Introduction

MICHAEL J. DZIEDZIC

The searing image of a U.S. soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu has defined for the American public, perhaps as much as any single event, the troubling character of the contemporary era. “What in the World are we Doing?” the cover of Time demanded to know on behalf of an outraged nation1¹. Less than a year later, U.S. troops were again spearheading a multilateral coalition in the midst of chaos in Port au Prince. This time the defining image was an American soldier, pistol drawn, holding a seething Haitian mob at bay. Sprawled on the ground behind him was the intended recipient of popular justice. The photo caption reads, “As Haitian police fade from view, U.S. troops are being drawn into conflict².” Two years later, thousands of American peacekeeping troops had been deployed to Bosnia as part of a NATO-led peace operation. Among their duties was providing area security in the strategic Bosnian Serb controlled town of Brcko. In late August 1997, Brcko became the flash point of an internal power struggle in the Serb Republic (RS). Supporters of indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic, incited by local radio broadcasts and air raid sirens, assaulted U.S. troops positioned there with rocks and ax handles for seeming to side with Karadzic’s political rival. Two U.S. soldiers were wounded in the ensuing street violence, and U.N. civilian police (UNCIVPOL) had to be evacuated temporarily to nearby military bases³. These jarring images form a mosaic of the post-Cold War era and our reluctant role in it. In tandem with various coalition partners, we are confronting the uncertainties and peculiar challenges associated with policing a new sort of disorder in the world.

Like it or not, contemporary use of the U.S. military instrument in peace operations has very often borne little resemblance to the high-intensity, high-tech battlefields that American soldiers, sailors, and airmen have been so well prepared to dominate. Indeed, the most frequent demands have come from the opposite end of the conflict spectrum, where the skills of the mediator are often more relevant and the essence of the mission is to rehabilitate, not annihilate. Among the more potent therapies for this new world disorder, whether administered prior to a crisis or during an international intervention, is for local institutions of public security—policemen, judges, and jailers—to begin functioning. Most military officers have been in uncharted territory when dealing with these matters, particularly when thrown into this complex task with a host of other international actors with whom they are largely unfamiliar (for example, relief workers, human rights monitors, election supervisors, and police trainers). Much of the early learning was on the job.

Because the factors contributing to the “new world disorder” are unlikely to diminish any time soon, it behooves the United States and the entire community of nations to refine our collective capacity to mount effective multilateral responses. This book is dedicated to the task of increasing international proficiency at coping with the distinctive challenge of restoring public security in war-torn or chaotic societies. There has been a great deal of study devoted to the military aspects of peacekeeping, but little attention has been given to the military contribution to the public security function. Through an examination of relevant recent experiences, we seek to extract useful insights and recommendations for those who must grapple with restoring public security during future peace missions.

Peace Operations and the New World Disorder

Historically, conflict between states has been a predominant source of concern for soldiers and statesmen. During the post-Cold War period, however, it has been anarchic conditions within the sovereign state that have repeatedly posed the most acute and intractable challenges to international order. Some notable internal conflicts that attracted international attention since 1989 had been exacerbated by superpower rivalry (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, Cambodia). More recently, however, the international community has been called upon to act purely in response to dysfunctional or disintegrating states (Somalia, Yugoslavia, Liberia, Haiti, Rwanda, Zaire, Albania). Throughout the present decade, most battlefields have been internal to individual states; very few conflicts have resulted from interstate warfare, the more traditional concern of statecraft. ⁴

Domestic disorder, of course, is not new. The essence of this problem in many Third World states is the fragility and decay of governmental institutions, especially those devoted to responding to citizen demands, preserving law and order, and resolving internal disputes. Domestic pressures, brought on by ethnic cleavages, overpopulation, poverty, maldistribution of wealth, environmental degradation, and rapid social mobilization often outpace and even overwhelm government ability to respond. When internal unrest either causes a government meltdown or provokes draconian spasms of repression, the consequences can spill over the border, destabilizing the surrounding region. In turn, transnational forces such as massive refugee migrations, guerrilla movements, and international criminal syndicates have increasingly been unleashed or exacerbated, threatening surrounding states. The humanitarian implications have also become more compelling. The specter of genocide or starvation, televised graphically to global audiences, has the demonstrated capacity to stir world opinion. International politics has thus been turned on its head: instability often tends to emanate today from the weakest of states (the “failed state”) rather than the most powerful. This anomaly has been labeled the new world disorder.

