF deployed. It developed and distributed guidelines and standards for “Democratic Policing.” Although ICITAP expected to be increasingly involved in training and development for the Bosnian police, most of its initial activities supported the IPTF. In 1996 ICITAP provided training in roles and mission for the entire IPTF and drafted standard operating procedures and policies. It also conducted a needs assessments of the judicial system, of equipment for the police, and of specialized units such as traffic control and internal affairs.

ICITAP is working more intimately with the United Nations in Bosnia than in previous projects, initiating no activities without the IPTF commander’s authorization. It is too early to assess the Bosnia operation, although ICITAP staff express frustration at the slow pace of police development and believe that their capabilities have been underutilized thus far. In April 1997, ICITAP founding director David Kriskovich was named the IPTF’s Deputy Commissioner for Development, the top American post within the IPTF.⁸⁰

ICITAP’s expanded portfolio of projects does not necessarily mean more “whole-force” development projects. In Bosnia the project does not entail creating a new police force but reforming existing police forces. The bulk of ICITAP current projects involve specific training and institution-building objectives. In Liberia, for instance, ICITAP’s initial task was to develop the capability of the police to provide security for national elections. In the Caribbean, one of ICITAP’s main objectives was to harmonize the institutional policies and training goals of twelve small police forces so that joint training can be institutionalized. In Kazakhstan, ICITAP was developing a model precinct program rooted in the principles of community-oriented policing for replication in other localities. In Honduras, ICITAP work has recently focused on training, equipping, advising, and establishing an academy for a newly formed criminal investigations force separate from the military.

One of the most interesting and positive areas of training pioneered by ICITAP is its “Human Dignity” course, developed jointly with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Aimed at improving police officers’ understanding and protection of human rights, the course begins with police officers’ own personal experiences and observations, requires them to develop their own definitions of rights, and takes them through numerous role-playing scenarios. Above all it seeks to instill a notion of human dignity that is common to all persons, including cops, that should be preserved under all circumstances. The human dignity course has been given in most Latin American countries and is now being delivered at the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest, Hungary.

Several broad conclusions can be drawn from the experiences of ICITAP over the past 11 years. First, overall political conditions often limit what is possible. In countries where armed conflict has not been resolved, or which are not “ripe” for resolution,⁸¹ it is extremely difficult to develop new government institutions, especially ones that reflect democratic norms of community orientation, accountability, and representativity. ICITAP’s experience in Somalia and the first phase of El Salvador illustrate this limitation. ICITAP’s learning process was evident in its refusal to initiate a project in Burundi because requisite political conditions were absent. In contrast, the peace process in El Salvador, and perhaps now in Guatemala, show that a climate of political reconciliation is highly beneficial. Likewise, domestic economic constraints in countries such as Haiti and Rwanda limit the potential of police development programs.

Similarly, wherever political will for change and institutional development has been lacking, police training programs have had little or no success. International actors such as ICITAP and CIVPOL may use pressure, but they cannot create political will where none exists. No matter how solid the international planning and implementation, if conditions on the ground are not permissive, then international efforts will founder. One former employee praised ICITAP for its attention to this point: “[In inter-agency discussions on Haiti,] I heard [ICITAP’s Director] repeatedly raise the issue of whether political will was present, whether the government was committed to the project, but she was often overruled.”⁸² “Whole-force” police development projects such as Haiti tend to occur with a certain degree of political support; smaller assistance programs to existing forces may face a lack of will more often, particularly in larger countries where international influence is limited.

In addition, international actors must approach police assistance as more than a technical process. ICITAP disinclination to start a Burundi project and to use reviled ex-soldiers for policing in Haiti are illustrative of a broader point. Reforming or creating foreign police forces is not simply a technical matter whereby international actors can deliver training, deploy a new cadre of police and then leave. It is inevitably a political process, whereby certain groups are legitimate in society and others are not, and whereby religious, class and ethnic groups feel better protected if they are incorporated into the police and if it responds to their needs. Police advisers must ensure that they do not leave behind a Somoza-style police force in the hands of one political party, a single individual, or the military. Many ICITAP employees, seeking to work as technical experts and avoid politics, have favored utilizing existing security forces as the most expedient means of quickly establishing an effective tool for maintaining order.⁸³ However, ICITAP’s leadership has displayed some sensitivity to these political questions, both in the peace process in El Salvador and in the general preference for nonmilitary recruits in Haiti. The lesson here, perhaps not fully learned by U.S. policy makers, is that international decisionmakers must pay attention to these highly political issues, often balancing them against technical ones.

