Introduction

Setting the Stage

Defining CIVPOL's Mission

Cross-Cultural Issues

Implementation and Coordination

Training and Professionalization

Conclusion

USIP Library Resources

Participants

About the Report

SPECIAL REPORT 71

American Civilian Police in UN Peace Operations: Lessons Learned and Ideas for the Future

Briefly...

• With the advent of the United Nations missions in Kosovo and East Timor, civilian police (CIVPOL) mandates expanded in scope and scale to assume the full spectrum of executive law enforcement authority, along with the crucial peacebuilding tasks of creating indigenous law enforcement and criminal justice systems based on democratic values and institutions.
  
  
• The Clinton administration's Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 71 sought to address the "public security gap," created by the lack of a comprehensive justice system package for peace operations, by enhancing U.S. capabilities to recruit, train, and deploy American police officers and by providing the necessary criminal justice resources.
  
  
• The United States has been assigning an increasing number of experienced American police officers to CIVPOL missions in peace operations such as Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor, with the number reaching more than eight hundred annually.
  
  
• Currently, the U.S. CIVPOL program is not a permanent or long-term initiative, but is funded on an annual basis; the program does not have a statutory basis. The U.S. Department of State's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement is currently responsible for the U.S. CIVPOL program; it has a budget of $10 million for Fiscal Year 2001 for developing a two-thousand-person CIVPOL cadre drawn primarily from municipal and state law enforcement agencies.
  
  
• Many participants were in agreement that CIVPOL by itself can do little to build sustainable peace in a postconflict environment. In the initial stages of a peace operation, the overriding priority is establishing baseline law and order. Both Kosovo and East Timor illustrate that even such an initial objective is a challenge for CIVPOL to achieve, given the time required to deploy officers with sufficient and appropriate equipment for the task.
  
  
• Former CIVPOL participants from the United States stressed that establishing organizational command and control structures early on or even before deployment, along with a personnel ranking system, would greatly facilitate the speedier and more effective deployment of CIVPOL in the field.
  
  
• All the American officers and many participants agreed that the desired end state of a CIVPOL mission is a self-sustaining indigenous criminal justice system based on democratic policing principles and the protection of human rights.
  
  
• Cross-cultural issues in multinational peace operations are very sensitive, not only within and among the mission's civilian and military components, but also between those components and the local population. The multinational composition of a UN CIVPOL mission can create many obstacles to effective law enforcement action.
  
  
• The symposium's American CIVPOL participants agreed that operational challenges were the most significant barrier to setting up an interim law enforcement presence in a peace operation. The U.S. officers emphasized that, absent an international program that facilitates organization, as well as training and coordination for different national contingents prior to deployment, they themselves had to invest considerable time, effort, and resources in the field to forge a standardized and unified team composed of civilian police from the United States and a variety of other countries.
  
  
• A number of participants voiced support for such ideas as Congress's taking action to give the U.S. CIVPOL program a statutory basis, creating a reserve force in which officers would be deputized federal agents, or establishing a standing "gendarmerie"-type paramilitary capacity (such as that found in France, Italy, or Spain) to be used exclusively for CIVPOL operations.
  
  
• In Bosnia, East Timor, and Kosovo, American officers generally have earned a professional reputation and are looked to for leadership and solid policing expertise.
  
  
• Enhancing public perception and understanding of CIVPOL and the role of American officers must take place to propel CIVPOL to a greater level of importance as a peacekeeping and peacebuilding tool.

Introduction

On March 14-15, the United States Institute of Peace, in conjunction with George Mason University's Program on Peacekeeping Policy, hosted a symposium on the roles of American CIVPOL officers in UN peace operations. Approximately fifty participants gathered in panel sessions and working groups to grapple with lessons learned from past and current U.S. involvement in CIVPOL missions, specifically Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor, and to present concrete recommendations for improving U.S. capabilities in these types of missions. The participants included policymakers, practitioners, academics, analysts, and, for the first time, a number of American police officers who were veterans of CIVPOL contingents in peace operations. The symposium provided the American CIVPOL officers the unique opportunity to inject their valuable mission experience into the policy discussion on what should be the next stage of development in the U.S. CIVPOL program.

