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CIVILIAN POLICE AND POLICE

TRAINING IN POST-CONFLICT

OSCE AREAS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND

COOPERATION IN EUROPE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

Printed for the use of the

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2001

[CSCE 107-1-4]

 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.csce.gov

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COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

(VACANT), Department of State

(VACANT), Department of Defense

(VACANT), Department of Commerce

COMMISSION STAFF

 RONALD J. MCNAMARA,, Chief of Staff

DOROTHY DOUGLAS TAFT, Deputy Chief of Staff

BEN ANDERSON, Communications Director

OREST DEYCHAKIWSKY, Staff Advisor

JOHN FINERTY, Staff Advisor

CHADWICK R. GORE, Staff Advisor

ROBERT HAND, Staff Advisor

JANICE HELWIG, Staff Advisor

MARLENE KAUFMANN, Counsel

MICHELE MADASZ, Office Administrator

MICHAEL OCHS, Staff Advisor

ERIKA B. SCHLAGER, Counsel for International Law

H. KNOX THAMES, Staff Advisor

MAUREEN T. WALSH, General Counsel

HOUSE

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey

Co-Chairman

FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania

ZACH WAMP, Tennessee

ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama

STENY H. HOYER, Maryland

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland

LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER, New York

ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida

SENATE

BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL, Colorado

Chairman

KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas

GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut

BOB GRAHAM, Florida

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York
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CIVILIAN POLICE AND POLICE TRAINING IN

POST-CONFLICT OSCE AREAS

SEPTEMBER 5, 2001

PAGE

COMMISSIONERS

Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Chairman ................................................... 1

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, Ranking Member ......................................................... 3

Rep. Christopher H. Smith, Co-Chairman ................................................... 19

WITNESSES

Testimony of Steve Bennett, Director, OSCE Kosovo Police

Services School ............................................................................................ 4

Testimony of J. Michael Stiers, former Deputy Commissioner,

U.N. International Police Task Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina .................. 8

Testimony of Robert M. Perito, Senior Fellow, Jennings Randolph

Program for International Peace, U.S. Institute of Peace ....................... 10

APPENDICES

Prepared Statement of Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell ............................. 27

Prepared Statement of Rep. Christopher H. Smith .................................... 29

Prepared Statement of Rep. Steny H. Hoyer ............................................... 31

Prepared Statement of Steve Bennett ......................................................... 32

Related Materials Submitted by Steve Bennett ......................................... 35

Prepared Statement of J. Michael Stiers, Former Deputy

Commissioner, UN International Police Task Force in Bosnia ............. 39

Prepared Statement of Robert M. Perito, Senior Fellow, Jennings

 Randolph Program for International Peace, USIP ................................. 41

Letter of August 27, 2001, to Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell from

Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, United States European Command,

Commander-in-Chief ................................................................................ 51

American Civilian Police in UN Peace Operations: Lessons Learned and

Ideas for the Future, Report Prepared by U.S. Institute of Peace,

Submitted by Pobert M. Perito ................................................................ 53
CIVILIAN POLICE AND POLICE TRAINING IN

POST-CONFLICT OSCE AREAS

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2001

COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE,

WASHINGTON, DC

The hearing was held in Room 385, Russell Senate Office Building,

Washington, DC, at 10:00 a.m., Hon. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Chairman, presiding.

Commissioners present: Hon. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Chairman;

Hon. Christopher H. Smith, Co-Chairman; Hon. Steny H. Hoyer, Ranking Member.

Witnesses present: Steve Bennett, Director, OSCE Kosovo Police Service School; J. Michael Stiers, former Deputy Commissioner, U.N. International Police Task Force [IPTF] in Bosnia-Herzegovina; and Robert M. Perito, Senior Fellow,Jennings Randolph Program for

International Peace, United States Institute of Peace.

OPENING STATEMENT OF

HON. BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL, CHAIRMAN

Sen. CAMPBELL. This CSCE hearing will be in session. Co-Chairman

Smith and some other members will be along but, in the interest of

time, were going to go ahead and begin.

Todays hearing focuses on the increasingly important topic of civilian policing, local police monitoring, and police training in the OSCE

region, particularly in those areas seeking to recover from armed conflict.

One of the more critical and difficult challenges in the transition to

democracy in the OSCE region over the past decade has been the process of transforming law enforcement structures, including the police.

Policing has been used as a tool in some participating States to repress

the people. The task has been to train those in police uniform to serve

the people. Progress in meeting this challenge has been mixed and,

regrettably in some OSCE countries, those charged with upholding the

law are themselves responsible for human rights violations.

Organized crime and official corruption, major concerns to all of us,

likewise can threaten democratic development and undermine effective

law enforcement.

Given my own personal background in law enforcement, Im keenly

aware of the importance of professional training for police officers. Since

the 1990s, the United States and other democratic countries bilaterally

and multilaterally have provided significant law enforcement assistance

and training to encourage as much progress as possible. In some areas,

and in southeastern Europe in particular, conflicts have thwarted the

attempts at police reform. Indeed, in some places the local police actively participated in ethnic cleansing and genocide along with paramilitary and military units. Ethnic tensions have also been a major

hurdle to overcome.

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The challenge for the OSCE and the international community, not to

mention their roles and responsibilities, grew in these post-conflict areas. As a result, for example in Croatia, both the United Nations and

the OSCE have engaged local police intensively over the years in an

attempt to reintegrate the previously occupied Eastern Slavonian region back into the country and to increase the security for and confidence of the remaining and returning Serbs.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the International Police Task Force under

U.N. auspices has focused on some of the most challenging aspects of

civilian implementation of the Dayton Agreement, including its role in

monitoring and training police.

In Kosovo, the United Nations mission has had to deploy its own

international force to do the actual policing in a vacuum of law and

order following Serbias withdrawal, while the OSCE has operated a

police service school in an effort to build a whole new cadre of police

officers in Kosovo.

Im delighted to see the superintendent of the OSCE Police Academy

here today. I visited that facility about a half a year ago with Senator

Stevens and was very impressed with the training.

In southern Serbia, the OSCE is also training new, mixed units of

police to restore stability and build confidence in that conflict area where

tensions always run high.

In Macedonia, where the ethnic composition of the police force has

been a major issue, international monitoring and training of police will

likely figure highly in resolving the ongoing turmoil there.

Meanwhile, bilateral programs in the United States, such as the International Criminal Investigation Training and Assistance Program

(ICITAP) and the Law Enforcement Academy supported by the FBI in

Budapest, Hungary, will continue to play a critical role. We hope to

learn more today about the accomplishments and challenges of this

work.

Id like to introduce the panel we have who are really experts in the

field. First we have Steve Bennett, the Director of the OSCE Police

Service School in Kosovo. As I mentioned, it is a place that I, along with

Senator Stevens and other members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, visited earlier this year. The work there is extremely impressive and serves as a model which I am sure well discuss today. Thank

you for being here, Mr. Bennett.

Next well have Mike Stiers who served as the Deputy Commissioner

of the International Police Task Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina from September 1999 until November 2000, following more than two and a half

decades of service in my home state of Coloradoin Aurora, Colorado.

Were delighted to have you here, too.

Finally, we have Robert Perito who is beginning a fellowship at the

United States Institute for Peace after six years with the International

Police Training Program at the U.S. Department of Justice. Mr. Perito

served for almost three decades as a Foreign Service Officer with the

U.S. Department of State and teaches at George Mason University.

We had invited Mr. Gerald Beekman who spent several years, both

with the United Nations and the OSCE as a police advisor in Croatia

after 15 years with the New York City police department but, while he

wanted to be here to testify today, he notified us that he would be unable

to participate.
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So with that, we will go ahead and start with our hearing. Before we

proceed though, Id like to invite Mr. Hoyer for a comment. I was so

intent on my notes, Steny, I apologize.

Mr. HOYER. Thats all right. Theres a man who concentrates.

Sen. CAMPBELL. You bet.

Mr. HOYER. Benjamin Franklin said the secret of a successful person

was the one who concentrated on what they were doing at the time. So

obviously thats why youre so successful.

Sen. CAMPBELL. I guess Benjamin Franklin didnt forget everything

else in the process, as I do.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. STENY H. HOYER,

RANKING MEMBER

Mr. HOYER. I want to welcome our three witnesses here and make a

brief opening comment. The members of the Helsinki Commission are

not of one mind regarding certain issues which come before us. On most

issues we are, but not all. One issue on which there was some disagreement was the use of armed forces in southeastern Europe, first to make

and then to keep peace.

I have been, as I think most know, a very strong advocate of U.S.

leadership and participation on the ground. Without it, we do not know

how many thousands more may have died, been displaced, had their

families separated. Without it, our European Alliance itself, in my opinion, would likely be threatened to the detriment of our national interest.

That said, as Members of Congress, we are all aware of the risks and

costs of a prolonged presence in that region. I believe were all of one

mind that we want to see improvements on the ground to the benefit of

the people living there that would also allow the United States and the

rest of the international community to gradually disengage and be able

to say a job well done.

We must be committed, in my opinion, however, to persevering until

such time as we can make that observation. In no area is the need for

improvement more critical than in the realm of law enforcement. Not

only establishing a secure environment but also establishing the trust

of the people is critical if the political and economic situation in the

region is ever to change. That is why the work of those before us today

and the issues they have come here to address, Mr. Chairman, are so

very important. It has been their work that we have an interest in

seeing succeed.

I also would like to welcome the fact that the OSCE is playing an

increasing role in the civilian police matters. I have been a particularly

close observer of the OSCE for more than 16 years and, while I do support U.N. efforts as well, I must say as an aside I have not been overwhelmed with the success of the U.N. on the ground in the Balkans.

I believe, however, that the OSCE is a unique and strong institution,

becoming more so, and that, in addition to all of its other assets, it

focuses on the individual and the human rights of the individual. It has

adapted to the changing European scene and I hope it will continue to

grow in areas like policing and police training. While much of the experience in this field so far has been in southeastern Europe, it should not

be confined only to that region.
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As has been pointed out, human rights violations for which local police are responsible are too common in too many OSCE countries. I

might add, including our own. In too many OSCE countries, sometimes

it is done at the direction of the central authorities; elsewhere it could

be the lack of control or the prevalence of corruption and inadequate

training. Whatever the cause, I am very interested in hearing the views

of our experts and how best to address this situation.

During the 1960s, there was much talk about law and order. Some

were concerned about that phrase because they thought it was a catch

word for somehow racist views. The fact is a civil society cannot exist

unless law and order prevails. The very definition of civil society reflects the necessity that we act within rules and boundaries for, if we do

not, then it is simply not the rule of law, but the rule of might that

governs. Too often obviously in so many parts of the world, it has been

that rule which has prevailed rather than the rule of law.

Your efforts are obviously directed to ensuring that rule of might does

not continue in the Balkans and that we have a civil society in which

Europe and the American community and others can watch with satisfaction the results of our work. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sen. CAMPBELL. With that, well start with Mr. Bennett.

TESTIMONY OF STEVE BENNETT,

DIRECTOR, OSCE KOSOVO POLICE SERVICES SCHOOL

Mr. BENNETT. Good morning, Senator Campbell, Commission members. I thank you for this opportunity to appear before the Commission

and a chance to share my Kosovo experiences with you, an experience

that I can honestly characterize as one of the most important and professionally rewarding opportunities that Ive had in my 36 years of working in law enforcement.

Your invitation asked me to share my views on the schools accomplishments, the problems and challenges associated with training local

police and the precedence that our school in Kosovo has set for similar

endeavors in the OSCE countries. Id like to begin by providing the

Commission with some brief background information about the school

and putting it online to begin with.

The department was initially formed in July 1999 shortly after the

cessation of the bombing and the reestablishment on the ground of the

OSCE mission in Kosovo. The staff then consisted of 10 OSCE verification mission members who had been evacuated and then returned at

the end of the bombing and me.

We were given the mission to set up, developing and implementing a

program for the training of the local police. Our effort was to be undertaken as a partnership with the U.N. civilian police who were at the

time organizing for their primary mission of executive law enforcement

and to take on these graduates from the school and integrate them as

local officers into that enforcement program.

Early plans called for rapidly training approximately 4,000 local

Kosovars. A site for training was located in Vushtrri which is a town

located north of Pristina and just south of the troubled area of Mitrovica.

This location had for many years been the site for police training in

Kosovo as the Ministry of Interior police for Serbia had also been trained

there.
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The site was well-suited for training, but the site was in very great

disrepair and needed significant renovation to make it serviceable for

training. Through the OSCE we launched a process of selecting contractors and quickly moved toward fixing the critical infrastructure so

that we could begin training. Concurrently, we began developing program materials, seconding and organizing the staff and planning for

program implementation.

The existence of a basic training curriculum enabled us to move rapidly in program development and the existence of this curriculum we

owe to ICITAPs earlier efforts to organize that in anticipation and preparation for supporting the mission. The model that we employed then

was a two-phase approach to facilitate a rapid deployment. We used a

relatively short academy program and then we followed that short academy program with a longer field training to ensure deeper competency.

A variation of that program is still in use in the school today. We

began with an 8week and 19week distribution, eight weeks in the

academy, 19 weeks in the field. We are now using 12 weeks in the

academy and 15 weeks in the field to complete the basic certification

program.

We opened our doors to the first 176 local trainees on September 6 of

1999 and in 10 days on September 15, 2001, we will graduate course

#16 which will bring our total to 4,106 local officers trained and deployed to the streets of Kosovo. In fact, when you look at the streets of

Kosovo today, either as an international or as a resident of Kosovo, you

will see more national KPS officers on the street than you do international officer presence.

Current projections are for approximately 1,500 additional officers to

be trained and deployed by December 2002. Continued assessment of

internal security and definition of police roles in Kosovo may identify a

need for additional officers. Growth of the police, however, will have

major implications for the already strained Kosovo consolidated budget.