The consequences of this disorder for regional and international stability and compelling humanitarian implications have eroded traditional inhibitions against intervention in the internal affairs of states. Unilateral action, however, is not considered legitimate because this could degenerate into the classic pattern of suspicion, and regional/great power rivalry, especially if states were repeatedly allowed to intervene without cost. The international community has preferred to act in concert, under U.N. or other auspices, devoting an unprecedented amount of attention and scarce resources over the past decade to ameliorating this intrastate source of international instability. The challenge for contemporary statesmen is to organize their global community, one which lacks any supranational authority, for the purpose of collectively restoring order in states that are often only marginally viable.⁵

The multinational peace mission has typically been the mechanism adopted. Owing to the need to separate armed domestic rivals while simultaneously restoring law and order, post-Cold War peace operations have increasingly required the participation of both military personnel and civilian police. International policing, in this context, involves a flexible combination of participants. The mainstay invariably will be a contingent of policemen recruited from member states by the United Nations (or some other multilateral organization or coalition). When acting under a U.N. mandate, such civilian police are referred to as UNCIVPOL, and they are administered by the Civilian Police Unit within the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO)⁶. Typically supporting UNCIVPOL efforts is an eclectic mix of bilateral law enforcement assistance programs (e.g., the U.S. Justice Department International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program, ICITAP), multilateral activities (e.g., U.N. Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Division), and nongovernmental organizations (e.g., the American Bar Association). Also typically involved with aspects of policing and public security within a U.N. mission are the military contingent, human rights and election monitors, and civilian affairs personnel.⁷

Normally, an international mandate directs the peace mission to establish a secure and stable internal environment. To fulfill this mandate, indigenous institutions of law and order must be coaxed into functioning in rough accordance with internationally acceptable standards. CIVPOL members have been called upon to perform an array of tasks, including monitoring the conduct of local police cadres, training and mentoring police recruits, mediating local disputes, and even maintaining public order themselves. Owing to the complex nature of the public security challenges involved, peace operations since the end of the Cold War have often required sizable CIVPOL contingents.

Conceptual Framework

Disorder is the phenomenon certain to be present at the inception of this genre of peace operation. It may be disorder in the form of an appalling incapacity of the state to perform its most basic function—protecting its citizens. In other cases, the “public security” apparatus itself has been the instrument of massive public insecurity, almost to the point of genocide. It is generally the transnational consequences of this disorder that provoke the international community to intervene. Restoring order becomes an urgent priority. The initial phase of a typical, post-Cold War peace operation entails separating local armed groups (normally pursuant to a peace accord), restricting them to cantonments or assembly areas, impounding their weapons, and demobilizing many of them. In some instances, one or more of these armed forces may be totally disbanded. Owing to the uncertainty of this process and the firepower available to the disputants, a military peacekeeping force is required to inspire confidence in and verify compliance with the peace process.

The Deployment Gap

The military is a blunt instrument when used alone in this context. It is capable only of imposing a most basic, rigid form of order. An intervening military force can attempt to deter and limit loss of life and destruction of property, but that is about all. Because local law enforcement agencies have either ceased to function or have become oppressive and even murderous, international policing assistance must be mobilized to oversee restoration of this function.

Military forces have a capacity to deploy rapidly in unit strength; police organizations typically do not. Mobilizing a CIVPOL contingent is inherently time consuming because most domestic police forces do not have a significant surge capability, international mobility, or experience in operating beyond national borders. In the early days of an intervention, therefore, the military is often the only source of order. As a practical matter, moreover, CIVPOL in the absence of a credible military backup would be of dubious value and might even be placed in considerable risk.

The local public security force commonly lacks either the capacity or motivation to cope responsibly with civil disorder. Consequently, the international military contingent will likely be faced with a need to perform certain police functions, at least until UNCIVPOL personnel arrive and are able to operate effectively. The lag time between the arrival of the two forces creates a deployment gap. It is one of several public security gaps that military peacekeepers are apt to confront. In this case, the gap is temporal in nature.