Prior to 1989, only two UN peace operations contained CIVPOL components: Congo (1960-1964) and Cyprus (1964-present). Since 1989, CIVPOL has become an integral element of UN peace operations, beginning with the monitoring mission in Namibia (UNTAG) and the limited executive authority mandate in Cambodia (UNTAC). A significant expansion of CIVPOL operations occurred with the UN International Police Task Force (UNIPTF) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a monitoring, mentoring, and training mission with an authorized strength of more than two thousand. With the advent of the Kosovo (UNMIK) and East Timor (UNTAET) missions, CIVPOL mandates expanded in scope and scale to assume the full spectrum of executive law enforcement authority--that is, the authority to carry sidearms and to arrest--along with the crucial peacebuilding tasks of creating indigenous law enforcement and criminal justice systems based on democratic values and institutions.

In Kosovo and East Timor, the UN assumed the responsibility of rebuilding public institutions, social infrastructure, and economic life. Significant burdens were placed on CIVPOL, along with expectations that CIVPOL would rapidly restore law and order and enable the military contingent of the peace operations to withdraw from those activities. The UN's Brahimi Report, released in August 2000, indicated that the "demand for civilian police operations dealing with intrastate conflict is likely to remain high on any list of requirements for helping a war-torn society restore conditions for social, economic, and political stability." The United States has been assigning an increasing number of experienced American police officers to CIVPOL missions in peace operations such as Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor, with the number reaching more than eight hundred annually.

In peace operations where CIVPOL contingents have executive law enforcement authority and where rule of law systems have failed or are nonexistent, CIVPOL's success in establishing law and order is crucially linked with the complementary components of a criminal justice system--courts, judges, prosecutors, corrections officials, and public defenders. The Clinton administration's Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 71 sought to address the "public security gap," created by the lack of a comprehensive justice system package for peace operations, by enhancing U.S. capabilities to recruit, train, and deploy American police officers, and also by providing the necessary criminal justice resources. As one symposium participant noted, "We all know the problems, and PDD-71 says it all." However, the principal factors that impede the enhancement of CIVPOL as a key tool in U.S. involvement in peace operations are political will and funding. Symposium participants agreed that it is in the national interest that the United States continue to enhance U.S. CIVPOL capabilities and involvement in international peace operations.

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Setting the Stage

The symposium's keynote speaker, Major General William Nash (U.S. Army, ret.), former Task Force Eagle Commander in Bosnia and the UNMIK Regional Administrator for the Mitrovica region of Kosovo during much of 2000, posed a three-part thesis to the participants: First, until the civilian components of peace operations attain the same relative competency and appropriate resources as the military component, the peacebuilding effort and its political objectives will never be achieved. Second, too much effort has been spent talking about the military component of peace operations and not enough directed at understanding the complex and intertwined political, economic, social, and security dimensions of the societies where intervention is taking place. Third, establishing law and order and combating the organized crime that flourishes in the security vacuum of peace operations cannot be done with disorganized international police.

Nash stressed that the international community steps onto a slippery slope when it equates security with military capacity in peace operations, because security is a much broader and more complex concept. In fact, issues such as restoring the rule of law, freedom of movement, and civil order, as well as normalizing the political, economic, and social orders in a postconflict environment, are far beyond the scope of the military component in a peace operation. The military is required to provide security for both pacification and stabilization; it is not the appropriate actor for institution- or state-building.

A comprehensive mandate such as UN Security Council Resolution 1244--the foundation for the international community's initiative in Kosovo--requires more extensive understanding of the full spectrum of requirements and assigning appropriate organizations to achieve those objectives. The improvement of international civilian police capacity requires, at a minimum, the integration of judicial and penal components into a comprehensive rule of law capacity, which in turn must be integrated with other civilian capacities.

Such a task can be achieved only by investing the necessary resources--both human and financial--in the civilian components of peace operations. In Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor, the military had a lopsided professional and logistical advantage over the civilian elements. Nash remarked that, as Task Force Eagle commander in Bosnia, he had led soldiers fully trained and equipped who worked with other professional soldiers from other countries who were equally well trained; all the military objectives were fully planned and executed through coordination. As the UNMIK Regional Administrator in Kosovo, Nash noted that the Serbs and Albanians were the least of his problems, as he spent the majority of his time managing and coordinating the various civilian components of the peace operation. While he found dedicated and professional civilians, there was chaos in planning and execution, not the least of which was on the police and rule-of-law side.