Other conditions affect the success of police assistance. The effectiveness of the judicial system is perhaps the most relevant. In case after case, police reform efforts have outstripped the impact and pace of judicial reforms. In part this is because training and deploying a cop are easier and quicker than training a judge or a prosecutor who requires longer and more complex technical preparation before starting work than a police officer who will learn a great deal on the job once deployed. Basic-level cops generally have no more than a high-school education, whereas a law degree is often necessary for an officer of the court. Furthermore, the checks and balances imbedded in constitutional democracies, while imperfect in practice, generally mean that judges and judicial processes are more insulated from broad political changes than executive-controlled police forces. Ineffective international efforts in these areas have also made a difference, pointing to another lesson.

The effectiveness of police assistance is constrained and shaped by the overall international engagement with a country. ICITAP is just one U.S. agency, and its efforts must be viewed within the context of its relation to other international efforts. If one views police as only one leg of the “three-legged stool” of the criminal justice system which also includes the judiciary and the prison system, then one recurring problem is that U.S. police assistance has not been conceived or implemented in coordination with judicial assistance. For instance, ICITAP separation from AID judicial reform programs has deepened the gap between police development and judicial reform. AID has been oriented toward a longer time horizon and has felt less pressure to produce operational results quickly. It has also relied more upon contractors whose approaches and strengths vary.

Recent changes in U.S. bureaucratic organization have enhanced coordination of judicial and police assistance programs. In 1996, ICITAP offices and administrative staff were united with those of the Justice Department’s aid program for foreign judges and prosecutors, the Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance, and Training (OPDAT). For Haiti, where judicial shortcomings have drawn much attention, responsibility for both the ICITAP and OPDAT U.S.-based operations is now unified under one person. And in Colombia, OPDAT and ICITAP jointly trained thousands of judges, police, and prosecutors in groups across the country in preparation for a wholly new judicial system. Also, policymakers are more willing to take strong measures aimed at harmonizing these two sides of the administration of justice: the State Department suspended the ICITAP program in the Dominican Republic in 1996 mainly because corresponding judicial reforms were not forthcoming.⁸⁴ Yet because police development can be achieved more quickly than developing judges, prosecutors and public defenders, newly deployed police officers are likely to continue confronting unresponsive courts.

Other examples abound of the limits the U.S. policymaking structure places upon ICITAP. For example, ICITAP involvement in a country is most often initiated as part of an overall U.S. policy decision. Often the circumstances requiring ICITAP services are precisely those that impede its effectiveness. The use of ICITAP as part of a frantic “exit strategy” in Somalia is an excellent example. ICITAP has some influence over when and how it carries out projects (e.g., the decision not to train the Haitian PSU), but this influence is limited.

The most prominent constraint in larger ICITAP projects has been the imperative to withdraw military forces from a country as quickly as possible and to shield them from public security functions—the “exit strategy syndrome.” In situations such as Somalia and Haiti a military presence has been essential for filling the deployment gap so that meaningful international assistance programs can be initiated. Yet an overriding concern with the military exit has undermined efforts to build police, judicial and other institutions necessary to ensure security and to reorient attitudes and conduct. Rather than letting the exit strategy drive police development decisions, the performance of the police should shape the exit strategy. Long-term interests in security and conflict-prevention might best be served by basing the timing of troop withdrawal partly on whether the local public security force is capable of maintaining order and enjoying legitimacy and support.⁸⁵

Perhaps the clearest lesson ICITAP has learned is that piecemeal training efforts are often squandered if not carried out in the context of long-term development and institutional strengthening. The initial tendency to provide whatever discrete courses were picked from a menu by recipient governments has been discredited, as this comment by ICITAP’s deputy director illustrates:

Evidence suggests that other police assistance organizations such as the United Nations are largely unaware of and poorly organized for long-term institutional development.⁸⁷ Yet as one former staff member said, ICITAP confronts two very different sorts of situations:

In smaller projects where existing forces are not being reconstituted, it is difficult to create an “institutional development” context.

Nevertheless, ICITAP has begun to find ways to do so. In Bolivia, for example, ICITAP was asked for limited assistance in training the investigative police unit. An ICITAP project manager arrived and found that broader problems of corruption and low quality stood in the way of successful training. Prepared to leave the country, he suggested broader reforms, and within a month obtained ministerial approval for such reforms and housecleaning. Within 7 months the old unit was disbanded, and within 1 year a new unit had been formed under new selection criteria with new procedures. Moreover, suggested changes in the police educational system subsequently led to improved upward mobility and higher educational levels for the main Bolivian police force. While such opportunities are not universal, ICITAP has pressed to identify them.