During this early phase, the peace mission is apt to be tested, and one vulnerable area will likely be the void in public security. If a single soldier errs by using excessive force, the entire mission can be placed in jeopardy because local consent may be squandered. Inaction, on the other hand, risks the loss of credibility and can give the impression the mission is failing. In either case, the peace operation may confront a “defining moment” before it is well postured to respond. The media spotlight will be unavoidable, moreover, since the actions (or inaction) of a deploying peace mission invariably produce dramatic TV news clippings. The consequences for public opinion and the credibility of the peace mission of failing to cope adequately with such challenges can be enduring.

U.S. policy makers received early warning of the pitfalls associated with a deployment gap by virtue of their experiences with the 1989 Panama operation. Although the U.S. intervention to remove General Manuel Noriega was a purely unilateral action, it demonstrated a fundamental point for future peace operations: any intervention force—unilateral or multilateral—that removes or replaces local authority will find itself responsible for maintaining public security. In Panama, no advance provision had been made for this, as described in the paper by Gray and Manwaring.

The intervention in Panama was coincident with the end of the Cold War, and the United Nations was soon being called upon to mop up the vestiges of superpower rivalry in places like Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, and Angola. The U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was established shortly after the four factions vying for power there agreed to the Paris Accords in October 1991. Although deployment of UNTAC’s military contingent required about 5 months, the CIVPOL unit was not fully fielded until November 1992, when the planned 18-month mission was half way to completion. As Farris and Schear have chronicled, this deployment gap contributed to the loss of vital credibility from which the mission never adequately recovered.

In subsequent operations in Haiti and Bosnia, the magnitude of the deployment gap was reduced but not eliminated. Although provisions had been made by the United States to field International Police Monitors (IPMs) in Haiti, during the first chaotic weeks of the intervention, soldiers of the U.S.-led Multinational Force (MNF) were left with the task of maintaining order themselves. When Haitian police began openly brutalizing their own people, the military force was compelled to reassess its rules of engagement (ROE) and assume a law enforcement role. In Bosnia, the first crucial test of compliance with the Dayton Accords involved the transfer of Sarajevo suburbs to Moslem control. Even though the transfer was postponed by 45 days, the International Police Task Force (IPTF) had scarcely begun to become operational when that “defining moment” arrived. The civil disorders that accompanied this process, despite the presence of the IPTF and Implementation Force (IFOR), tarnished the image of the mission and certainly did nothing to diminish the recalcitrance of Bosnian Serb leaders.

The Enforcement Gap

Once sufficient CIVPOL members have been deployed, monitoring of the indigenous police force can begin (assuming the latter remains in existence). The “inner shell” of public security for individual crimes and small scale disturbances, therefore, will usually be provided by some hybrid of the indigenous police force and CIVPOL. The military component normally shifts to a “rapid reaction” mode, thus providing the “outer shell” or area security. At this stage, maintenance of order is normally heavily reliant on external actors.

For society to begin to restore normal activity, however, law and order are required. This is the domain of police, judges, and jailers. This phase of the operation, therefore, should be a period of reconstitution for the entire public security apparatus. A common problem is confusion about which legal code applies and who is authorized to enforce it. The parties to the domestic dispute are also intended to reconcile their differences, normally pursuant to an agreement that the peace mission is called upon to verify.

Whereas the deployment gap was about timing, the gap in enforcement is about function. An enforcement gap is likely to arise when the peace mission is confronted with the need to perform functions that fall between these inner and outer layers of public security. Typically, these deficiencies relate either to the basic maintenance of law and order or noncompliance with the peace agreement. When serious lawlessness breaks out or one of the disputants acts to thwart the peace process, the peace mission can be acutely challenged since the capabilities of their military and police contingents to deal with these situations often do not overlap.

In the first case, international police are incapable of dealing with serious lawlessness and violent domestic disorder, especially of the sort that tends to arise during postconflict situations. This applies whether or not they are armed and have arrest authority added to their mandate. The local government is typically characterized by an extremely weak or dysfunctional domestic law enforcement apparatus; the society, in contrast, is awash with automatic weapons and unemployed ex-combatants whose job prospects are extremely limited, at least in the formal economy. While the military intervention force may have great firepower, only specialized units, such as military police (MPs), constabulary units, and special forces (SF), have the training and resources to engage in law enforcement activities. These specialized units may or may not have been included in the peace force. Even when they have been available and the mandate has permitted military involvement in law enforcement, there has sometimes been considerable reluctance by military commanders to use them for this purpose, out of concern this could make it difficult to disengage and possibly incite popular opposition.