Our program is conspicuous in Kosovo for its early success as a multiethnic and multi-gender institution. Among the graduates of the school,

17 percent are from Kosovos minorities. Nine percent of that are Serb

and 8 percent are other minorities representing all of the ethnic groups

in Kosovo, and 19 percent of our graduates are women.

This success was possible for many reasons. First was a strong emphasis and priority on minority and gender recruitment. This was followed up by an insurance of a training environment that guaranteed

adherence to the strongest standards of human rights and professional

behavior. This is guaranteed by professional program and management

standards and example.

In this area of example, Im always reminded of a story that I tell

often in my experience between my grandfather and me, and Ill share

that with you at the moment. I have four sons and when my sons were

teenagers, as all people who have children who have been through the

teenage years can attest to, it is a very challenging time for a parent. I

was talking to my grandfather on one occasion. I said, I dont know

why Im talking to my children. They never listen. I tell them one thing

today; tomorrow they are out there. They do the same thing again. So I

dont think that they are ever listening to me.

My grandfather looked at me and very quietly said, Steve, dont worry

that they are never listening to you. Worry that they are always watching you. I think that, again, my point is that our example is very
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critical. When you look at the schools example, you will find multiethnicity in our staff. We have a mix of professional women involved.

Our classes are integrated. Our dormitories are integrated. Our dining

hall is integrated and all the facilities, events and activities of the school

reflect our value in multi-ethnicity, multi-gender and professional behavior.

Our environment highlights, I think, the potential for multi-ethnic,

multi-gender professional cooperation that can someday be achieved

more broadly throughout Kosovo society.

Equally encouraging is evidence from the field at this time that in

some areas where there are multi-ethnic communities there are multiethnic police services. Albanian and minority officers policing together,

which I think extends to future hope that there will be a multi-ethnic,

multi-gender police in the future for Kosovo.

Whereas the officers are accepting each other, the communities are

more resistant to this change, and are unaccepting of officers of the

other ethnicity. There is a very strong cultural resistance to accepting

women as equal partners in policing. Still, I remain optimistic that in

both cases, time will bring a change to their attitudes and a change to

the public confidence and, as a consequence, acceptance will grow in

the society for this new professional police corps.

The Kosovo training program is built on three broad themes of professional development. First is basic training which has been refined and

offers a very stable platform for continued training using the current

model as it has been successful. After basic training, specialized and

advanced training is needed to deepen the competency base and enable

a full range of services for all the communities of Kosovo. These programs include criminal investigation, traffic management, and selective courses dealing with problems not unique to Kosovo, but of particular significance, such as organized crime and domestic violence.

Supplemental material Ive provided to you will give you a list of the

courses that we are providing and some production figures and some

general information about the Kosovo mission as it relates to police

training. You will note, I hope, that the total number of students completing courses at the school will exceed 18,300 by December of this

year. That involves many repeat courses, but it gives you a sense of the

aggressive level and volume of activity that the school is responsible for

and is being successful with.

The third theme and perhaps the most important is the program

intended to provide sustainability to what were building. A training

designed for capacity building. The school is well on its way to creating

within the Kosovo police service the institutional ability to sustain this

professional level of career training. We have the first 24 Kosovo police

service officers certified as academy instructors and fully engaged in

training at the school. We have a plan for before December of this year

to introduce another 40 officers into the academy staff. This total will

continue to grow rapidly with additional emphasis on developing and

deploying field trainers as well so that we can take care of that part of

the mission that deals with recertifying skills of officers already trained.

Besides the Kosovo Police Service [KPS] officers, the school has been

identifying and developing other local civilian faculty and technical staff

members who will round out the capacity of the school for the future.
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In the operational forces, two groups of supervisors and managers

have been provisionally established, promoted, and put in place and,

again, early results relate to a capacity for management and leadership

which are encouraging. Theyre doing well.

Challenges along the way have been abundant but not debilitating, in

my mind. The most challenging issues for us in the school program

evolved around early role definition, resource problems, and expectations. Most of these issues related to a lack of experience with the scope

and the role that this mission would play. It was clear from the beginning that the U.N. civilian police would be responsible for operational

development and deployment of the KPS. It was also clear and understood that OSCE would be responsible for the school.

It was less clear, however, how the two operational functions would

interact in making choices regarding policy for KPS development and

the responsibility of continuing education after the initial graduation.

I believe future pre-mission planning for operations similar to the

circumstances of Kosovo will benefit greatly from our lessons learned.

Joint planning teams, for instance, are highly encouraged. The earlier

principles and pre-mission planning discussing the parameters of their

operations with each other and the sooner that they can determine where

there is a requirement for clarification and agreement, it will be that

much better for the follow-on activities.

This will eliminate the more dysfunctional nature of the process once

political and organizational momentum overtakes the dialogue. Once

youre on the ground and the line is drawn, it is a lot harder to change

their minds.

It seems reasonable that future missions of this type will also occur

in environments where acquiring needed resources would become a serious problem for operational implementation and, again, the best remedy in my mind will be good planning and an integrated plan.

If I had to single out the most prescriptive solution for the problems

that we experienced earlier on, I would point everybody in the direction

of the U.N.s Brahimi Report on U.N. Peacekeeping Reform. It very

objectively addresses lessons learned from the most recent mission and

offers a very broad range of important recommendations for improvement. It also sadly points to a conclusion that we have yet to effectively

learn how to process lessons learned and make improvements for the

next mission, but it is an extremely well done report in my judgement.

The importance of designing effective methods for planning in advance becomes even more compelling as regional actors such as the EU

begin expanding their capacities. This will, particularly in Europe and

particularly with policing, add another layer of complexity to effective

security sector planning efforts.

Managing expectations has been perhaps the single most challenging

arena. We were almost immediately caught in a contradiction that,

again, my grandfather in his wisdom warned me about. He often cautioned me not to give up what I want most for I want now. Little did we

know when he said that the application I would wrestle with in the

present context would prove true to that same wisdom.

What we want most is to create a sustainable democratic institution.

What we want now is to get it done quickly because the political support

and consequently the funding window begins to close the day after the

mission begins. Time becomes our nemesis. Sustainable democratic

institutions require maturity. Maturity requires time, the one thing
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which is largely dependent on the next crisis, its magnitude and/or the

fickle nature of public support. In either case, the one thing we rarely

can count on having is time.

This reality leaves us with a compelling need to define, as early as

possible, what is most important in establishing our mission objective,

how can we achieve it and by when, and to convey this in all policy and

mandate documents. By doing this, we define our own success and

manage the expectations the best we can.

Regarding the issue of precedence, the school has established that

OSCE can add police training as an institution building component to

its capacity. Our model has already been used to provide a rapid startup capacity to the OSCE mission and FRY. The South Serbia Presevo

Police Training Initiative is using members that are former members

of the school. Theyre using our curriculum, the model of training developed in Kosovo. The OSCE mission now forming in the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia is following the same lead. They are

using staff that has previously been working at the school and our model

program because it deals effectively with multi-ethnic, multi-gender

training.

OSCE has proven capacity for engagement in institution and capacity building operations. Police training and development clearly are complimentary institution and capacity building activities. That means that

OSCE can now, as a result of Kosovo, with confidence offer this in its

inventory.

Again, I thank you for this opportunity to appear, both on behalf of

ICITAP and on behalf of the OSCE and would be very happy to address

any questions that you might have.

Sen. CAMPBELL. Okay. Thanks, Mr. Bennett. Well have some questions. Funny thing about grandfathers: the older we become, the wiser

they get.

Mr. BENNETT. The wiser they get.

Sen. CAMPBELL. Thats right. Well go on now with Mr. Stiers.

TESTIMONY OF J. MICHAEL STIERS,

FORMER DEPUTY COMMISSIONER, U.N. INTERNATIONAL

POLICE TASK FORCE IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

Mr. STIERS. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is my pleasure to be before you this morning to address the

issues of the International Civilian Police and their missions. I was

asked to speak on two topics.

First, the effectiveness of police monitoring and the ability of the international community to provide meaningful training to the local police officers within the mission country.

Second, the question of how well donor countries provide personnel to

the International Police Task Force and the ability levels of those police

officers provided.

After giving this request much thought, I believe the real questions

being asked here are 1) is police monitoring the best way to deal with

post-conflict police and crime-related issues and 2) is there a better way

for the international community to deal with these concerns?

The short answers are no. Police monitoring alone is not the best way

to deal with police and crime-related issues and there must be a more

efficient and effective way for the international community to address

these areas of concern.
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Let me say first that there is a place and time for police monitoring in

a mission. However, it comes only after a great deal of work has already

taken place with the local police forces. After the war in Bosnia, we

inherited 40,000 police officers who were mostly military officers and

political favorites. It took nearly four years to get this force to the 18,000

plus they have today.

Then came the task of converting them from the old socialistic style

of policing to a more modern democratic style. This task is still ongoing

today.

Training in new investigative techniques and modern operational

tactics; development of police academies for new police recruits; development of specialty trainingthe list goes on and on. Only after you

have a working police force do you have something to monitor.

In Kosovo and, I believe, in East Timor, they are building the local

police forces from the ground up. The first task for the IPTF or other

missions international police forces should be to reestablish law and

order. Whether by using the existing police force or the international

police forces, that must be the first goal.

Second, we must create a local police force capable of maintaining law

and order using the new, modern world style of policing. They must be

able to stand on their own two feet after the internationals pull out.

Im sure you see there is much for the international police officers to

accomplish before we are truly able to focus on police monitoring alone.

All these tasks are currently being tackled by these same police officers. They are asked to teach first, train, evaluate, mentor, and then

finally monitor. Additionally, in Kosovo and East Timor, they are charged

with all of the official policing duties, a severe challenge at best.

Yes, the international community possesses the capability to provide

all necessary training to the local police forces. How we go about it is

another question. I do not believe that there is a one-size-fits-all type of

training to cover all of the variety of training needs in the various missions. Certainly the bulk of the training can and should be done within

the mission country.

However, certain types of training may be more efficiently undertaken by having the appropriate group of local police receive their training in a neighboring country. The Bosnian State Border Service is a

good example of this. Usually this will involve specialty types of training. The ability to tap international resources for such training can

prove very beneficial to the mission country.

Now, whether or not the international community, including the

United States, is doing its best in providing quality police officers to

these missions: I can only speak on what I observed in the Bosnian

mission. As a former deputy commissioner, I can honestly say that

every donor country sent us some excellent police officers. However, I

must admit that the percentage of good police officers provided by a

donor country varied widely from country to country.

During my 14 months in mission, there were times when as many as

1015 percent of the international officers sent to the mission didnt

meet the minimum requirements set out by the United Nations. Those

requirements are very basic in nature: First, you must be or have been

a qualified police officer with at least 5 years experience. Second, you

must be able to speak, read and write English at a workable level. Third,

you must be able to drive a stick shift, four-wheel drive vehicle.
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At the beginning of my mission time, we were able to repatriate those

who failed to measure up without too much difficulty. However, as the

Kosovo and East Timor missions grew, repatriation became almost impossible. Therefore, we were challenged to find something to do with

these unqualified officers. If the screening process were improved worldwide prior to sending a police officer to mission, I believe we could accomplish much more with much less in a much faster time frame.

In closing, I do not pretend to understand the complexity of the issues

which the United Nations and its contributing countries face. However, I do know we must do a better job in providing qualified police

officers to these missions, and I hope that America remains an active

partner in that cause. Thank you.

Sen. CAMPBELL. Thank you.

Mr. Perito.

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT M. PERITO,

SENIOR FELLOW, JENNINGS RANDOLPH PROGRAM FOR

INTERNATIONAL PEACE, U.S. INSTITUTE OF PEACE

Mr. PERITO. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Id like to express my

appreciation to you and the members of the committee for inviting me

here this morning. I was asked to provide general context for the remarks of the other two people on the panel. Before I do that, Id like to

ask that my formal statement be submitted for the record.

The issue of police and peace operations is before us this morning

because theres been a change in the nature of warfare and the nature

of peacekeeping since the end of the Cold War. In the post-Cold War

period, interstate war has been replaced by intrastate conflict. From

1990 to 1997, there were 49 wars in the world that involved at least

1,000 battle deaths. Of these, only seven occurred between countries.

The rest occurred within countries between ethnic and religious groups.

With the rise of intrastate conflict, the international community has

been repeatedly called upon to intervene to stop the violence. During

such interventions, the international community has been faced with

the need to restore public order in countries where theres been a total

break down of government. As a result, international civilian police

forces have become a central part of peace operations. The number of

United Nations civilian police authorized by the Security Council has

reached nearly 9,000. About 40 percent of all peacekeepers deployed

today are police officers.

The largest United Nations police mission is in Kosovo. The other

two largest missions are in Bosnia and East Timor. In addition to the

U.N., international police missions have also been fielded by the OSCE

in Croatia and by the European Union in Bosnia and Albania.

This increase in the number of officers deployed has demonstrated

the capacity of police to contribute both to public security in the short

term and to building law enforcement institutions that are necessary

for sustainable stability in the long term.

Over time, the role played by police in these operations has greatly

expanded. Historically, civilian police officers were limited simply to

observing and reporting on the activities of indigenous police who remained fully responsible for law and order in their countries. But in El

Salvador, Somalia, Haiti, Guatemala and Bosnia, the role of international civilian police was expanded to include the reform, restructuring, and retraining of indigenous police.
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Police reform, as weve heard this morning, is extremely important.

The central task of national reconciliation is the creation of a functioning judicial system of police, courts, and prisons. A competent judicial

system is necessary to ensure that justice becomes an effective alternative in these societies to resort to armed conflict.

In Kosovo and East Timor, the withdrawal of Yugoslav and Indonesian police created a situation in which the international civilian police

were required to be the police and perform all police functions. In those

two operations, international civilian police, carry weapons and have

full police powers.