Nash concluded by recommending that we must remember the primacy of civilian goals and objectives in all cases of intervention through peace operations. Military objectives only support the successful achievement of the civilian objectives. Establishing law and order and reconstructing a criminal justice system as part of the overall security and peacebuilding goals can be realized only through a civilian capacity that has adequate resources.

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Defining CIVPOL's Mission

This overarching topic for the panel "The Professional Challenge: What Should CIVPOL Be Doing to Build Sustainable Peace?" focused participants' attention on the question of CIVPOL's fundamental role in peace operations. The panelists in this session posed numerous issues that touched on not only U.S. CIVPOL capabilities, but on the conception and practice of UN civilian policing as well. What will the mandate be and how will it be achieved? If sustainable peace is the end state, what can CIVPOL do to realize that goal? What is the product that CIVPOL is delivering? What services are to be provided? And who are the customers? Many participants were in agreement that CIVPOL by itself can do little to build sustainable peace in a postconflict environment. In the initial stages of a peace operation, the overriding priority is establishing baseline law and order. Both Kosovo and East Timor illustrate that even such an initial objective is a challenge for CIVPOL to achieve, given the time required to deploy officers with sufficient and appropriate equipment for the task. The current controversy over whether the U.S. military should play a role in securing baseline law and order during peace operations is a result of that state of affairs.

Complex peace operations such as those in Kosovo and East Timor are, in effect, large-scale, international efforts at state building. When CIVPOL arrive, they inevitably begin to change the status quo and the balance of power among competing groups in the mission area. This is an inescapable fact of peace operations--as is the fact that mandates for Kosovo and East Timor charge the civilian components with creating the institutions necessary for legitimate, democratic governance. Unfortunately, the term "state building"--as was the case with the term "nation building"--has developed a negative connotation with respect to U.S. military involvement in policing and rebuilding war-torn societies during peace operations. However, neither the military nor the civilian component of a peace operation is capable of building sustainable peace by itself; rather, they must work in a coordinated and integrated fashion to target specific capacities and support each other as necessary. With CIVPOL, the initial securing of baseline law and order cannot occur without military support and coordination. Participants noted that the U.S. government will have to play a key role in determining the framework for effective CIVPOL-military coordination.

Currently, UN CIVPOL capacity is based on member-state contributions of human and material resources, as the UN does not have a standing capacity to deploy the array of law enforcement capabilities that an executive authority mandate requires. The impediments to effective law enforcement action are numerous: civilian police assigned to a peace operation may have never worked together, do not know one another, and come from all over the world with very different law enforcement experiences, training, and abilities. Forging an effective and efficient international police force from fifty-three national contingents, as in Kosovo, is a difficult task in an unstable, unfamiliar environment. Law enforcement in a postconflict transitional setting is not achieved by simply placing police officers in the field with a sidearm, handcuffs, and the power to arrest, for this is merely the street-level phase of establishing rule of law. The institutional capacity to sanction lawbreakers must exist alongside CIVPOL or else it will be impossible to establish the rule of law's full extent.

The American CIVPOL participants also stressed that establishing organizational command and control structures early on or even before deployment, along with a personnel ranking system, would greatly facilitate the speedier and effective deployment of CIVPOL in the field. Likewise, many American officers with years of specialized experience in organized crime, drug enforcement, investigations, forensics, and senior management found themselves placed in positions that did not match their specific professional experience; hence, CIVPOL in general bypassed opportunities in which these skills could have significantly improved its initial law enforcement action in peace operations. One former CIVPOL officer who had served as a major metropolitan chief of police found himself placed as an airport guard. Instead of the effective placement of officers with specialized skills required to combat organized crime, political terrorism, or human trafficking, the current practice has been to create specialized units from scratch that require their own logistical and administrative support. Many American officers feel that the U.S. government does not adequately address issues of command and control, rank, and appropriate placement, thus affecting officers' morale and effectiveness. The U.S. government should have a closer affinity with officers on the ground, not only as a source of national pride for U.S. contingent members, but also because American officers are looked to for leadership in a disorganized mission environment.