The second variant of this gap deals with enforcement of the peace agreement, as opposed to local laws. When one or more of the former disputants is unwilling to abide by or implement aspects of their peace accord, the military contingent may be prevailed upon to compel compliance. To the extent this is done, the peace mission runs the risk of losing consent from at least one of the parties, potentially leading to civil disturbances and more violent forms of opposition to their continued presence. In many cases, moreover, the international community will also be attempting to promote the transformation of the police force from an instrument of state repression into a servant of the people. Policing is inherently political, and such a role reversal for the forces of public security can profoundly affect the domestic distribution of power⁸. This is another area that could precipitate serious local resistance.

Military forces are reluctant to engage in confrontations with civilians because, with the exception of constabulary or military police units, they are generally not trained in the measured use of force, control of riots, negotiating techniques, or de-escalation of conflict. As noted above, CIVPOL is not capable of handling violent challenges, either.

The Cambodian experience reinforced the need to be attentive to political consent, especially when implementation of the peace accord has the potential to alter the internal balance of power. The incapacity and lack of authority of UNTAC to enforce the cantonment process as specified in the Paris Accord caused a fundamental reorientation at the midpoint of the mission. Military and CIVPOL resources were reconfigured so they could operate jointly, and their mission was reduced to manageable proportions (i.e., providing security for the electoral process).

The Haitian case demonstrates several promising approaches to this issue. Among them is the benefit of unity of purpose for military and police components, premission training, and a comprehensive political-military plan for U.S. Government agencies involved. The experiences of the MNF and the U.N. Mission In Haiti (UNMIH), as documented by Bailey, Maguire, and Pouliot, might serve as a model for achieving smooth transitions and overall unity of effort. In Bosnia, the enforcement challenge was even more demanding and unity of effort was much more difficult to achieve owing, in large part, to the division of international responsibilities among a welter of divergent actors, and the limited mandate for IFOR to support civilian operations such as the IPTF. Although the final word on Bosnia is far from written, the paper by Bair and Dziedzic traces the arduous path traveled by IFOR/SFOR and the IPTF in their struggle to narrow this gap over time. Somalia provides both positive and negative examples of the enforcement gap. The United Task Force (UNITAF) phase provided a remarkable example of the value of a reasonably professional indigenous police force, supported by military peacekeeping forces (in this case, without CIVPOL involvement), in dealing with the enforcement gap. As Thomas and Spataro describe, the Auxiliary Security Force (ASF) was actually capable of functioning in the absence of other governmental structures. The subsequent demise of the U.N. Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II) is a classic case of the enforcement gap, as the military intervention force sought to apprehend clan leader Mohommad Farah Aideed, becoming a protagonist in the internal dispute without the means or the will to do so. The violence thereby unleashed and the lack of support for the ASF also caused the latter’s effective disintegration.

The Institutional Gap

The two gaps discussed above pertain to the relationship between the military and civilian police components of a peace operation. The institutional gap, in contrast, refers to the incapacity of the host government to provide public order, especially when measured against international standards for policing and human rights. Law and order alone do not guarantee sustainable security, since, without justice, the likely result is oppression. That, in turn, could set the stage for another cycle of institutional decay and collapse. Sustainable security requires that law and order be combined with an adequate measure of justice for all. The institutional gap, therefore, is the difference in development between a public security apparatus that is responsive to the entire citizenry and one that is dysfunctional (or perhaps not functioning at all). Whereas the deployment gap was temporal and the enforcement gap was functional in nature, the institutional gap is a matter of political development.

Rather than becoming a surrogate for malfunctioning institutions of law and order, the international community aspires to foster their progressive development. Domestic police forces, however, are often ill trained, inadequately equipped, and lacking in discipline. They usually do not command the trust or respect of the citizenry and are often themselves among the more notorious criminal offenders. In addition, ex-combatants may be tempted to join the criminal underworld, and international criminal syndicates may have exploited the previous period of lawlessness to insinuate themselves into the fabric of government and society. The judiciary and penal systems are apt to be similarly overwhelmed. Thus, before local authorities can effectively assume responsibility, a reconstitution of the entire public security system (i.e., police, courts/legal code, and prisons) may be necessary. The international community, including CIVPOL, will need to play an integral role in this institution-building process.