The limits of ICITAP’s current capabilities and its small size have also become more apparent through recent “whole-force” programs. ICITAP cannot fill the deployment gap that immediately follows an international intervention. It is not configured to deploy massive numbers of personnel as a short-term international police monitoring force. As a result, other forces—be they reluctant military troops, scarce military police personnel, paramilitary (non-U.S.) gendarmerie forces, or a hypothetical standing international police rapid-deployment unit—must be relied upon to provide public order during the early stages of peace operations.

The U.S. Government is only beginning to put into place an inter-agency mechanism to address this problem. The challenge remains to find means to fill these public security gaps without exposing soldiers to unnecessary risk or detracting from other defense requirements. Currently there is no institutionalized coordination between the Defense Department and the Justice Department regarding peace operations and public security issues,⁸⁹ and many Pentagon officials do not understand the capabilities and limits of ICITAP. Planning occurs ad hoc around each crisis situation, when military planners and representatives of ICITAP and other agencies are brought together.

If ICITAP is unable to fill the deployment or enforcement gaps, it also needs help from the U.S. military and the United Nations to address the institutional gap. ICITAP cannot match the U.S. military’s “surge” capacity for moving materials, people, and supplies necessary to set up a public security force quickly after an intervention. Nor does ICITAP have the resources to deploy monitors and field trainers all over a country, even one as small as Panama. Peacekeeping operations require UNCIVPOL or comparable forces (such as the U.S.-led International Police Monitors in Haiti) to provide vital field training and mentoring for newly trained and freshly deployed police. In its large-scale projects, ICITAP has focused instead on activities where small numbers might have broad institutional impact, such as developing doctrine and institutionalizing training curriculum and standard operating procedures. Multinational efforts such as CIVPOL are the only means of marshaling the manpower required for monitoring interim security forces until permanent forces are up and running, and for field training of those permanent forces.

The United Nations can also benefit from ICITAP experience. The United Nations currently has no organization dedicated wholly to the institutional development of police forces. UNCIVPOL has neither the resources nor the organization to have a standby pool of experienced police development specialists (as opposed to police monitors) who can dedicate a few years to erecting academies, developing standard operating procedures, and advising the leadership of new police forces.⁹⁰ U.N. Headquarters has only one full-time police adviser and four bilaterally-funded police staff to guide the selection, deployment, and logistics of some 3,600 CIVPOL around the globe. Bilateral programs such as ICITAP are needed to supplement the U.N. police monitoring function with coherent institution-building expertise and financial commitment.

One lesson gleaned from ICITAP experiences is that the demobilization dilemma is a genuine dilemma, but its effects can be mitigated by stringent selection criteria, effective oversight units, and broad public education about citizen-oriented policing. ICITAP has generally found that relying upon too many former members of militarized or politicized security forces can undermine the ability to foster changes in organizational culture and public image. Even technically sound and careful selection procedures may not resolve deep legitimacy problems. At the same time, a total exclusion of former security forces personnel en masse may lead to a backlash. A sense of unjust discrimination and lack of alternative job opportunities have facilitated the transformation of some ex-cops into ringleaders of organized, violent crime in several posttransition settings.

ICITAP has also found that members of existing security forces can be an important means of providing order on an interim basis. Despite fears by some observers in Haiti that unqualified ex-soldiers on the interim force would find their way into the permanent force, events showed that interim arrangements do not necessarily constrain decisions about permanent composition. Of course, vetting police-force members for human rights violations and criminal involvement is important to ensure the integrity of a new force. Given the limitations on data for vetting processes, however, ICITAP has learned the value of institutionalizing external and internal mechanisms for continuous accountability checks by the new force itself.

Even careful, well-planned, and amply funded attempts to develop accountability and diversity (e.g., the inclusion of women in police forces) will have limited impact absent an active and informed civil society. In former military regimes such as Haiti, the population has known security forces that only repress rather than protect them. Police reforms have limited effect unless large-scale education about human rights and police roles transforms citizen expectations. This applies for both accountability for abusive behavior and the incorporation of marginal groups. In general, unless civil society is broad based and well organized, efforts to enhance the representation of women and marginalized political or ethnic groups are likely to be disappointing.⁹¹ Such efforts have received inadequate attention.