CIVPOL missions also continuously evolve, and it is necessary that CIVPOL deployments be organized to effectively utilize officers with the appropriate skills and experience for each stage of the mission. Initial deployment for securing baseline law and order requires different skills than those during the middle and late stages of a mission's life cycle, in which institution building, training new police forces, and employing specialized law enforcement functions are necessary. This places CIVPOL officers in new and challenging situations with which they may have had no experience in their home police agencies. CIVPOL officers also find themselves serving as political actors, which greatly complicates the impartial, public service roles with which American officers are familiar. Kosovo's highly politicized context (which includes some contributing nations being favored over others by either Albanians or Serbs) places American officers in professional situations that heighten the potential for manipulation, compromise, and loss of impartiality. This politicization not only affects policing, but also greatly complicates institution building and other goals that have been set as mission objectives.

Ill-defined peace operation mandates, in which political decisions regarding end states are not taken or deferred, also complicate CIVPOL's mission. All the American officers and many other participants agreed that the desired end state is a self-sustaining indigenous criminal justice system based on democratic policing principles and the protection of human rights. In Kosovo and East Timor, criminal justice systems have been created from the ground up; in Bosnia, UNIPTF officers deployed to monitor, mentor, and train found themselves facing three different policing structures and little leverage or ability to get behind the scenes and alter the relationship between nationalist power brokers, organized crime, and local law enforcement. In the former cases, CIVPOL is able to work with senior mission officials and local leaders and communities in identifying how a future police force should function. Such collaboration is crucial in enabling the local population to have an important stake in building impartial, accountable institutions that break with past practices, and CIVPOL can deliver basic and field training in law enforcement fundamentals, including community policing. Working closely with local communities in establishing an indigenous police force that includes members of all ethnic groups in the society is tremendously important to building sustainable peace in a postconflict environment.

CIVPOL's best contribution to that goal comes not through serving as a long-term law enforcement surrogate, but in supporting the development of a new criminal justice system that has the trust and confidence of the entire population. Long-term engagement should come in the form of training and support, along with quantitative and qualitative evaluation of new police services. Such assessment would be backed by the kind of executive authority necessary to address institutional and personnel problems and concretely manage the development of democratic police and criminal justice institutions.

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Cross-Cultural Issues

The panel session "The Challenge of Differences: Cross-Cultural Issues for CIVPOL in Multinational Peace Operations" addressed the complex subject of cultural differences, which the panelists stressed as being one of the most challenging issues UN CIVPOL missions face. Cross-cultural issues in multinational peace operations are very sensitive, not only within and among the mission's civilian and military components, but also between those components and the local population. The multinational composition of a UN CIVPOL mission can create many obstacles to effective law enforcement action. Within a CIVPOL mission, the social, cultural, normative, and religious backgrounds, professional skills and competence, and law enforcement subcultures of the national contingents differ considerably among police from established democracies, emerging democracies, and autocratic regimes.

Many American officers found themselves having to manage several policing cultures within individual CIVPOL stations, where officers had quite different attitudes toward handcuffing suspects or using force against detainees. They also found themselves training officers from other countries who had been placed in supervisory positions, but whose professional skills were weak. These differences, along with morale, efficiency, and service effectiveness problems, created many obstacles to forging a cohesive, unified UN civilian police force. In Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor, the expectations of the local population toward the international community were very high. When CIVPOL could not meet those expectations and the local population could see the internal disarray of CIVPOL, respect from the local community was diminished.

These cross-cultural factors also emerge in working with extant indigenous police forces, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, or in creating new police forces, as in Kosovo and East Timor. Although CIVPOL contingents arrive with the basic material for training those indigenous police in international policing norms, such as democratic policing, community policing, and human rights, the fact is that there is no robust and coherent international CIVPOL culture that would enable officers from Western democracies, emerging democracies, and Islamic societies, for example, to impart the same package of norms and professional conduct to extant police forces in postconflict societies. In particular, gender and religious issues can complicate not only how CIVPOL tackles problems of human trafficking and forced prostitution, but also how CIVPOL goes about cultivating an appropriate law enforcement attitude among indigenous police. In many peace operation settings, bad practices and unethical behavior are condoned or overlooked in the name of cultural tolerance.