Closing this gap may require that unsuitable local personnel are expunged from the ranks and a new cadre of police and supervisors recruited and trained. Once cadets complete basic training, mentoring (or on-the-job training) will be required for a considerable period. Until the local police force and judiciary have been reconstituted and are able to maintain public security autonomously, there will be a need for continuous international oversight and assistance. This void in institutional capacity can be bridged by effective use of international civilian trainers and mentors, including CIVPOL. This process tends to begin while the military contingent is still present, but it ought to continue well after their departure (5 years is often used as a minimum for such major institution-building projects). Even if the local police force eventually proves to be willing and capable, the entire process will ultimately be of little benefit unless the courts, criminal code, and penal system have also undergone a similar transformation. If these potential deficiencies are not adequately addressed, the likely result will be the re-emergence of conditions that precipitated the peace operation in the first place.

This is, in essence, what transpired in Cambodia. Rehabilitation of the public security infrastructure was not one of its missions. As Farris and Schear conclude, this, coupled with other factors, made UNTAC’s contributions “highly perishable” and the political regime it had ushered into existence at great expense was ultimately vulnerable to collapse. In El Salvador, in contrast, the international community undertook to replace the entire police force. In their chapter, Stanley and Loosle capture the spectrum of challenges associated with assembling sufficient human and financial resources from the international community, eliminating incompetent or corrupt former members of the police, developing a leadership hierarchy, and training a new force. Although the Salvadoran case deserves its acclaim as the poster child of successful peace operations, it also serves as a cautionary tale about the damage wrought by neglecting to undertake judicial and penal reform in tandem with enhancements in policing. Similarly, Haiti shows the corrosive effects on a replacement police force, even one receiving substantial ongoing international assistance, when judicial reform lags far behind. The conceptual framework sketched out below seeks to portray the relationship among the three public security gaps over the life-cycle of a peace operation.

In August 1996, the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University (NDU) hosted its first conference, “Policing the New World Disorder,” which involved a team of experienced civilian and military specialists who were assembled to consider this issue and help design the project. The approach that emerged from these deliberations was to conduct an inductive examination of the most instructive post-Cold War interventions using a common analytical framework as a guide. (This framework is included as appendix C.) At a minimum, authors were asked to address five general topics (Background, the Mandate and Resources, the Mission, Coordination and Cooperation, and Evaluations/ Conclusions). Most case studies have been written by a team of authors with an intimate understanding of the specific case but with differing viewpoints (e.g., military and civilian).

After completing an initial draft, each team of authors returned to INSS to discuss their chapter in a workshop including some 15 to 25 key civilian and military practitioners and international specialists having an intimate knowledge of the peace operation involved or who have responsibilities for planning such operations. The authors presented their drafts with particular attention to the public security challenges involved, how these were addressed, and the development of preliminary conclusions. Each group critiqued the paper and helped define the lessons learned. These specialized workshops afforded an opportunity to gather missing data and sharpen analysis. Subsequently, authors, additional civilian and military officials with knowledge of each operation, and editors refined the drafts, in Hegelian manner, through several cycles of thesis and antithesis.

Seven case studies (Panama, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia) were completed in this manner and form the foundation for this work. Two chapters are included to describe the origins and functioning of the U.S. Justice Department’s International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP) and the U.N. Civilian Police. The former is the largest bilateral government program of assistance to law enforcement, the latter a U.N. program; both are prominently featured in the case studies. To place this analysis in historic perspective, Erwin Schmidl introduces the entire work with an overview of pre-1989 attempts to maintain domestic order during external interventions. Lieutenant Colonel Michael Kelly, a lawyer with the Australian Army, contributes a provocative paper on the subject of “legitimacy.” Also included in this work are an independent assessment recently completed by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and a study done by the official Swedish Commission on International Police Activities.

After the papers had been essentially completed, INSS, the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, and the Lester B. Pearson Canadian Peacekeeping Training Centre co-sponsored an international conference at NDU on September 15-16, 1997, which was designed to develop pragmatic approaches to dealing with public security problems typically encountered during post-1989 peace operations. The recommendations growing out of this fertile discussion are presented in the conclusions.