While the number of international civilian police has increased and

their duties have expanded, international police missions worldwide

remain deeply troubled and have been plagued by a host of political,

administrative, logical, personnel and quality control problems. The

most difficult problem confronting the United Nations in civilian policing has been finding enough police officers. Right now the U.N. police

missions worldwide are about 1,000 police officers short.

The second problem has been finding enough officers with the appropriate training, skills and experience. In each of these missions, as we

heard from Mike, there have been significant shortfalls in the quality of

the people whom U.N. member states have provided.

The third problem has been the U.N.s inability to provide appropriate logistic support in a timely manner.

The problems associated with fielding international civilian police

missions have been particularly challenging for the United States. Since

1974 when the U.S. Congress passed Section 660 of the Foreign Assistance Act which banned U.S. assistance to foreign police forces, the

United States has gone on to become the worlds largest contributor of

manpower, money and material to international police missions. Currently, there are more than 835 American police officers serving in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor. Previously, U.S. civilian police served in

Haiti and in Eastern Slavonia in Croatia.

This fiscal year, the United States will spend more than $100 million

on these programs to both provide police in the field and to train indigenous police in these operations. The growth in the number of U.S.

police serving in peace operations has been both extremely rapid and

has been done on an ad hoc basis. The U.S. Civilian Police Program has

no statutory authority and it is funded by annual appropriations.

The United States has no national police force. We have nothing similar

to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that provides Canadian police in

peace operations. Instead, the United States has about 18,000 independent state, country and local police forces plus more than a dozen federal law enforcement agencies.

As U.S. police departments are very reluctant to release personnel for

one year assignments to U.N. missions, most members of U.S. contingents historically have been retirees, although the number of active

duty officers is increasing.

During its final year in office, the Clinton Administration released

Presidential Decision Directive 71 which assigned responsibility for the

U.S. Civilian Police Program to the State Department. The State Department in turn contracts out responsibility for recruiting, training,

and logistic support for U.S. civilian police contingents to a commercial

contractor.
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Police officers participating in U.S. missions are not government

employees. They are independent subcontractors of a commercial company. The United States is the only country that uses this practice.

While the performance of our contingents has been better than most

countries, as weve seen in The Washington Post and as weve heard,

there are some American officers whove been provided to these missions who either are unfit or participated in activities that were embarrassing to the United States.

Rectification of this situation will require new legislative authority.

It would require assigning this responsibility to a U.S. federal law enforcement agency that would have both the authority to recruit active

and retired personnel and swear them into federal service and provide

for their pay, insurance, transportation, equipment and logistic support. This would place the U.S. civilian police contingents in peace operations on a par with those with other countries. It would also give the

U.S. Federal Government greater control over American civilian police

contingents in the field.

While the U.S. has expanded its role in international civilian policing, European regional organizations such as the European Union and

the OSCE, have also created the capacity to assist post-conflict societies

in reestablishing public security and the rule of law. With the peacekeeping operations in the Balkans right on their doorstep, this is of

greater concern to the Europeans in some respects than it is to us.

One goal of the European Unions European Security and Defense

Policy is to develop a force of 5,000 civilian police for peace operations by

2003. This force will include a rapid reaction unit of 1,000 police which

will include Gendarme units that will be ready for deployment within

30 days. Presently, the European Union has 3,600 police serving in

peace operations. These include Gendarme units that are serving with

SFOR in Bosnia and with KFOR in Kosovo.

At its summit meeting in 1999, the OSCE announced its intention to

create Rapid Expert Assistance and Cooperation Teams or REACT. This

includes teams of human rights, legal and political experts and some

500 civilian police. These teams would be available for rapid deployment to deal with future humanitarian emergencies and peace operations.

The division of labor between the U.N. and regional organizations

such as the EU and the OSCE was the subject of a conference that

Steve and I attended in Stockholm this spring. Also in attendance were

the head of the U.N. CIVPOL division, the senior police official from the

OSCE and senior police officials from the EU and the Western European Union.

This conference concluded that the United Nations with its global

authority and with its extensive experience in fielding international

police missions, remained the leader in this field. The Europeans felt

that it was best that the OSCE and the EU become involved in peace

operations only in a situation where there was a U.N. mandate and

where they were working to support objectives established by the Security Council.

In the past, we have seen four different ways in which the U.N. and

regional organizations such as the OSCE have worked together in peace

operations. The first has been what we might call regional succession.
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This is a situation in which the U.N. fields the initial police force and

then the regional organization comes in later and takes over. This is

what happened in Eastern Slavonia.

Another is a situation where you have joint policing where the U.N.

and the regional organizations share responsibility. This is what happened in Haiti where the OAS was present along with the United Nations. There have also been situations in which theres been a division

of labor. This is the situation in Kosovo, that Steve described, where the

U.N. is responsible for operational policing and the OSCE is responsible

for training indigenous police.

The fourth has been situations where the U.N. has sanctioned regional organizations to go in and do the operation. This was the case in

Albania where the U.N. sanctioned the Western European Union to

send in the police mission.

The conference that Steve and I attended noted that regional organizations in Europe have certain advantages which make them ideal partners for the U.N. in staging these operations. Ill summarize these.

First, OSCE and the EU have an advantage in terms of training

personnel, something which would reduce the chronic problem that the

U.N. has faced in having inadequately trained personnel arrive in these

missions.

Second, with their new Rapid Reaction Units, the OSCE and the EU

would be well-situated to deploy people quickly and that would correct

another problem which the U.N. has faced which is the slow deployment of police.

Third, these organizations can provide policemen with special skills,

particularly in organized crime and civil disorder management.

Fourth, regional organizations can play a role by assisting the U.N.

with training indigenous police. Weve heard from Steve about how that

worked in Kosovo which was one of the most successful operations of its

kind.

Id like to close by making one observation. You see before you on this

panel people who represent, through their experience and their work in

this field, the United Nations, a regional organization, the OSCE, and

in bilateral programs of the U.S. Government. All of these elements are

essential in future international police missions. They all have a role,

and they all make a contribution.

Thank you.

Sen. CAMPBELL. Thank you. Let me start with a couple of questions.

Mr. Bennett, I remember when we were in Kosovo, we learned about

retention and you told us that one of the problems in the academy is you

couldnt offer very high salary and that there was a problem with retention. What is the retention rate now? Are you keeping them a little

longer?

Mr. BENNETT. Youre addressing the KPS graduates. The retention

rate is still extremely high, quite honestly. I think we all feared that

with the rate of pay in Kosovo, which is 350 DM a month which is about

$175, something close to that right now, that we might, as the rest of

the society became more stable and other jobs became available, that

many people that we got because we were the only employing entity in

Kosovo, we might start losing people. The reality so far has been that

that was a false fear, if you will.
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I think the long-term consequences of that to perhaps some other

issues like corruption and other that we also fear might be outcomes of

such a low salary. Well have to play that out but I think early statistics would suggest that it hasnt gone in the direction that we thought

it would. When you were there, I think I mentioned to you that it is

important to look at that salary in the broader context of whats going

on in Kosovo. It is in the top 10 percent, for instance, of all public salaries in Kosovo. Just the judges and a very few others have better salaries than that. When you look at the countries contiguous to Kosovo, it

is higher than most all of the other Balkan countries in terms of what

police officers are being paid. Of course, we wouldnt want to look to the

standard of those police agencies and necessarily make a correlation

there.

Sen. CAMPBELL. In my view, most police people in most countries are

professional and tend to obey the law themselves, but theres always a

couple that dont. Is there some kind of internal affairs organization

that investigates accusations of corruption once these people are out on

the streets?

Mr. BENNETT. There are a couple of major mechanisms in Kosovo

that address that issue right internally within the U.N. CIVPOLs organization to manage the executive policing role. They have a professional standards unit which is by any other name an internal affairs

division where the public and other officers have a vehicle for raising

complaints and dealing with investigations of officers themselves. In

addition to that, the OSCE and the U.N. have ombudsmen programs

that are also very active in the public.

Sen. CAMPBELL. What kind of programs?

Mr. BENNETT. Ombudsmen programs where they provide an access

of the general public more anonymously to get involved in complaints

about the police or behavior of police.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the Chairman for yielding. Unfortunately Ive

got an 11:00 appointment I have to make in my office.

I visited with the police, the U.N. police operation in Bosnia in Sarajevo some years ago In 1998, I am told, there was obviously a concern

about the operation at that time of the U.N. mission, the police mission

there.

Mr. Perito, in your statement you say, The conference concluded

that the United Nations global authority and extensive experience make

it the undisputed leader in international police missions. I will accept

that premise as correct, but in Bosnia at least, there seems to be a

dysfunctional relationship between the U.N. mission and the locals.

Maybe that was because of the proximity of the conflict and perhaps it

has gotten better. I hope thats the case.

But, as I said in my opening statement, I am concerned about the

U.N.s role, which seemed to me to be more of an observer role than a

peacekeeper role. Assuming weve made peace, peace has broken out, if

you will, and our objective through civilian police officers is to keep the

peace, we found many instances where the police were observers rather

than interveners to maintain peace. We saw that in ethnic conflicts

between Croats and Muslims but in other areas as well.

If you would comment briefly on that because Ive got to go, anybody

who would want to comment on that, in terms of the relationship that

the U.N. has with regional organizations.
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Mr. PERITO. The mandate for the International Police Task Force in

Bosnia was established in the Dayton Agreement. That was a negotiated agreement. The reasons for this limited mandate go back to the

demands of Europeans who participated in those negotiations who wanted

a very restrictive mandate for the U.N. police force. It was agreed in

the context of the negotiations at Dayton that the IPTF would only be a

force to monitor indigenous police. If you read Ambassador Holbrookes

book on the negotiations, he says that creation of a weak IPTF was a

major flaw in the agreement with especially serious consequences. I

think most observers believe it was a mistake. In fact, Ive just finished

a book which says it was a mistake. Since the mandate was established

in the negotiations, the mandate was then picked up by the United

Nations and was the mandate that Mike and the ITPF had to implement.

I think with hindsight and in retrospect, the international community would have probably done it differently. Had REACT and the EU

police, these two units that are now coming into being, been available to

those involved in the Dayton negotiations, this would have been done

very differently.

Where you see the resolution of this is in the creation of the police

force in Kosovo where there was an attempt by the U.N. and the international community to learn from previous errors. In Kosovo you have

a fully competent international police force with full executive authority.

I agree with your evaluation of the IPTF. I think this in some respects is an accident of history and maybe weve learned this lesson.

Mr. STIERS. I would tell you, Representative Hoyer, sir, that your

comments about the police sometimes being observers and not intervening is very accurate. However, it is my experience that in Bosnia

the local police force has some very professional police officers. Many

times though they are restricted from doing what should be done and

what they believe should be done because of the political atmosphere.

Basically, that boils down to the fear of losing their jobs if in fact they

are to intervene on a given situation or allow their people to intervene.

There is still a political stranglehold umbrella over the local police forces.

I think that the IPTF and others, the Office of the High Representative (OHR), are working hard to break that stranglehold but it does still

exist today to a certain degree. Not to the same degree that it probably

did in 1998 but there is a program right now to ensure that every chief

of police, if you will, is a professional police officer and not a political

appointee. The credentials have to be there before they can be appointed

as chief of police or a minister of the interior.

So I think it is critical to say that the will is there by many local

police professionals but it is overshadowed still by the political atmosphere that exists among the three ethnicities today.

Mr. BENNETT. I think I would concur with both of my colleagues and

the comments theyve already made, and I would go back to perhaps

what I had said earlier, that that issue of clarification of expectation

and clarification of roles at the front end of these missions is extremely

critical. You spend a lot of time trying to figure out who is supposed to

be doing what and, in that regard, you are an observer until it is clarified. So I could not, again, speak more strongly to what I think is the

most remedial approach is for us to put a lot of emphasis on this front

end planning. We have a lot of capacity to build model scenarios.
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We have a lot of experience and particularly in the United States

were far ahead in these areas and thats one thing that we could assist

the U.N. and motivate the U.N. to move toward, and that would allow

us all to use, whether theyre regional apparatuses or NGOs or whoever

is being applied in these different environments. If they understand

what they are there for, what the priority is, where the limits are, it

will make a lot of difference in terms of efficiency/effectiveness once

theyre on the ground. So again, I push for pre-planning as my strongest possible message.

Mr. HOYER. Good point. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Sen. CAMPBELL. Ill get back to you in just a minute, Mr. Bennett,

Since Congressman Hoyers questions were mostly to Mr. Stiers, let me

proceed there.

The ITPF is known primarily for monitoring. In the monitoring, were

any of the specific officers that you know of involved in atrocities or

cleansing during the war and, if so, is the IPTF or the United Nations

or the Office of the High Representative in a position to deal with the

allegations?

Mr. STIERS. Absolutely. It has taken a considerable amount of time,

but IPTF has begun a program over there, a basic program that perhaps should have been done a little earlier. Its the re-registration and

certification of every police officer, all 18,000plus throughout the country. We created a unit that goes on a road show and does as thorough a

background check as we possibly can, with the documents that are

available, but it is up to the officers, the individual local officers, to

provide their documents to us. If they cannot do that, then the potential

exists that they will be decertified and, therefore, not be a police officer.

Checks by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY] are made on these individuals to see, not only if they were

involved in war atrocities, but even if they were mentioned anywhere in

an ICTY report that dealt with war atrocities. Then they are put in a

limbo state until we can verify it either way. The challenge is great

because youre using a handful of people to go throughout the country to

register these police officers and then theres a background group that

comes behind that actually would approve certification of them as a

full-fledged police officer. That was ongoing when I was there. Its still

ongoing.

They hope to have at least the registration of all 18,000 completed by

midsummer of 2001, and then the final certification sometime in early

2002. But in several instances there was enough information given to

us in the registration process where they were decertified immediately.