This situation is made even more complex by the problem of determining what law CIVPOL should apply in exercising executive authority. When CIVPOL national contingents first arrived in Kosovo and East Timor, the issue of what legal code would apply was unresolved. There was no code of criminal procedure to regulate how suspects were to be arrested, processed, detained, and brought before a court. This situation was complicated by the fact that different national contingents were familiar with different legal systems: common law, civil law, Shari'a, Confucian, customary, or a blend of different types. The American officers stressed the importance of the UN's developing a special peace operation criminal code and procedure that could be used during the early stages until senior officials and local leaders determine what laws will be applicable or draft new laws. Existing within a postconflict security and legal vacuum, many local communities found themselves resolving disputes or addressing illicit acts by relying on alternative or traditional methods that were unfamiliar to CIVPOL officers. However, many officers learned that some alternative or traditional methods--if respectful of human rights--could actually be helpful during the re-establishment of law and order and a criminal justice system, especially when community policing strategies are used to fill the public security gap--a critical task in building the trust and confidence of the local population in CIVPOL missions.

Cross-cultural issues are also internal to the U.S. national contingent. American police officers come from very different cultures within the United States; there are also unique professional subcultures of law enforcement agencies across the country. Because the U.S. government recruits primarily from municipal and state law enforcement agencies, the same sort of professional and personal issues found in a multinational UN CIVPOL mission can be found among American officers. While U.S. government recruitment has improved, there are still considerable challenges in attracting qualified officers for CIVPOL missions. These officers are already in high demand by local U.S. police departments, and there is little incentive to let them go on CIVPOL missions. Moreover, cross-cultural training for American officers deploying to peace operations is limited, and some officers come to the mission not fully prepared to handle the general and specific cross-cultural challenges they will inevitably face.

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Implementation and Coordination

The third panel session of the symposium focused on the operational challenges UN CIVPOL missions encounter. The panelists shared extensive field and policymaking experience on the subject of implementing and coordinating action, and they illustrated how CIVPOL has made substantial progress in recent years in solving operational difficulties. Kosovo and East Timor in particular show how lessons learned from earlier peace operations, in both military and civilian capacities, have contributed to the dramatic evolution in policing in peace operations in fragile postconflict societies. The field has witnessed tremendous change over a short period, as the ability and willingness of the international community to intervene in failed societies, reduce tension, and restore normality have improved considerably. CIVPOL is mostly a development of the decade following the end of the Cold War, so much remains to be done.

Just as in the military side of peace operations, the international community has developed new ideas, techniques, and capacities in field missions; much of this has been done through the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Improvements have emerged only through a difficult process of trial and error in the field. Taking over executive law enforcement authority is a tremendous responsibility, and CIVPOL operations must be constantly analyzed and reassessed by the U.S. government, the UN, and regional organizations. Policymakers should listen carefully to lessons learned by CIVPOL officers in the field to improve implementation and coordination of executive authority with other elements of the criminal justice component.

The American CIVPOL participants agreed that operational challenges were the most significant barrier to setting up an interim law enforcement presence in a peace operation. As discussed during the first panel session, officers acknowledged that they themselves expended considerable time, effort, and resources in forging a standardized and unified CIVPOL team composed of U.S. officers and those from other nations. Human resources were not always used effectively, and the list of operational difficulties affecting implementation and coordination of U.S. and international CIVPOL officers was substantial: unfamiliar policing techniques, cultural differences and biases, lack of fundamental skills, lack of common understanding of human rights and democratic policing practices, lack of standard equipment and uniforms, nonexistent policies and guidelines, confusion about applicable laws and procedures, and confusion over rank. As General Nash noted in his keynote remarks, the civilian components were professionally and technically disadvantaged compared to the military contingents. Securing baseline law and order--along with jump-starting institution building for indigenous police services and the criminal justice system--are difficult under the abnormal conditions of a peace operation in a postconflict setting.