ICITAP has been slower to learn other lessons, such as the need for appropriate personnel. Because the ICITAP mandate focuses on criminal investigation, ICITAP initially relied principally upon law enforcement personnel from U.S. Federal agencies, especially the FBI. Starting with the first ICITAP director, the agency’s main program positions were filled principally with FBI special agents whom it “rented” by renewable short-term contracts.⁹² As ICITAP grew rapidly in the 1990s, it hired and advanced more “civilian” (i.e., nonlaw enforcement) staff. It also expanded a longstanding practice of hiring retired or active agents on loan from other federal law enforcement agencies to conduct training: the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Border Patrol, the U.S. Marshals, the U.S. Park Police, and Customs agents. Beginning with Panama, ICITAP extended its training beyond investigators. Over time the agency learned that “whole force” projects require different sorts of skills and experience than they had originally possessed. Recognizing that the FBI has no experience in walking a beat, riot control, traffic control, rural patrols, or community-oriented policing, the agency began recruiting retired or active-duty state and local cops in the mid-1990s.⁹³ Somalia’s Berkow was the first project manager drawn from a local police force, and he relied mainly upon active-duty local police officers there.⁹⁴ In addition, the great bulk of contract trainers in the field are active or retired local police. Yet ICITAP continues to rely principally upon persons with federal law enforcement backgrounds, in part because they are generally more available than cops from smaller, cash-strapped local U.S. forces. As of March 1997, only three of ICITAP’s 51 permanent employees had backgrounds in local law enforcement. Consequently, some human rights groups point out that ICITAP, like other international bilateral programs and U.S. programs, has drawn upon national-level models that underemphasize community policing, local participation, and local means of accountability such as civilian review boards.⁹⁵

Finally, ICITAP illustrates an important evolution of bilateral U.S. police assistance: it is possible to overcome the problems of association with human rights abuses that plagued OPS. Although ICITAP-trained individuals have been implicated in human rights violations in places such as El Salvador and Haiti, ICITAP has not been accused of responsibility for these incidents. Instead, local human rights groups in those countries have generally attributed abuses to factors beyond the control of international police trainers.⁹⁶ Although the possibility of abetting abuses is ever present, the experience of ICITAP shows that, given a carefully constructed mandate, close monitoring by both the executive and legislative branches, support for mechanisms of accountability, and a willingness to avoid training in certain circumstances, bilateral police aid can avoid furthering human rights abuses and even be perceived as contributing to the protection of human rights.

Part of avoiding the OPS fate derives from ICITAP interaction with human rights groups. Rob Weiner of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights described the evolution of human rights groups’ attitude about ICITAP as passing from “suspicion” in the late 1980s, to an “ICITAP-neutral” phase, and then to a third phase since the mid-1990s, where there is “a limited desire by ICITAP to hear what human rights groups have to say, to do what it can to avoid problems and to incorporate the input of groups from civil society.”⁹⁷ In Haiti, for instance, ICITAP invited speakers from human rights, business, and popular groups to weekly open fora with HNP cadets at the academy. At the same time, human rights groups point out that ICITAP has engaged in very limited consultation with the nongovernmental human rights groups of the countries where programs are carried out.⁹⁸

Organization theorists have long noted the inertia with which organizations respond to change in their environment, and academics generally believe that institutional learning is rare in the field of U.S. police and military assistance. Conventional wisdom holds that starry-eyed police advisers and reformers commit the same well-intentioned (or not so well-intentioned) mistakes abroad that prior reformers committed. Certainly many of the same constraints that faced U.S. police assistance during the days of OPS and prior decades continue to vex ICITAP operations. Operational and planning problems clearly persist.

Yet as the end of the Cold War ushered in a new wave of global police assistance efforts, ICITAP adaptation to changing circumstances is instructive. As one State Department official mentioned in an offhand remark upon hearing of this research project, “ICITAP has always shown an unusual willingness to examine its own warts.” Many of the lessons learned by ICITAP—an orientation toward institutional development over short-term training, an ability to recognize when police training would be unwise, etc.—have not been learned by other U.S. agencies or by other bilateral or multilateral police aid providers such as the United Nations.⁹⁹ As a congressional staff member stated, “Despite all of ICITAP’s problems, which are numerous, it is the best effort in the world right now, practically alone. Other countries won’t touch this stuff [police aid], and the U.N. has been very slow in coming on-line with this.”¹⁰⁰ Police assistance programs will always run the risk of imposing inappropriate models, squandering resources where training is unwelcome, and abetting abusive practices. Political authorities bear the responsibility of minimizing these risks, and they have sought to do so with ICITAP, with more or less success. ICITAP history demonstrates that police assistance can improve the effectiveness and conduct of the government forces which are often most in contact with citizens around the world.

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