Sen. CAMPBELL. And what happens to the ones that are decertified if

they have been implicated at all in some atrocity?

Mr. STIERS. The information is passed on to the appropriate investigative body, ICTY, and then it is up to them to do with it whatever they

choose to do. That is not part of the IPTFs mandate.

Sen. CAMPBELL. There have also been, as I understand it, some reports in Bosnia as well as of some international police officers in Kosovo

who contributed to the demand for prostitutes and have actually participated in trafficking. Would you comment on that? Have you found

that thats been in effect?
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Mr. STIERS. Well, I guess I would say the short answer is yes. We

have done investigations where individuals were international police

officers involved in the solicitation for prostitution. We have done investigations where there were allegations that they were actually involved

in the trafficking of human beings. Some of those took place after I left,

and I dont know the exact outcome of those.

Once the investigation came to a point where we could confirm that

these officers were involved, action was taken by the IPTF commissioner. Mostly that included repatriation, immediate repatriation to their

home country. What happened to them after that, I cant tell you.

But when you have 2,000 officers, mostly male, in a foreign country,

those types of issues as it deals to participation or solicitation for prostitution, although it was illegal in Bosnia, as youre well aware, Im sure,

that many of these police officers come from countries where prostitution is not illegal, where it is an accepted part of way of life and to break

them from participating in that literally was probably impossible for

some who didnt understand that the law in Bosnia must be upheld.

Theyre all professional police officers, or at least most of them were

professional police officers when they came there, and the vast majority

did exactly what they were supposed to do. With 2,000 offices, did we

have some problems? Yes, sir, we did.

Sen. CAMPBELL. Mr. Perito, concerning U.S. Government policy making, is there sufficient coordination between the State Department and

the Justice Department as well as other interested agencies like the

Department of Defense and who takes the lead in developing programs

and deciding in which countries they are to be implemented?

Mr. PERITO. Well, now that Im out of government, Im looking back

on this. Under PDD 71 which was the Clinton Administrations effort

to set standards in this area, the leadership in police operations was

assigned to the Department of State. The Department of State has the

responsibility for determining policy and for answering those questions

such as should we engage.

The Department of State also is involved in a larger interagency process. In this administration, Im not certain how this interagency process is functioning. This administration has not had to deal with an

emergency, so this remains an open question. Historically theres been

a division of labor between the Department of State which has been

responsible for the operational aspects of international police programs

and the Department of Justices ICITAP program which has been responsible for indigenous police training. That breakdown has worked

quite well.

As I understand it, Mr. Chairman, youre going to have government

witnesses up here next week. I think thats a very good question to ask

them. Were in a new administration and this is an issue which has not

been fully joined. I would be interested in the answers you get next

week.

Sen. CAMPBELL. Thank you. Let me get back to Mr. Bennett since I

did visit the academy in Kosovo and I was interested in that interaction

you had. I remember you telling us that there was some lack of ethnic

integration until the women themselves decided they wanted to be integrated in the dormitories and attend the classes together. I thought

that was a great step forward.
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But you did mention in your opening statement there is someI think

you called it cultural resistance still. When we were in Kosovo, I remember you said that even after graduates were out on the streets,

that sometimes the Albanians would be reluctant to call if they thought

a Serb officer was going to answer the call and the Serb family might be

reluctant to make a call if they thought an Albanian officer was going

to answer the call. Has that improved at all?

Mr. BENNETT. I would like to characterize whats going on in Kosovo

as a slow improvement toward the ultimate goal of having the ability to

have a multi-ethnic society there. I think I would have to stand on that

comment. On the other hand, I would continue to tell you it is very

slow. Theres a tremendous amount of still trauma involved in the society at large. Theres still a lot of hatred. Theres still a lot of problems

that all tend to defeat the progress that youre talking about trying to

make.

But I think in spite of all those obstacles that I still, as I mentioned in

my comments, Im encouraged by those places where it is working.

There are, as I mentioned, I think it is even remarkable that there are

communities, quite honestly, where you can have both officers working

the street as opposed to just being in an enclave where, for instance, the

minorities might live.

So we still have enclaves. We still have areas in Kosovo where only

the officers that represent the minority there can in fact safely be on

the streets and effectively police. But there are exceptions to that and I

think that, again, I try to see that as the glass being half full. Over

time I believe it will change. Nevertheless, it is still a serious problem

now.

Sen. CAMPBELL. I noted with interest that when I watched the classes

at that school and ate in the dining hall that very frankly I couldnt tell

one person from another in terms of their ethnic background. I couldnt

tell if a person was an Albanian or a Serb. They seemed to be getting

along well. When the officers go out and work on the streets, do they

have anyyou might not know the answer to this but I was wondering

if they had much interaction themselves when theyre off duty. American police do. I mean thats common. They frequent the same places.

Theyre friends. Their families are friends very often.

Mr. BENNETT. I think that in the school there is a very healthy level

of interaction professionally and I think in the police departments themselves where they are in fact working in an integrated environment

that theres a lot of cooperation and again professional acceptance. Certainly outside that work environment, I would say there would rarely

be any social interaction between the

Sen. CAMPBELL. Cultural resistance.

Mr. BENNETT.the different cultural entities.

Sen. CAMPBELL. In Kosovo we read, of course, that there was a great

deal of violence in the form of trafficking and domestic abuse. What

types of training does the police school provide on those issues? Have

you had some success in training police to deal with women that have

been victims of trafficking?

Mr. BENNETT. We have, first, the problem is notlet me stress that

I dont think it is only about training. Its about changing the laws and

a whole lot of other things, too, which Im happy to say in fact are being

accomplished also through the OSCE rule of law section and through
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efforts of the Judicial Affairs Department in Kosovo. They are making

headway in changing the law and then educating prosecutors, educating judges and others.

Nevertheless, in the school itself we do have a very healthy program

in terms of creating both the awareness, the legal aspects and working

in this arena. We have had several special seminars where we have got

police, prosecutors and public together from the other organizations,

NGOs and so forth. I would characterize it as a pretty substantial task

force working on this in Kosovo, and I think theyre making a difference. I think women in the police service itself has offered an access

point, if you will, for complaints and things of this nature thats been

very important, too.

I would have argued that probably a couple of years ago or even more

recently, you would never look at a police blotter, the incidents of the

day, and find anybody complaining about their husband beating them

up or something like that happening, but you find it every day now. I

think in spite of the fact that thats a negative thing in one way, it is

positive in another that they feel that there is a way to redress this.

Theres recourse for it now. I think thats a positive indication that the

program is starting to take root.

Sen. CAMPBELL. Thank you. Id like to yield to our Co-Chairman, Mr.

Smith.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH,

CO-CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON SECURITY

AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Chairman Campbell. I do have a statement

and I would ask that the full statement be made a part of the record.

Thank you for convening this very important hearing.

Obviously, police matter a great deal as to whether or not the rule of

law and democracy takes hold. As weve seen, even some of our more

mature democracies, including the UK, the problems in Northern Ireland have been almost exponentially exacerbated by the Royal Ulster

Constabulary [RUC] and its excesses. Hopefully those excesses can be

mitigated. We know our own police in the United States have had problems and hopefully, wherever they are discovered, they are prosecuted

and ferreted out.

But in emerging democracies, it takes on even greater importance,

and I want to thank each of our panelists for the good work you do and

for the testimony youve provided. I did read most of it before I came. I

apologize for being late, but I do have a couple of questions.

When Chairman Campbell and I, and our delegation, made our way

over to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Paris, we met with General Ralston and had a very fine briefing by him and his staff. The issue

of policing was really at the core of our conversation. He gave us a very

strong admonition to bring back a message to the administration, to all

of our interlocutors at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly: take what

has been developed in Kosovo and replicate it, especially in Bosnia. I

would ask you if you could respond to his strong request.

 He points out that the Kosovo school is a model, that the UNMiK

[U.N. Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo] and OSCE effort has

been very successful. In contrast, the rule of law has not taken hold,

has not matured the way one might have thought it might in Bosnia,

whether it is Republika Srpska or in the Federation. Could you perhaps
20

give us your insights as to those two republics, their strengths and

weaknesses, and whether or not the police school in Kosovo dimensions

would be warranted for Bosnia?

Mr. BENNETT. I guess I could start the response. First, I would point

out, although I really appreciate General Ralstons comments about our

successes in Kosovo, that you want to be careful to see that these are

really apples and oranges in my mind. The environment that were

working on in Kosovo was the executive environment. We were the

government. We are the government. So our capacity to control, to

manage, to develop all this was virtually unlimited in that regard.

In Bosnia it is a totally different situation where the interaction of

the host and the other government are mixes that complicate the answer. I think there are some good things within the program that can

be used universally almost in terms of the lessons that weve learned,

the kind of model that has emerged in terms of working with multiethnic groups, multi-gender groups. I think what has happened in Kosovo does provide us some good methodologies and strategies for that.

But again, if we werent able to have the kind of control that we do

over the entire process which starts with screening and selection and

placement. For instance, I think one of the more obvious differences is

that we in fact had no police service. We went out. We put together the

entire program of recruiting, selection, vetting, and put them through

all the basic programs. That is not what happened in Bosnia at all, and

I think I would have to defer to the Bosnia experts since I was not there,

but I dont think that that could have happened there and certainly, as

Bob mentioned to you earlier, the mandates were so different in missions that it is not really fair to necessarily see this whole thing as

being able to be transported somewhere else and be as effective.

But I do think we have in fact created some methodologies and some

programs that could be more universally applied and be successful, but

I would be very hesitant. I would not, in fact, endorse the possibility of

starting something like this over there unless the conditions that made

this prevail were the same. I dont think we can go back to that.

Mr. SMITH. Is it a matter of control? Would the Bosnian officials be

willing to cooperate in what is to their own advantage? Why not learn

the lessons of Kosovo? As you pointed out, vetting and recruitment

couldnt be more important. We recently met with the Roman Catholic

Bishop of Banja Luka, who made an impassioned plea that walking the

streets in that locale, in Banja Luka, are people who are known to have

committed very serious offenses. Theyve got the guns holstered, and

they are the arbiters of justice, but nothing could be further from the

truth.

If a new effort were made with mutual respect and all the other important aspects that diplomacy warrants regarding these governments,

would it be helpful? Otherwise, this will be a problem, in my view and I

think the view of many of us, that will fester, get worse, and could lead

to greater impunity. Why not build on the Kosovo model? Perhaps you

cant use a cookie cutter approach, and superimpose it, but you could

take major chunks of the training and philosophy if the political will

were there. The General told us if we want an exit strategy with regards to our military deployment and the Europeans who are there,

this has to happen. Reading briefly from his letter, There was no effective means in place to recruit new officers and imbue them with the

respect for the rule of the role of law. This would go from bad to worse

potentially unless something like a tourniquet is put on this process.
21

Mr. BENNETT. Id like to defer that because I lack the experience in

Bosnia and all the political nuances and operational nuances that apply

here. I think they are pretty much aware of what is going on in Kosovo

and how this might fit.

Mr. STIERS. Mr. Smith, with all due respect to the General, I guess I

would question that statement, frankly. Having served 14 months in

Bosnia, having visited and seen the process to select the new recruits in

both the Republika Srpska and in the Federation academies, I would

tell you from my personal experience that the statement that the General makes, in my opinion, is absolutely false.

The two academies are functioning quite well, I believe. I think the

quality of the individuals that are being recruited is excellent. The breakdown of the ethnicities has been put on them. Each academy has to

have 80 percent of the minority candidates selected to attend the academy. So in the Republika Srpska in Banja Luka, if that academy has

120 students, 80 percent of them are not Serbian. They are minorities,

and they will then work within the Republika Srpska.

Twenty five percent of them roughly are females, so it is not a gender

issue either. I guess I dont know where the general got his information, but I guess I would recommend to the panel when they go to a

mission like this, if they want information about the police, they ought

to go to the police. If they want information about the military, they go

to the military. The majority of the working police forces in Bosnia are

staffed with qualified professional police officers.

The issue of converting them to the more modern democratic style of

policing is till ongoing, but they want to be recognized by their peers

from the international community as professional police officers. Are

there some that are still out there doing policing the old way? Sure

there are. Theres almost 20,000 police officers over there. The process

of vetting from 40,000 to 20,000 was done on paper and eliminated the

obvious. Now you have to go back in with the 18,000 that remain and do

a thorough background investigation.

We had numerous allegations from all ethnicities. It didnt matter

whether they were Serbian, Croat or Bosnian. If we sent a minority

police officer into their area, immediately there were allegations that

this person was a war criminal. To the best of our ability and to the best

of ICTYs ability, the research into their backgrounds proved that to be

totally false.

As you well know, even here in America, allegations against police

officers are a dime a dozen. If you can track back and find out the facts

of this individuals participation during the war, which is difficult at

times over there because much of the documentation has been destroyed,

but we went to great lengths and are still doing that with the 18,000

plus that remain to ensure that they are the caliber of police that you

want over there, that Bosnia wants over there, that the European Union

wants over there, and that they will be able to stand on their own and

that the individual citizens can respect those officers as professional

law enforcement officers.

But in any country that we deal with, including the United States,

including my home police force, we had renegade police officers. That

happens and unfortunately that one or two percent creates a bad name

for all.
22

I wouldnt dispute what a bishop might have told you, but I dont

know where his information came from. If it were brought to the authorities, to the IPTF authorities, then we did everything we could possible do to verify it. Senator Campbell asked earlier what did we do.

Well, we decertified them if we found out that there was a bit of truth to

it, and then we took that information and passed it to the authorities

that could do something with it.