Kosovo has been an especially difficult undertaking, as the essential elements of the conflict remain unresolved and UNMIK's efforts to secure cooperation and compliance from and among the various ethnic and other groups involved has been difficult at best. In some areas of Kosovo, baseline law and order and security have not been realized, requiring daily coordination between NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR) and CIVPOL to maintain some semblance of control. Political terrorism and organized crime have proved difficult to deal with, and, in certain respects, peace in Kosovo has become the continuation of war by other means. The province is populated by many "spoilers," who are prepared to sacrifice peace for short-term political gain.

Coordination at the tactical level--not only between CIVPOL and KFOR, but also among CIVPOL contingents--has been personality driven: Individual leadership has often been the key to success. In the gray area of the public security gap, it is not always clear where military responsibility for security and law and order ends and CIVPOL responsibility begins. Political indecision and uncertainty, and the excruciatingly slow implementation of the criminal justice components and the rule of law compound these functional problems. In Kosovo and East Timor, a meager handful of international judges and prosecutors has been insufficient for supporting and guiding the new indigenous criminal justice system or processing the backlog of minor and major cases sitting on CIVPOL commanders' desks. As the American officers noted, given these circumstances and other resource constraints, implementing CIVPOL's executive authority and coordinating law enforcement action were sometimes insurmountable tasks.

In Kosovo, CIVPOL operations have been hampered by the lack of effective criminal intelligence work. KFOR and UNMIK have sought to overcome that intelligence gap by sharing information and working jointly to improve CIVPOL's grasp of the political landscape. This form of coordination should enable identification of who is behind political violence, who the targets are, what is the structure of organized crime entities, and what CIVPOL, UNMIK, and KFOR can do. Joint planning and targeted operations conducted by CIVPOL and KFOR have led to more successful engagement against illegal weapons, human trafficking, organized crime, and political violence. Some governments making personnel and resource contributions have stepped up their efforts by making sure that specialized officers are better used and that the tools they need are made available.

The American officers and other panelists and participants noted, however, that progress has also been made and that there are remedies to the problems. While the lack of political will and funding by contributing states is still a major obstacle, the mission has moved forward in building the rule of law and demonstrating to the local population--as the customers receiving international public services--models of legitimate governance. Improving and expanding coordination and collaboration among the civilian and military leaders of a peace operation can enhance CIVPOL's capabilities. Constant communication, routine meetings, and common operations will contribute to greater understanding and effective action.

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Training and Professionalization

The final panel session of the symposium focused on the state of training and professionalizing American police officers for UN CIVPOL missions. The panelists highlighted current difficulties and successes of the U.S. government's CIVPOL program. Currently, the U.S. CIVPOL program is not a permanent or long-term initiative, and it is funded on an annual basis; the program does not have a statutory basis. The U.S. Department of State's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement is currently responsible for the U.S. CIVPOL program and has a budget of $10 million for Fiscal Year 2001 for developing a two-thousand-person CIVPOL cadre drawn primarily from municipal and state law enforcement agencies. The day-to-day administration of the program is subcontracted to a private company, DynCorp, which is responsible for recruiting, preparing, and supporting the mission's American officers selected for deployment. As one panelist remarked, the CIVPOL program is expensive in terms of putting an officer on the ground in Kosovo or East Timor--an estimated $10,000 per officer; $1 million per week is spent on the U.S. CIVPOL contingent in Kosovo. Because funding comes slowly and no political decision has been made on how to establish the program on a permanent basis, responses to problems in the operational setting are sometimes also slow to come.

The CIVPOL program has been overshadowed by the issue of the United States' financial arrears to the UN and the debate over the role of the U.S. military in peace operations. However, the new Bush administration has indicated that it considers the U.S. CIVPOL program valuable and that it is studying the possibility of an expanded role for CIVPOL. This interest is based on the position that the military is best suited for a limited mission of establishing security through pacification and stabilization and does not have the capacity to establish law and order by addressing organized crime and using community policing techniques; these are police functions.

A number of participants voiced support for such ideas as getting Congress to make the U.S. CIVPOL program permanent, creating a reserve CIVPOL force in which officers would be deputized federal agents, or establishing a standing "gendarmerie"-type of paramilitary capacity (such as that found in France, Italy, or Spain) to be used exclusively for CIVPOL operations. However, in charting the way forward, the U.S. government must decide whether U.S. contributions to CIVPOL will continue at least at current levels and whether a more permanent legal and bureaucratic basis for CIVPOL will be found. As of now, the U.S. government has not made a decision to adopt U.S. CIVPOL as a permanent program, and the future of U.S. CIVPOL's official status is still a matter of public debate.

Several participants maintained that current recruiting is insufficient, as the U.S. government basically goes state-to-state searching for qualified officers. Because vacancy rates in municipal departments around the country are high, police chiefs and city government executives are reluctant to let qualified officers take leaves of absence or give them any professional continuity for time served with UN CIVPOL. Many active-duty police officers have had to resign in order to pursue their interest in international service, and they find it difficult to return to a domestic position after serving abroad. A large percentage of police recruited are retired officers who view working abroad in a peace operation as a way to see the world and have some adventure. One panelist urged that during the selection process, more face-to-face contact take place to better determine applicants' motivation and suitability. This kind of "targeted" assessment would be especially necessary in creating a reserve roster based on the increasing complexity and functional specialization throughout a mission's life cycle: the initial startup, where living conditions are hazardous and resources scarce; the mandate-implementation phase, in which the CIVPOL mission establishes its full operational presence; and the institution-building phase, with officers capable of assisting in rebuilding a criminal justice system and turning it over to the local citizens at the end of a mission.

A central concern of the participants was on the issue of how to improve training and professionalization of U.S. CIVPOL officers. Under the current framework, American officers recruited by DynCorp undergo a two-week testing and orientation process that includes physical training, psychological testing, firearms and defensive tactics training, as well as a variety of short modules covering the UN, peace operations, and regional politics and history; recruits also get exposure to negotiation, mediation, and conflict management provided by the U.S. Institute of Peace. Many participants and former CIVPOL officers view the training modules as very useful but suggested that additional training time is needed to cover the key topics in more depth to help CIVPOL cope with demanding tasks and unique environments. The limited training time available is constrained by available funding and the operationally driven, sometimes uneven, forecast for new officer requirements coming from the UN.

Some participants urged that the next step should be to implement an extended multidisciplinary training program with follow-up advance training that could include distance learning courses via the Internet. Currently, there is an effort to establish a basic preparatory program of four to eight weeks, during which candidates would be given extensive training to create professional confidence, technical competence, and dedication to the principles of CIVPOL. The U.S. government has examined other national programs, such as the Canadian and Scandinavian models, to derive ideas for building a U.S. model based on a core curriculum of the UN's basic police officer course, comparative policing and legal systems, international human rights, cross-cultural programs, and the technical roles of police in peace operations.

Symposium participants suggested that more advanced training should include, for example, ethics, civil-military relations, working with nongovernmental organizations, management and leadership courses, team building, and cross-cultural issues and communications. Equally important will be building conflict management and resolution skills alongside cultural and gender awareness training that will enable officers to expand the repertoire of skills they bring to the field. Some participants advocated that officers should also receive certain training together with other professional components of the criminal justice system. Such additional training would potentially improve the ability of the international community to prepare and deploy a comprehensive criminal justice package in a postconflict society, reducing the time and resources currently spent in a mission to get all the elements working together.

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Conclusion

The symposium's participants were unanimous in their conviction that U.S. civilian police are essential and critical to the success of UN CIVPOL missions. In Bosnia, East Timor, and Kosovo, American officers generally have earned a professional reputation and are looked to for leadership and solid policing expertise. There was broad consensus that changes need to be made in the U.S. CIVPOL program and, given the uncertainty of the U.S. government's position, the symposium featured a variety of suggestions on where to go and what to do.

Participants also emphasized that CIVPOL is just as important as the military component in peace operations. Each element has different objectives and capacities that cannot be assumed by the other. CIVPOL should not be regarded as a panacea--the single best alternative--for U.S. military involvement in peace operations, just as the military should not be burdened with executive law-and-order responsibilities. During the crucial early phases of a peace operation, both are required and need the involvement and support of the other.

Two working groups deliberated on recommendations the symposium could offer to the U.S. government on the key issues raised in each panel session. In the area of training and professionalization, several key recommendations emerged:

• Recruiting and job tasking must be linked to mission mandate specifics.
  
  
• Operational procedures should be standardized, not only for the U.S. CIVPOL contingent, but for all national contingents.
  