IPTF did not have that mandate. We dont have the authority to do

that. We have no executive authority at all. We have pushed that envelope probably further than we should have in doing some of these investigations, but youre absolutely correct. If there are allegations against

any police officer from the rank of patrolman all the way up to the

chiefs, they have to be investigated. But then you deal with the facts

that you can find. Otherwise, in the three different areas of Bosnia, we

would truly have non-multi-ethnic police forces because immediately

when we sent a minority officer to an area, we had allegations of everything against them.

Mr. SMITH. Let me ask you a different question. What you are describing is the equivalent of an internal affairs type of operation.

Mr. STIERS. Absolutely.

Mr. SMITH. How large is the investigation unit? When an allegation

comes to your knowledge, what is triggered? Are there two people deployed to look at it? Whats the average length of time to look into an

allegation? How many people are actually doing this?

Mr. STIERS. Well, our internal unit existed of a dozen individual police officers assigned to it with the assistance of some legal and civil

affairs personnel because they knew the political backgrounds and all

those types of things and could assist us in that area. But additionally

to that, we utilized another group. The actual group that is doing all of

the backgrounds on these 18,000plus. That road show consists of probably two dozen roughly who actually go out and physically search out

the documentation as best we can.

We also used ICTY. There are ICTY resources in Bosnia where we

could get information about all the allegations made against everybody

during the war. All of that is put together. Some investigations you

could clear in a matter of 2448 hours. Some investigations took a month

to try to track down some of this stuff. Getting information out of ICTY

was sometimes not difficult but time-consuming because they have so

much going on in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and elsewhere in their investigations. Its a time process.

But as soon as we had enough documentation, fortunately, because of

the mandate, the IPTF commissioner can decertify a police officer at a

moments notice and did so including chiefs and a variety of others.

Mr. SMITH. Were there instances where they would not be punished?

Where the evidence did not conclude their guilt?

Mr. STIERS. Oh, absolutely. In the majority of the incidents, the evidence did not prove the case against the officer.

Mr. SMITH. Were there times when the authorities would not carry

through with what the evidence was suggesting?

Mr. STIERS. I guess the short answer is no. If there was enough evidence, the commissioner acted. If it were questionable, then we either

had to investigate further or give the benefit of the doubt to the police

officer or to the individual. It had to be there to take that kind of severe

action.
23

Mr. SMITH. One last question, if I could. How many active cases do

you have right now on police officers?

Mr. STIERS. Well, I cant tell you right now. Im not there any longer.

But at any given time, there were probably two or three dozen at any

given time ongoing investigations on different police officers within the

country because theres roughly 20,000 of them. But it is really hard to

base it down to individual numbers, plus to be quite fair, many times it

took time for the information to get to us. People were very hesitant to

come forward.

But even as Steve said, in Kosovo, I was only there 14 months but the

number of individuals that were willing to walk through the door of a

local police station and make a complaint against a police officer was a

hundredfold of when I arrived to when I left. So that in itself says something about the local police, that the citizens have the confidence and

have lessened their fear that they will actually go in and say, this police

officer did this or is this person or whatever it happens to be.

So I think thats some testimony that it is moving. It is moving slowly.

The progress over there is painful, but it is happening.

Sen. CAMPBELL. Perhaps one last question, and Im not sure who

should answer. Maybe you all could take a crack at it. The Southeast

European Cooperative Initiative called SECI has created a Regional Crime

Fighting Center in Bucharest which, when it is fully staffed, will involve police officers from each of 12 different countries, Albania, Bosnia,

Bulgaria, Croatia, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Greece, Hungary,

Romania, Moldova, Slovenia, Macedonia and Turkey, in an effort to put

some kind of reduction to cross-border criminal activities.

Id like to know your view on the work of the SECI center and do you

have any recommendations to improve it?

Mr. STIERS. Unfortunately, Im not familiar with that group by itself

but, in speaking from working with multi-jurisdictional task forces for

30 years, I would tell you that the concept I believe is excellent. Any

time you can put that many police agencies together, whatever their

capabilities, you are going to positively affect fighting organized crime

which knows no political or geographic borders.

I think the way that we, the international community, can assist is

to provide quality training and expertise to that unit or to that body so

that the individual officers that come from the 12 different countries

can learn from each other and learn from whoever heads that group up

on how to go about doing their investigations in a much more professional manner. It would be much more efficient and much more effective if they can learn that.

Youre talking about some countries there where the policing may

not be up to the standards we would like to see here in America and

maybe even in most of the world. But that doesnt mean theyre not

good police officers and cant do a good job. They just need the tools and

the knowledge to know how to go about that.

Sen. CAMPBELL. Our federal agencies, including the Secret Service

and FBI, are both helping with it, too, as you probably know. Mr. Perito,

what would your observations be on SECI?

Mr. PERITO. I think we have in the Balkans today a range of situations starting from in Macedonia where were at the very beginning and

were faced with the need to create public order to Bosnia where were

five years into a peace operation and were beginning to deal with issues

such as those raised by Congressman Smith concerning organized crime.
24

SECI belongs at the end of the continuum. SECI is just getting started.

In the future, it is going to be increasingly useful.

However, I dont think that SECI is going to make much of an impact

in situations such as Macedonia where we are trying to establish public

order.

Just a comment on the previous question about whether we could

create a special police academy in Bosnia. Its been our experience, and

this is counterintuitive, that it is easier in some respects to start from a

clean slate, as we did in Kosovo, with no existing police force and to

build one correctly from the very beginning.

Mr. PERITO. Its very hard, as we discovered in Bosnia, to come in

and try to reform an existing police force, particularly one that has

vested interests. I think another factor was the very limited mandate of

the IPTF in Bosnia. Hopefully these are lessons learned that we can

apply in future operations.

Sen. CAMPBELL. Mr. Bennett.

Mr. BENNETT. I would want to agree with my colleagues comments

about the value of this task force concept. I would just make a couple of

quick observations. One is that it is much broader than police, and we

never want to forget that, that if were not attacking the laws and were

not providing resources for prosecutions and some other things that are

necessary to be successful in changing this, we wont make that much

progress with police officers on the street, no matter how effective they

are.

The second thing is never underestimating the demand and, again,

the economy. Just for instance, in Kosovo, the estimates that I have

seen from UNHCR suggest that 40 percent of the economy in Kosovo is

propped up by probably what we would call organized crime in some

fashion. So where does that go? There is a demand. There is a need.

Many things that we consider organized crime and criminal activity

arent perceived that way by their own culture. So theres a huge problem there and some of it is about expectations.

I guess I would just caution you: dont expect it to turn around very

quickly in the Balkans because it is not perceived the same way that we

see as organized crime.

Mr. SMITH. Just one final question. Thank you, Chairman Campbell.

Several months ago we were contacted by LaStrada, an NGO out of

Ukraine that deals with helping women who have been trafficked. They

had very good knowledge that seven women in Montenegro were being

held. They knew right where they were, and they asked the Commission for help.

We put together a letter very quickly to Prime Minister Vujanovic

and he responded. What transpired was a rescue of all but one of those

women, but we learnednot unexpectedlythat there was a great deal

of trepidation on the part of the women to be released into the hands of

police because occasionally, at least, some of these police were known to

have been on the take or frequented this brothel to which these women

had been trafficked.

I know that theres deep concern on your part with trying to mitigate

and end this scourge of trafficking. I know the Chairman asked about

trafficking earlier. Could you elaborate further as to what kind of very

special emphases may be placed on trafficking? I would hope that some
25

female officers are being trained to act. A woman, who has been so

abused in this way might find it easier to be helped by another woman

rape crisis centers have proved that time and time again.

Perhaps you could comment or elaborate further on this. We have

found a hesitation of the part of the women themselves because the

authorities may be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Mr. STIERS. You know, I think it is important that we keep in mind

the mindsets that these people have grown up with and thats what

were trying to break down today with the police. Thats all I can speak

to. Its understandable why they would fear going to the police because

the actions of the police historically have been in the interest of the

state and not in the interest of the people. Its going to be a generational

process to get these individuals, be it trafficked women, whoever it happens to be, to build a trust within the police force.

I think it is started. I think it has started, and Steve mentioned it in

Kosovo and I mentioned it just a minute ago. You would not have a

civilian citizen walk into a police department a couple of years ago and

make a complaint against a police officer because of that fear. That is

slowly changing because of the actions of the international community,

I believe.

Certainly, to augment the police forces and make them multi-gender

is absolutely the best thing to do to work in these areas. But if were

going to attack trafficking in human beings, it needs to be attacked in

the countries where theyre being trafficked from, additionally to where

theyre coming to. So maybe this organization that Mr. Campbell refereed to in Bucharest is one that could tackle something like that. You

need to hit it from all sides, the source and where it is being utilized.

Its an immense challenge. We had numerous raids in Bosnia on these

brothels and we would rescueif you want to use that term20 or 30

women at a time and most of them would go back to their home countries. Unfortunately, a raid a month later or whatever, we would find

some of those same women there. Now, whether they were kind of recaptured in their home country and forced to go back, in some instances,

yes. In many instances, no. You have to divide which ones are true

victims and which ones participate in that occupation voluntarily. Then

you have to decide what does voluntarily mean. Because of the economic

conditions that they live in, this may be their only way of making a

living.

When you break all of that out from a law enforcement perspective,

trying to charge the individuals that assisted them can become a challenge for you at best, and especially when youre in a country where the

judicial system hasnt progressed, as Steve indicated, as far as the law

enforcement system has. Where do you take them? Who do you charge?

Where do you charge them when there arent courts that are set up to

handle that, when there arent prisons to put them in?

Its a much more involved, complicated issue than just saying lets

tackle trafficking in women and try to put some forces to that. We cant

ignore it, but it is going to be a challenge for quite a while to come, I

believe, sir.

Mr. PERITO. Maybe I could just add to that. There are four parts to

this problem. One part involves attacking international organized

crimethe groups that participate in trafficking. Thats one thing that
26

the SECI Center is looking at. My former organization, ICITAP, provided a retired FBI special agent to that center whose expertise is in

international trafficking.

The second part is to improve border controls in all these countries.

ICITAP has programs to do this, as does the State Department and

other countries. Unless these countries actually have control of their

borders, theres no way to prevent people from moving across.

The third part concerns training for local police and sensitizing local

police that this is a problem. This is a new problem in those areas and,

unfortunately, if you talk to local people, they say the problem exists

because there is a large number of internationals who are creating a

market.

The fourth is to create NGOs and social service groups that are able

to provide for people who are rescued and to repatriate them. We need

diplomatic efforts to convince governments to accept people back and to

take care of them when they return home.

This is a multifaceted program which requires support from the Congress from the U.S. Government and the international community.

Mr. SMITH. Are you familiar with the legislation that was enacted

last year by the Congress? That law provides not only new law enforcement mechanisms but also help on the protection side. AID grants will

be made available to try to help countries help themselves with legal

and law enforcement reform, similar to what the ILO does so well in

trying to mitigate child labor. They teach the countries themselves how

best, in a coordinated fashion, to resolve the problems.

Mr. PERITO. Its enormously useful legislation.

Mr. BENNETT. I dont think I could add much to that except that I

would reinforce what you just heard, and thats that there are many

dimensions associated with it, everything from economics to political,

etc. You have to take, I think, a holistic approach to your attacks or

whatever were doing in that regard. The simplest fix is training or

operational changes. The tougher part is the law, the political pressure

to get these many countries that are engaged in this to agree that this

is a priority problem and to address it in that fashion.

Mr. STIERS. You must attack the cause. When law enforcement gets

involved in it, were treating the symptom. But weve got to get back

further and stop it at its onset.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you.

Sen. CAMPBELL. I have no further questions, but the Commission

appreciates your testimony here today.

There may be some questions from other commissioners that they

will be submitting in writing and, if they do, wed appreciate it if you

would answer those. Well keep the record open for two weeks for any

additional comments from the panel or from anyone in the audience,

and well include also a copy of General Ralstons letter and a report by

the U.S. Institute for Peace which will be included in the hearing record.

With that, the Commission hearing is adjourned. Thank you.

(Whereupon, at 11:41 a.m, the hearing was adjourned .)
27

APPENDICES

PREPARED STATEMENT OF

HON. BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL, CHAIRMAN,

 COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION

IN EUROPE

Todays hearing focuses on the increasingly important topic of civilian policing, local police monitoring and police training in the OSCE

region, particularly those areas seeking to recover from armed conflict.

 One of the more critical and difficult challenges in the transition to

democracy in the OSCE region over the past decade has been the process of transforming law enforcement structures, including the police.

Long used as a tool in some participating States to repress the people,

the task has been to have those in police uniform serve the people.

Progress in meeting this challenge has been mixed, and regrettably, in

some countries those charged with upholding the law are themselves

responsible for human rights violations. Organized crime and official

corruptionmajor concerns to many of uslikewise can threaten democratic development and undermine effective law enforcement. Given my

own personal background in law enforcement, I am keenly aware of the

importance of professional training for police officers.

 Since the 1990s the United States and other democratic countries

bilaterally and multilaterallyhave provided significant law enforcement assistance and training to encourage as much progress as possible.

 In some areas, and southeastern Europe in particular, conflict has

thwarted attempts at police reform. Indeed, in some places the local

police actively participated in ethnic cleansing and genocide along with

paramilitaries and military units. Ethnic tensions have also been a

major hurdle to overcome.

 The challenge for the OSCE and the international community, not to

mention their roles and responsibilities, grew in these post-conflict areas as a result.

 For example, in Croatia, both the United Nations and the OSCE

have engaged local police intensively over the years in an attempt to

reintegrate the previously occupied Eastern Slavonian region back into

the country, and to increase the security for, and confidence of, remaining and returning Serbs.

 In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the International Police Task ForceIPTF

under U.N. auspices, has focused on some of the most challenging aspects of civilian implementation of th Dayton Agreement, including its

role in monitoring and training police.

 In Kosovo, the United Nations missionUNMiKhas had to deploy

its own international force to do the actual policing in a vacuum of law

and order following Serbia s withdrawal, while the OSCE has operated

a police service school in an effort to build a whole new cadre of police

officers in Kosovo. I have personally visited that facility and commend

those attempting to foster stability and the rule of law in a very difficult

environment.

 In southern Serbia, the OSCE is also training new, ethnically mixed

units of police in an effort to restore stability and build confidence in

that conflict area where tensions often run high.
28

 In Macedonia, where the ethnic composition of the police force has

been a major issue, international monitoring and training of police will

likely figure highly in resolving the ongoing turmoil there.

 Meanwhile, bilateral programs of the United States, such as the International Criminal Investigate Training and Assistance Program

ICITAPand the Law Enforcement Academy supported by the FBI in

Budapest, Hungary, will continue to play a critical role.

 We hope to learn more today about the accomplishments and challenges of this work.
29

PREPARED STATEMENT OF

HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, CO-CHAIRMAN,

COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION

IN EUROPE

International civilian policing is, without question, an issue of growing importance in human rights work.

We have seen the difficulties encountered in southeastern Europe by

those who were earlier displaced and now seek to return to their original homes. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, where minority returns have generally increased, the rate of return to Republika Srpska has remained

far too low, and those who do return are sometimes greeted by violence

and intimidation. The local police offer little protection in this regard.

Indeed, last May when Muslims sought to rebuild the destroyed mosques

in Banja Luka and Trebinje, they were attacked by organized mobs.

The police not only failed to protect the workers and the Bosnian and

international officials who accompanied them, there were indications

that the police had colluded in the attack.

The peacekeeping forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina, known as SFOR, are

not equipped or trained to provide the day-to-day security of law enforcement officers. The events in April of this year in Mostar demonstrated

this, when civilians stood in the peacekeepers way as thugs attacked

and beat international auditors trying to uncover criminal banking activity. No doubt, Mr. Chairman, there is a law-and-order gap which

needs to be bridged.

That gap in law-and-order was among the items members of this

Commission and other Members of Congress discussed with General

Ralston, NATOs Supreme Allied Commander, this past July. The General noted the particular threat posed by organized crime in Bosnia and

felt that doing more to establish the rule of law in that country will be

a critical component of any exit strategy.

Bosnia is not alone in its problems. Virtually no minority returns

have taken place in Kosovo, and protecting those that did not leave is a

challenge for the UNMiK police and KFOR. Earlier this year I met with

young people from Serbia who were from Otpor, or resistance movement. These courageous men and women seek legal action against those

police officers who intimidated, detained and sometimes beat them during the Milosevic years. In Macedonia, not only the ethnic makeup of

the police but their treatment of private citizens has been a major concern.

Indeed, law enforcement problems go beyond southeastern Europe;

they exist in many OSCE States. In Northern Ireland, the U.K. Government has used the overwhelmingly Protestant police forcethe Royal

Ulster Constabulary (RUC)as an instrument in responding to the

Protestant-Catholic conflict there. The police have been implicated in

many human rights abuses and have rarely been held accountable. As

a result, rather than being a police service that serves all sides of the

community in Northern Ireland, the RUC became a direct target for

nationalists opposed to the U.K. Governments policies. I have chaired

more than a half-dozen hearings on human rights problems in Northern Ireland and have heard consistently that root-and-branch reform of

the RUC, including the vetting of officers who have engaged in past

abuses, is a critical factor in securing a lasting peace in Northern Ire-
30

land. I expect that many of the principles of civilian policing in the

Balkans which our witnesses will discuss today will be equally applicable in Northern Ireland.

Similarly, I am quite disturbed by reports that local police in several

countries do little if anything to stop the trafficking of human beings.

The police are often part of trafficking network. In some countries, the

police continue to be used as instruments of the state to quash dissenting voices, even with the use of torture. Elsewhere, members of the

Roma minorities have been harassed and sometimes killed by police

officers for no reason.

Of course, there are incidents of police abuse in this country which is

of great concern to all of us. At the same time, the outrage rightly

expressed over such incidents stems in large part from the understanding, expectation and common experience in the United States of having

faithful and dutiful local police officers serve the public, protect the

innocent and arrest the lawbreakers. The police officer standing on the

corner should be seen as the protector of civil liberties, not the abuser.

I strongly support efforts to provide countries in transition with assistance and expertise in democratic governance, and I look forward to

the testimony about your efforts to train civilian police and how to improve their effectiveness.
31

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. STENY H. HOYER,

RANKING MEMBER,COMMISSION ON SECURITY

AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE

The members of the Helsinki Commission are not of one mind regarding certain issues which come before us, such as the use of U.S.

armed forces in southeastern Europe, first to make and then to keep

peace. I have been an advocate of U.S. leadership and participation;

without it, we do not know how many thousands more may have died

and millions been displaced. Without it, our European alliance itself

would likely be threatened to the detriment of our national interests.

That said, as Members of Congress we are all aware of the risks and

costs of a prolonged presence in the region. I believe we are all of one

mind that we want to see improvements on the ground to the benefit of

the people living there that would also allow the United States and the

rest of the international community gradually to disengage and to be

able to say it is a challenge, and we must be committed to persevering.

In no area is the need for improvement more critical than in the

realm of law enforcement. Not only establishing a secure environment,

but also establishing the trust of the people is critical if the political and

economic situation in the region is ever to change.

That is why the work of those before us today, and the issues they

have come here to address, are so important to this Commission. It has

been their work that we have an interest in seeing succeed.

I also would like to welcome the fact that the OSCE is playing an

increasing role in civilian police matters. I have been a particularly

close observer of the OSCE for more than 16 years, and, while I do

support U.N. efforts as well, I feel that the OSCE is unique in its strong

focus on the human rights of the individual. It has adapted to the changing European scene and I hope it will continue to grow in areas like

policing and police training.

And while much of the experience in this field so far has been in

southeastern Europe, it should not be confined only to that region. As

has been pointed out, human rights violations for which local police are

responsible are too common in too many OSCE countries. Sometimes it

is done a the direction of the central authorities; elsewhere it could be

the lack of control, the prevalence of corruption and inadequate training. Whatever the cause, I am very interested in hearing the views of

our experts on how best to address this situation.
32

PREPARED STATEMENT OF STEVE BENNETT,

DIRECTOR, OSCE KOSOVO POLICE SERVICES SCHOOL

Senator Campbell, Commission members, I thank you for this opportunity to appear before the Commission and a chance to share my Kosovo experience, an experience I can only characterize as one of the

most important and professionally rewarding experiences in my 36 years

of law enforcement.

Your invitation asked me to share my views on the Schools accomplishments the challenges of training local police officers and the precedents the School has set in similar endeavors in other OSCE countries.

I should like to begin by providing the Commission with some brief

background information to help provide a frame of reference.

The Department was initially formed in July of 1999, shortly after

the cessation of bombing and reestablishment of the OSCE Mission in

Kosovo. The staff at that time consisted of ten (10) OSCE Verification

Mission holdovers and myself. We were given the mission of developing

and implementing a program for the training of local police. Our effort

was to be undertaken as a partnership with the UN Civilian Police who

were at the time organizing for their primary mission of executive law

enforcement and the operational integration of local officers. Early plans

called for rapidly training approximately 4000 local police. A site for

training was located in Vushtrri, a town north of Pristina and just

south of Mitrovica This location had for years been the Kosovo site for

police training but had been neglected and was in need of major renovation to make it serviceable. Through OSCE we launched a process of

selecting a contractor and quickly moved forward with the most critical

infrastructure repairs.

Concurrently we began developing program materials, seconding and

organizing staff, and planning for program implementation. The existence of a basic training curriculum enabled us to move rapidly in program development. This curriculum had been developed by ICITAP in

early 1999, in anticipation and preparation for supporting the Mission.

The model employed a two-phase approach; to facilitate a rapid deployment, it used a relatively short academy phase, and to insure competency, it followed the academy with a longer field-training phase. A

variation of that program is still in use today.

We opened our doors to the first 176 local trainees on September 6,

1999, and on September 15, 2001, in ten days, we will graduate Course

16, bringing our total to 4106 local officers trained and deployed to the

streets of Kosovo. When you look at the streets of Kosovo today you see

more local officers than international in all but the Mitrovica region in

the north of the province.

Current projections are for approximately 1,500 additional officers to

be trained and deployed by December 2002. Continued assessment of

internal security and definition of police roles in Kosovo may identify a

need for additional officers. Growth of the police, however, will certainly

have major implications for the already-strained Kosovo consolidated

budget.

Our program is conspicuous in Kosovo for its early success as a multiethnic, and multi-gender institution Among the graduates of the School

17% are Kosovo minority and 19 % are women. This success was possible for a number of reasons; first was a strong emphasis and priority

on minority and gender recruitment. This was followed by the insurance of a training environment that guaranteed adherence to the stron-
33

gest standards of human rights and professional behavior. This is guaranteed by professional programs and management standards and examples (Grandfathers advice). The School staff is multi-ethnic, has a

mix of women professionals, our classes are integrated, as are the dormitories, dining hall, and all other facilities, events, and activities. Our

environment highlights the potential for multi-ethnic, multi-gender,

professional cooperation that can someday be achieved more broadly in

Kosovo society.

Equally encouraging is evidence from the field that in some areas

where there are multi-ethnic communities, there are multi-ethnic police services. Albanian and minority officers policing together, extending the future hope that there will be a multi-ethnic police for Kosovo.

Whereas the officers are accepting each other, the communities are

proving to be resistant and not accepting the officers of the other ethnicity. There is also strong cultural resistance toward accepting women

as equal partners in policing. Still I remain optimistic that in both

cases, time will bring a change in attitude and public confidence, and

as a consequence, acceptance will continue to grow.

The Kosovo training program is built on three broad themes of professional development. First is basic training, which has been refined and

offers a stable platform for continued training using the current model.

After basic training, specialized and advanced training is needed to deepen

the competency base and enable a full range of services for each community. These programs include criminal investigation, traffic management and investigation, supervision and management training, basic forensics skills, and selective courses dealing with problems not unique

to Kosovo but of particular significance, such as organized crime and

domestic violence.

Supplemental material provided lists these courses and provides you

with figures of officers trained. You will note that the total number of

students completing courses at the School will exceed 18,300 by December of this year.

The third theme, and perhaps the most important, is the program

intended to provide Sustainability  training designed for capacity building.

The School is well on its way to creating within the Kosovo Police

Service the institutional ability to sustain a professional level of career

training. We have the first twenty-four (24) Kosovo Police Service Officers certified as Academy Instructors and fully engaged in training support at the School. By this December we will add another 40 to the

Academy staff This total will continue to rapidly grow with additional

emphasis on developing and deploying field trainers as well.

In addition to the KPS officers, the School has been identifying and

developing other local civilian faculty, technical and staff positions which

will contribute to the effective ultimate transition of the School.

In the operational force two groups of supervisors and managers have

been provisionally established and again early results related to capacity for management and leadership are encouraging.

Challenges along the way have been abundant but not debilitating.

The most challenging issues have evolved around role definitions, resources, and expectations. Most of these issues were related to lack of

experience with the scope and role this mission would play. It was clear

the UN Civilian Police would be responsible for operational development and deployment of the KPS. It was also understood that OSCE

would be responsible for the School. It was less clear however how the
34

two operational functions would interact in making choices regarding

policy for KPS development and the responsibility for continued training. Future pre-mission planning, for operations similar to the circumstances of Kosovo, will benefit from our lessons learned. Joint planning

teams, for instance, are highly encouraged. The earlier principals in

pre-mission planning discuss the parameters of their operations with

each other, the sooner areas requiring clarification, and agreement,

will emerge. This may eliminate the more dysfunctional nature of the

process, once political and organizational momentum overtakes dialog.

It seems reasonable that future missions of this type will also occur

in environments where acquiring needed resources would become a serious problem for operational implementation. Again the best remedy

will be good planning and integrated planning.

If I had to single out the best prescription for improving early mission

performance I would encourage full support for the UNs Brahimi Report. It very objectively addresses a lesson learned from the most recent

missions, and offers a broad range of important recommendations for

improvement. It also sadly points to a conclusion that we have yet to

effectively process lessons learned.

The importance of designing effective methods for planning in advance becomes even more compelling as regional actors such as the EU

begin expanding their capacities. This will, particularly in Europe, and

particularly with policing, add another layer of complexity to effective

security sector planning efforts.

Managing expectations has been perhaps the single most challenging

arena. We were almost immediately caught in a contradiction my grandfather also warned me about. He often cautioned me to not give up what

I want most for what I want now. Little did he know then the application I would wrestle with in the present context.

What we want most is to create a sustainable democratic institution.

What we want now is to get it done quickly because the political support

and consequently funding window begins to close the day after the mission begins. Time becomes our nemesissustainable democratic institutions require maturity. Maturity requires timethe one thing which

is largely dependent on the next crisis, its magnitude, and/or the fickle

nature of public support. In either case the one thing we rarely can

count on having. This reality leaves us with a compelling need as early

as possible to define what is most important in establishing our mission

objective, how we can achieve, and by when, and to convey this in all

policy and mandate documents. By doing this we define our success and

manage the expectations the best we can

The School, as precedence, has established that OSCE can add police

training, as an institution-building component, to its capacity. Our model

has already been used to provide a rapid start up capacity to the OSCE

Mission in FRY, South Serbia Presovo police training initiative, and to

OSCE Mission now forming in FYROM. OSCE has proven capacity for

engagement in institution and capacity building operations. Police training and development clearly are complimentary institution and capacity building activities that OSCE can now with confidence offer.