  
• Criminal legal and procedural codes should be created for peace operations to eliminate confusion over what laws are applied by CIVPOL for an interim period.
  
  
• Deployment of specific technical expertise should be targeted.
  
  
• Administrative and civilian support should have adequate resources.
  
  
• A UN rank structure and command system should be established, with all CIVPOL contingents wearing the same uniforms and using the same equipment.
  
  
• Periodic evaluations and professional benchmarks must be implemented, along with professional enhancement that is transferable to domestic positions.
  
  
• A CIVPOL returnees panel should be formed to capture institutional knowledge from the field and to develop a "lessons learned" capacity.

The second working group presented a recommendation that should be acted on if any significant evolution in the U.S. CIVPOL program is to occur: Enhancing public perceptions and understanding of CIVPOL and the role of American officers must take place in order to propel CIVPOL to a greater level of importance as a peacekeeping and peacebuilding tool. This effort should also include educating Congress as a step toward developing a legislative constituency critical to CIVPOL. Likewise, a nationally coordinated effort could be used to educate the American public on the mission of CIVPOL and why it is important for American police officers to be active in peace operations. One tool that might be utilized could emulate the Pentagon's "Hometown News Program," providing the U.S. CIVPOL program with a system of public outreach in the home communities of officers serving abroad. This form of public outreach would provide Americans with reasons about the need for a U.S. CIVPOL contribution and how it would improve the U.S. government's ability to participate in peace operations.

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USIP Library Resources

Peacekeeping Web Links
www.usip.org/library/topics/peacekeeping.html

Participants

The Professional Challenge: What Should CIVPOL Be Doing To Build Sustainable Peace?

Moderator: William Hayden, program officer, Training Program, U.S. Institute of Peace

Mike Stiers, UNIPTF deputy commissioner, UN Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina

John Collins, UNMIK police deputy commissioner

Eric Scheye, policy and planning officer, CIVPOL Division, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations

Major Kim Field (U.S. Army), political adviser, U.S. Mission to the UN

The Challenge of Differences: Cross-Cultural Issues for CIVPOL in Multinational Peace Operations

Moderator: Ted Feifer, program officer, Training Program, U.S. Institute of Peace

Maureen Kelly, UNIPTF captain, UN Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Graham Day, senior fellow, U.S. Institute of Peace, and former UNTAET district administrator

Harvey Langholtz, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Va.

Addressing the Challenge: Implementing and Coordinating Action in Peace Operations

Moderator: Colonel Curtis Morris (USAF, ret.), program officer, Training Program, U.S. Institute of Peace

Randy Ostrander, UNMIK police station commander

Gary Vanderslice, UNTAET protective services team leader

Colonel Mike Dziedzic (USAF), National Defense University, peace operations analyst, U.S. Defense Strategy Team

Matthew Vaccaro, director, Peacekeeping Office, U.S. Department of Defense

Preparing for the Challenge: Training and Professionalizing CIVPOL

Moderator: David Davis, Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, Fairfax, Va.

Lynn Holland, International Police Program manager, DynCorp, Reston, Va.

Jeremy Pritchard, UNMIK Police Planning and Development Division/U.S. Contingent commander

Robert Perito, International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program, U.S. Department of Justice

Robert Gifford, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, U.S. Department of State

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About the Report

This report presents the major issues, concerns, and recommendations that emerged from the United States Institute of Peace symposium "American Civilian Police in International Peace Operations: What Have We Learned? Is There More We Can Do?" held on March 14-15, 2001. The symposium was organized by the Institute's Training Program in collaboration with the Program on Peacekeeping Policy at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia. The two-day symposium, structured around four panel sessions and two working groups, brought together American civilian police officers, government and intergovernmental officials, practitioners, and academics to discuss lessons learned from recent United States involvement in United Nations civilian police (CIVPOL) missions, most notably in Kosovo and East Timor, and what can be done to enhance the future status of the U.S. CIVPOL program. This special report, prepared by William Hayden, synthesizes the panel presentations and discussions of the four major themes of the symposium regarding American experiences in CIVPOL from the perspective of police officers, practitioners, and policymakers. The report concludes with a brief discussion of the working group's recommendations for future action.

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policies.

See the complete list of Institute reports.

6 July, 2001