Again I thank you for this opportunity to appear on behalf of both

ICITAP and OSCE and would be happy to address questions you may

wish to ask.
35

MATERIAL SUBMITTED BY STEVE BENNETT

DEPARTMENT OF POLICE

EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT (1999 TO 2001)

MANDATE

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in

conjunction with international partners, and under the auspices of the

United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMiK), will recruit, select and train

police officers in order to establish an indigenous police capability within

Kosovo. The principal objective is to establish the Kosovo Police Service

(KPS), which will be organized and function in a manner consistent with

the principles of democratic policing. The OSCE has established the Kosovo Police Service School (KPSS) in order to develop the educational foundation upon which a community-based police service will be built. The

KPSS endeavors to restore trust and confidence in law enforcement through

a training philosophy which is based on the international standards of

human rights.

STRATEGIC APPROACH

The OSCE Department of Police Education and Development (DPED)

has developed a plan to achieve its mandate, and for the past two years

has been actively pursuing a strategy that would result in the development of a professional local police service, This plan has three broad

thematic phases: 1) basic training (both academy and field training), 2)

advanced and specialised training, and 3) ultimately training to facilitate capacity building. All of these phases are necessary to achieve the

goal of developing a professional police service and a training program

that will sustain competence.

HISTORICAL

Critical to the initial and sustainable success of our training effort

was to be the rapid and professional refurbishment of the selected training facility. It was necessary that the Kosovo Police Service School be

capable of functioning as a residential, self-contained institution with a

physical plant capable of operating independently from local power and

water. This, coupled with the timely procurement of equipment, supplies and training aids, and the successful management/assimilation of

a large diverse international and national staff, would ensure that training would be up and running as quickly as possible.

The initial production goal was to train roughly 30003200 KPS officers within a years time. The DPED and UNMiK agreed that every

effort would be made to develop a police service that was reflective of the

ethnic and gender makeup of Kosovo. To this end, a priority was placed

on the recruitment and selection of minorities and women with target

goals of 15% and 20% respectively in the selection process for the basic

recruit courses. It soon became apparent that Kosovo would need more

than 3000/3200 police officers in total. In 2000 this figure was increased

to 4000 to be trained and deployed by mid-year 2001. By mid-year 2001,

this goal has increased to a total of 5700 by the end of 2002.

Against all odds the DPED successfully established the Kosovo Police

Service School and graduated the first generation of the multi-ethnic

Kosovo Police Service on schedule. For the first time in Kosovos history, women were trained and deployed as police officers with executive
36

authority. The DPEDs success in its tenuous endeavor to recruit and

sustain an ethnic minority presence in the first two basic recruit course

in 1999 has proven to have been the watershed for the huge success of

the KPSS as a truly multi-ethnic institution two years later. It was only

through the hands-on community outreach approach adopted by the DPED

that this was achieved. In the first month and a half, the DPED quickly

assembled and organized a considerably large cadre of experienced international instructors, sufficient local staff and legal trainees in order to

begin recruitment preparation and training for the first basic courses. On

September 6, 1999, the KPSS opened its doors to the first Basic Recruit

course consisting of 170 students who successfully graduated in front of the

world on October 16, 1999. Since then, the KPSS has conducted a total of 15

Basic Recruit courses totaling 3846 officers graduated to date. The total training numbers are admittedly impressive, but underlying these numbers

are other equally significant accomplishments. We are also beginning to

see the integration of the KPS into the management of the overall policing

structure. This summer 28 KPS officers have been promoted to the rank

of sergeant, six to the rank of Lt. Colonel and one to the rank of Colonel.

ACHIEVEMENTS

WOMEN AND POLICING

The DPED has been successful in achieving its initial goals to significantly integrate women into the police service. To date, including Course

16, 19% of the officers trained have been female (733) from all representative ethnic groups of Kosovo. This integration has been much more

than a superficial mandate pushed by the international community.

The school has successfully created an environment where all persons

are equal, and all students, regardless of gender or race, are simply

police recruits or officers. The schools efforts have paid huge dividends

and their male peers recognize women as equals. This is evidenced by

the fact that over the last 16 Basic Recruit Courses, numerous women

recruits have been selected by their male peers to lead them as Class

Captains. Further, a woman was among the recent KPS officers promoted by the UN to the rank of Sergeant.

MINORITY INCLUSION

As with the integration of women into the KPS, the DPED has been

successful in creating a training environment where all citizens of Kosovo, regardless of ethnicity, can work and train in a professional

positive environment free from prejudice and racial hatred. Our multiethnic staff of young professionals exemplifies this open-minded thinking in their interaction and professional demeanor, day in and day out.

Our local staff serves as positive role models for each and every incoming basic recruit. To date, 17% of the Basic Recruit graduates have

come from all represented minority communities of Kosovo. The success of the school and its achievements in true integration is evidenced

by the fact Serbs and other Minority students have been elected as Class

Captains in their mixed classes. In some cases this has carried on into

the field, where in certain areas of Kosovo, Albanians and minority

KPS officers are working together on joint patrols.

CAPACITY BUILDING

The Department is committed to, and has been successful in maximizing capacity building that is characterized by activities which lead

to an end state where the Kosovo Police Service and the Kosovo provi-
37

sional self-government will be capable of substantially meeting their own

needs. Under the capacity building theme our plan has included the development of staff for the school, a model legislative approach to identifying and maintaining professional standards, training of trainers and training managers, and training of the leadership within the KPS.

The KPSS has already begun to train KPS officers to become certified

trainers. Twenty-four (24) KPSofficers have completed the Trainer Course

and are now certified police trainers working at the school. The DPED is

also working hard to train its local staff, especially in specific key areas,

so that they can take over critical roles/positions in the near future.

STAFF DEVELOPMENT

The school has consciously and successfully looked for methods to

enhance the professional development of both its International and national staff members. The school has, and will continue to conduct

courses, seminars and team building exercises for all staff members in

order to develop both the individual and the quality of the product the

school offers to its students.

KPSS FACILITY

The OSCE has successfully completed renovation of the KPSS. The

School has the residential capacity to house up to 705 students and includes separate quarters for men and women. It is a self-contained institution with a physical plant capable of operating independently from local

power and water resources. The school also has 28 classrooms, administrative and medical offices, a mess hail, laundry facilities, a warehouse, an

armory, two gyms. and a weight room. It is now equipped with state of

time art training equipment such as a F.A.T.S. machine for simulating

firearms shoot/dont shoot scenarios. The school is most certainly one of,

if not the, premier training facility in the Balkans, police or otherwise.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

Through our Cops-for-Kids (CFK) program in combination with our

community out reach programs, the School Staff has raised 118,834

DM to date. The money is used to help schools and families throughout

Kosovo. For example, the DPED/CFI( Program has funded new playgrounds in the Pristina City Park (14,845 DM), and has purchased

school supplies, computers, and sport equipment for numerous schools

throughout Kosovo (38,353DM).

Since the school opened in September 1999, the DPED has actively

reached out to the local communities to encourage them to visit the

school, Principally we have had the greatest interaction and impact

with the local schools and Kosovo youth programs, Youth groups utilize

the school and its sports facilities nightly.

OUTSIDE AGENCY SUPPORT

The KPSS has successfully supported the training efforts of other

agencies such as Corrections, Fire and Rescue, Customs, Court Security, and the Kosovo Judicial Institute. The school has hosted and assisted numerous NGOs with their program endeavors. One example

was our assistance in hosting/coordinating the LRC-sponsored 2001

Youth Congress.

TRAINING PRODUCTION

Over the last two years the DPED has developed and delivered the

courses listed below. Courses are principally delivered to KPS officers;

however the DPED also delivers training in various subject areas to

members of UN Civpol, UN Corrections, UN Fire and Rescue, UN Border Patrol, KFOR, Kosovo Judicial Institute and both international and

national staff of the DPED.
38

Course Duration

Trained by

September 2001

Projected Trained

by End of 2001

Courses Students

No. of

Courses

No. of

Students

Basic Recruit Course 12 wks 16 4106 17 4406

1st Line Supervisor

Course

2 wks 15 233 17 273

Senior Management 2 wks 2 32 2 32

Criminal Investigation 14 wks 5 97 8 172

Accident Investigation 13 wks 4 73 6 113

Emergency Response

Driving

l wk 39 659 55 870

Re-certification 1 wk 21 1400 30 390

In-service Stage 3

(Basic 1-15)

1 wk 3500+ 3800

In-service Stage 5

(Basic 1-15)

1 wk 3400+ 3800

Field Training

Officers:

 UN Civpol 2000+ 2200

 KPS 2wks 80 80 100

 Border Patrol 80 80 130

Basic Close

Protection

1 wk 1 25 8 200

Certified Trainer 12 wks 1 24 5 124

Instructor

Development I

1 wk 27 550 32 650

Instructor

Development II

2 days 15 324 20 424

Team Building 3 days 12 215 17 315

Non-Verbal

Communication

2 days 9 209 15 329

16998 18328
39

PREPARED STATEMENT OF J. MICHAEL STIERS,

FORMER DEPUTY COMMISSIONER,

 UN INTERNATIONAL POLICE TASK FORCE IN BOSNIA

Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee. It is

my pleasure to be before you this morning to address the issues of the

International Civilian Police and their missions.

I was asked to speak on two topics. First, the effectiveness of Police

Monitoring and the ability of the international community to provide

meaningful training to the local police officers in the mission country.

Second, the question of, how well donor countries provided personnel to

the International Police Task Force (IPTF), and the ability levels of

those police officers provided.

After giving this request much thought, I believe the real questions

being asked here are; Is Police Monitoring the best way to deal with

post-conflict police and crime related issues and is there a better way

for the International Community to deal with these concerns. The short

answers are No, Police Monitoring is not the best way to deal with

police and crime related issues and certainly there must be a more

efficient and effective way for the International Community to address

these areas of concern.

Let me say first of all, that there is a place and time for Police Monitoring in a mission, however, it comes only after a great deal of work

has already taken place with the local police forces. After the war in

Bosnia, we inherited 40,000 police officers who were mostly military

officers and political favorites. It took nearly 4 years to vet this force to

the 18,000+ they have today. Then came the task of converting them

from the old socialistic style of policing to a more modern democratic

style, which is still ongoing today. The training in new investigative

techniques and modern operational tactics must be addressed. The development of police academies for new police recruits must take place.

Specialties type training must be developed. The list goes on and on.

Only after you have a working police force do you have something or

someone to monitor. In Kosovo, and I believe in East Timor, they are

having to build the local police forces from the ground up.

The first task for the IPTF or other missions International Police

forces should be to reestablish law and order. Whether that is by using the existing police force or the International Police Force, that must

be the first goal. Second, we must create a local police force which is

capable of maintaining that law and order using the new modern-world

style of policing. They must be able to stand on their own two feet after

the Internationals pull out. Im sure you are able to see, there is much

for the International Police officers to accomplish before we are able to

truly focus on Police Monitoring. All of these tasks are currently being

tackled by these same police officers. They are asked to first teach,

train, evaluate, mentor and then finally, monitor. Additionally, in Kosovo and East Timor, they are charged with all the official policing

duties. A severe challenge at best.

Yes, the International Community certainly possesses the capability

to provide all the necessary training to the local police forces. How we

go about it is another question. I do not believe there is a one fits all

type of training that will cover all the variety of training needs in the

various missions. Yes, the bulk of the training can and should be done

within the mission country. However, there are certain types of training that may be more efficiently undertaken by having the appropriate
40

group of local police receive their training in another country. The Bosnian State Border Service is a good example of this. Usually, this will

involve specialty types of training. Having the ability to tap international resources for these trainings can prove very beneficial to the mission country.

Now, the question of whether or not the International Community,

including the United States, is doing its best in providing quality police

officers to these missions. I can only speak on what I observed in the

Bosnia Mission. As a former Deputy Commissioner, I can honestly say

that every donor country sent us some excellent police officers. However, I must admit that the percentage of good police officers provided

by a donor country varied widely from country to country. During my

14 months in mission there were times when as many as 10-15 percent

of the International Officers sent to the mission didnt meet the minimum requirements set out by the United Nations. Those requirements

are very basic in nature.

1) You must be, or have been, a qualified police officer with at least

5 years of experience.

2) You must be able to speak, read and write English at a workable

level, and

3) You must be able to drive a stick shift 4-wheel drive vehicle.

At the beginning of my mission time, we were able to repatriate those

who failed to measure up without too much difficulty. However, as the

Kosovo and East Timor Missions grew, repatriation became almost

impossible. Therefore, we were challenged to find something to do with

these unqualified officers. If the screening process were improved worldwide, prior to sending a police officer to a mission, I believe, we could

accomplish much more with much less in a much faster timeframe.

In closing, I do not pretend to understand the complexity of the issues

which face the United Nations and its contributing countries. However, I do know, we must do a better job in providing qualified police

officers to these missions and I do hope that America remains an active

partner in this cause.

Thank you.
41

PREPARED STAEMENT OF ROBERT M. PERITO,

SENIOR FELLOW, JENNINGS RANDOLPH PROGRAM

FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE, USIP

The question of how to reestablish internal security within so called

failed states is one of the most difficult challenges confronting the

United States in the post-Cold War period. History since the fall of the

Berlin Wall has seen the replacement of inter-state conflict by intrastate conflict. The Cold War roll of confrontation statesVietnam,

Afghanistan and Angolhas been replaced by a new list of failed

statesSomalia, Haiti and Yugoslavia. From 1990 to 1997, there were

49 wars involving at least 1,000 battle deaths. Of these, only seven

were between countries, the remaining 42 were internal conflicts.

This change in the nature of international conflict brought a corresponding change in the nature of international peace operations. Historically, wars occurred between nations; battles were fought between

armies. Conflicts ended with agreements that established national boundaries or cease-fire lines that separated the belligerents. Until the end of

Cold War, international peacekeeping forces were deployed along these

lines of separation to ensure that the parties to conflict did not cross.

With the rise of intra-state conflicts, international military intervention has been required to end ethnic, religious and ideological conflicts

so that humanitarian assistance, refugee return, economic reconstruction and political reconciliation could occur. In every case, the international community faced the issue of how to reestablish sustainable security. In nearly every instance, an important part of the answer has

been the deployment of international civilian police forces and the attempt to create indigenous police forces that operate in accordance with

internationally accepted standards of human rights and the rule of law.

The use of international police forces in peace operations is increasingly seen as one of the keys to creating the conditions and institutions

necessary to achieve sustainable security. From the first 173 United

Nations Civilian Police (CIVPOL) involved in the 1964 U.N. Peacekeeping Mission in Cyprus, the number of U.N. CIVPOL authorized by the

Security Council increased to 8,696 personnel in eight peacekeeping

missions in mid-2001. This number includes a one-year, 300 percent

increase in the authorized strength of CIVPOL missions in 1999. The

largest CIVPOL mission is in Kosovo with an authorized strength of

4,719 officers. Other major UNCIVPOL missions are in Bosnia with an

authorized strength of 2,057 and in East Timor with an authorized

strength of 1,640 officers. In addition to the United Nations, regional

organizations in Europe have also fielded international police missions.

On June 1, 2001, a team of 25 police advisors representing the European Union (EU) replaced 120 members of the Western European Unions

(WEU) Multinational Police Advisory Element (MAPE) in Albania. Composed of police from 23 WEU countries, MAPE participated in the Italian-led Multinational Protection Force that entered Albania in April

1997 and remained to provide training and technical assistance for the

Albanian National Police. A small number of police from the WEU also

participated in the EUs administration of Mostar, Bosnia in 1994-96.

WEU police carried sidearms, provided limited police services and conducted training for local police. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) provided the small Police Monitoring Mission in the Danube Region of Croatia that relieved the U.N. Police

Support Group in Eastern Slavonia in October 1998. This mission ter-
42

minated with the withdrawal of OSCE personnel in 200l. The OSCE

sponsored Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission and the follow-on Kosovo Verification Mission in Kosovo included police observers. OSCE is

also responsible for training indigenous police in Kosovo.

MILITARY AND POLICE FORCES

Contemporary peace operations find their historical antecedents in

different types of non-combatant operations conducted by military forces.

In these operations, military forces were required to perform constabulary or police functions related to law enforcement and the maintenance of public security. Military forces normally are not trained or

properly equipped to perform such duties and generally regard them as

distracting from their primary responsibilities. This point was made by

NATOs Commander, General Wesley Clark, at the beginning of the

Kosovo mission, when he urged the rapid deployment of an international police force to help restore public order. According to General

Clark: Experience in peace operations has proven that good soldiers,

no matter how well equipped, trained, organized and led cannot fully

perform police duties among local populations.

The difficulty and even unwillingness of international military forces

to perform police operations results from differences in the nature, structure, training and experience of police and military forces. In democratic countries, the division of responsibility between police and military is clearly defined in domestic law. The purpose of military forces is

to protect the country from the threat of external enemies and to guard

the countrys borders. Military forces normally operate in times of inter-state conflict under international conventions that authorize the

killing of enemy forces and destruction of property. Military forces are

trained to concentrate mass and firepower to overwhelm an enemy.

Military forces are heavily armed and trained to operate as units. They

live separated from the general population on bases where they are kept

in a state of readiness to act in situations of extreme violence.

In contrast to military forces, police are recruited, organized and

trained to preserve public order and protect property within a country

under its national and local laws. Police may be armed, but in many

countries they do not normally carry weapons. Police officers may only

use force that is proportional to what the situation requires. Police are

authorized to use deadly force, but this right is heavily circumscribed

by law and normally is permitted only to save another persons life or

for self-defense. Police operate as individuals. They live in the community and are frequently in direct contact with their fellow citizens.

For service in U.N. peace operations, civilian police are volunteered

by their respective governments as individuals and must pass an examination to demonstrate they have the skills required. Unlike military units that arrive with all their own logistics support and are selfsustaining, police arrive in theater as individuals with only their

uniforms. They do not have autonomous support and must rely upon

the U.N. to provide transport, communications, medical care, rations,

offices and equipment. CIVPOL are designated as experts by the U.N.

and are paid a mission allowance, which means they must find their

own lodgings in the local community. This can be extremely difficult in

areas that suffered massive destruction of housing and infrastructure

during the conflict. Policemen are also responsible for their own safety,

especially when off duty and even in missions where they are not armed.
43

Unlike military forces, police are trained to use the minimum amount

of force required to deal with a situation. Police are trained to respond

to civil disorder along a force continuum utilizing only the levels of

force necessary to restore order. Unlawful civil demonstrations, riots

and the destruction of property are criminal acts. In democratic countries, these activities are not punished by the death penalty. It is important, therefore, that international security forces not apply the death

penalty for these offenses during peace operations.

THE ROLE OF POLICE IN PEACE OPERATIONS

The increased interest in using international police results from their

ability to contribute to public security in the short term, while helping

to build institutions that are critical for long-term stability. There is an

emerging consensus that international police forces offer a cost-effective solution in financial and political terms to the problems of rebuilding post-conflict societies. The increase in the use of international police

forces is evidence of a growing recognition that police are the most appropriate actors to deal with a broad range of tasks that are common to

all peace operations.

With the expansion in the number of U.N. police missions and CIVPOL

officers has come a marked expansion in the duties of international

police forces. At the core of CIVPOLs traditional responsibilities has

been the monitoring of local police and the oversight of public safety and

security. These tasks were summarized in the SMART Concept that

was introduced in A Trainers Guide on Human Rights for CIVPOL

Monitors, a handbook issued in 1995 by the Center for Human Rights

in cooperation with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO)

Training Unit. The acronym describes the core package of responsibilities that are found in all CIVPOL mandates. These include: Supporting human rights; Monitoring the performance of local law enforcement authorities; Advising indigenous police; Reporting on the situation;

and, Training indigenous law enforcement officers.

In the aftermath of intra-state conflict, this core mandate can involve

an impressive array of peacekeeping duties. These have included:

1. insuring the personal security and protecting the human rights

of returning refugees and displaced persons;

2. providing candidate security and encouraging a neutral political

environment during election campaigns;

3. monitoring the cantonment, disarmament and demobilization of

armed combatants;

4. providing liaison between factions, non-governmental organizations and international agencies;

5. assisting relief agencies; and

6. assisting international military forces in the performance of their

duties.

In El Salvador, Somalia, Haiti, Guatemala and Bosnia, the CIVPOL

mandate extended beyond monitoring and mentoring local police during the performance of their duties to focus extensively on police reorganization, reform, training and institution building. In these countries,

it was clear that members of the former military/police forces had engaged in the internal conflict through death squads, ethnic cleansing,
44

torture, illegal detention and intimidation and were neither politically

nor operationally fit to police the peace. Of the 23 peace operations initiated in the 1990s, 17 included efforts to reform and rebuild indigenous

police institutions. Police reform is critical because intra-state conflicts

do not terminate with the signing of a peace agreement and most failed

states experience a spike in domestic violence and crime in the immediate, post-conflict period. Ethnic hatreds also do not subside with the

signing of a formal cease-fire. Once safe from the guns of the combatants, civilians often face new and equally deadly threats from criminals, ex-combatants, vigilantes and members of other ethnic groups

seeking revenge. After nearly all the civil conflicts in the last two decades, civilians have reported feeling less secure, and in El Salvador

and South Africa were at greater risk for death or serious injury after

the formal conflict ended than during it.

Central to the task of national reconstruction is the creation of a

professional, humane civilian police force that operates with respect for

internationally recognized human rights and the rule of law. Such a

force must be composed of diverse ethnic, religious and political groups

that will protect citizens and enforce the law with impartiality. Where

police are repressive or have political, ethnic or religious bias, attempts

to install democratic government or rule of law will be frustrated. Local

police are the most common face of the new government. Where a

single ethnic group dominates the police, other groups will turn to ethnically based mechanisms to provide their security. In many cases,

this involves forming alliances with organized criminal enterprises and

groups that can attempt to form a mafia controlled province or state.

In Bosnia and Kosovo, international authorities and local police have

had extreme difficulty confronting organized mafias that are armed and

have close associations with powerful political personalities and parties.

In most cases, provisions for creating indigenous police are not detailed in the peace agreement and are left to the international civilian

police force to improvise solutions under less than ideal circumstances.

This is particularly true as peace settlements normally do not identify

financial resources for implementing police reform and restructuring,

which is more than simply transferring police skills from the international civilian police to a rookie indigenous force. The most serious

challenges to fledging police services derive from weak judicial institutions and traditions of intimidation and authoritarianism in society.

Police reform must be a component of a comprehensive effort to reform

the entire judicial system that includes prosecutors, courts and prisons. A competent judicial system is necessary to prevent impunity from

prosecution and to insure that justice is an effective alternative to the

renewal of armed conflict.

Development of indigenous civilian police forces requires a multi-year

effort and international police officers who are not only law enforcement

professionals, but experts in building institutions, establishing police

academies, creating police departments and designing systems of law

enforcement service delivery based on democratic principles of community-oriented policing. In this aspect of their work, U.N. Civilian Police

forces have been handicapped by the UNs failure until recently to specifically recruit expert police instructors, police academy directors, police administrators and strategic planners. Short-term assignments and

frequent turnover of personnel have handicapped UNCIVPOLs involvement in institutional development. In addition, institution building re-
45

quires a high level of political will, including the fortitude to withstand

resistance from local parties to the conflict or newly created governments.

In more recent peace operations, UNCIVPOL have moved beyond

monitoring, training and institution building to actually exercising executive authority (full police powers). Assumption of such far-reaching

authority was necessitated by the withdrawal of Yugoslav police from

Kosovo and Indonesian police from East Timor under the terms of the

respective peace agreements. In Kosovo and East Timor, the Security

Council authorized the creation of U.N. transitional administrations

that are empowered to exercise executive and legislative authority, including the administration of justice and law enforcement. UNCIVPOL

in these peace operations are armed and have full police powers to enforce the law, conduct criminal investigations and arrest offenders.

In another departure, CIVPOL forces in Kosovo and East Timor included formed units or Special Police Units (SPU) provided by member states as integrated units complete with transport, communications, weapons and an internal chain of command. These constabulary

or gendarme police units combine police and military capabilities. The

best known of such forces are the Italian Carabinieri, French

Gendarmerie, Spanish Guardia Civil and Dutch Marechaussee. Since

these forces, which exist more commonly in Europe, deploy as units

their members are not required to qualify for CIVPOL service as individuals like other CIVPOL officers. The SPUs in Kosovo and East Timor

have military training, transport and weapons and are similar to the

NATO Multinational Specialized Units of military police that are part

of SFOR in Bosnia and KFOR in Kosovo. The SPU assigned to Kosovo

and East Timor, however, are part of the U.N. Civilian Police mission

and report to the UNCIVPOL Commissioner. They have executive authority to make arrests and conduct criminal investigations. Their rules

of engagement for controlling civil demonstrations are the same as other

UNCIVPOL elements in those operations.

PROBLEMS WITH POLICE IN PEACE OPERATIONS

While the number of international civilian police have markedly increased, international police missions have been plagued by political,

administrative, logistical, manpower and quality control problems that

have yet to be resolved. Of most pressing concern is the UNs inability

to obtain adequate numbers of qualified police personnel. In July 2001,

U.N. member states had made available only 7,697 of the 8,696 police

officers required to fill the positions authorized by the Security Council

for current missions. The U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations recruits for CIVPOL missions on the basis of universality. At

the beginning of a peace operation, letters are sent to the permanent

missions of member states in New York City requesting that governments contribute as many police officers as possible to staff the new

mission.

This method of simply calling for volunteers has resulted in

UNCIVPOL forces of extremely varied quality and heavily weighted

toward participation by non-industrialized countries. With officers from

70 countries, UNCIVPOL missions must contend with a bewildering

mix of social, cultural, normative and religious backgrounds and a broad

range of professional skills and law enforcement subcultures among

their contingents. The fact that police officers come from established
46

democracies, emerging democracies and autocratic states adds to the

difficulties CIVPOL commanders face in organizing a coherent police

force.

In many cases, recruits can not even meet the minimal U.N. standards for serving in a CIVPOL mission, which include: (1) five years

police experience; (2) ability to drive a four-wheel-drive vehicle; and, (3)

ability to speak the official mission language (usually English or French).

In Bosnia, these minimal requirements where so often ignored that the

U.N. DPKO began sending Selection Assistance Teams to donor countries to prescreen potential CIVIPOL officers before their departure.

The first such team saved the U.N. an estimated $527,360.00 based

upon what it would have cost to repatriate officers who would have

failed the tests upon arrival in theater.

In the face of universal increases in rates of domestic and international crime, governments have proven extremely reluctant to release

more than token numbers of police for international service. The prospect of foreign policemen arresting citizens in another, sovereign country also raises political, legal and ethical questions. International police

missions have been slow to deploy. They have also been handicapped by

the U.N. s inability to provide adequate equipment and vehicles in a

timely manner. Unlike military units that travel with their own logistical support, communications and transport, policemen serve as individuals and normally arrive for international duty with only their uniforms. International police missions have been troubled by an inability

of the international community to agree upon clear mandates, rules of

engagement, or even if international police should be armed or unarmed.

In most missions, U.N. CIVPOL have been unarmed because:

(1) police with sidearms would be no match for heavily armed populations;

(2) CIVPOLs role is to create confidence in the rule of law not in the

resort to violence;

(3) many countries have a tradition of unarmed police; and,

(4) the need for police to carry weapons would indicate to donor countries there was an unacceptable level of security risk.

US CIVILIAN POLICE CONTINGENTS

The problems associated with fielding international civilian police

forces have been particularly challenging for the United States. In the

early part of the Twentieth Century, the United States created police

constabularies in the Caribbean and Central America that subsequently

became vehicles for dictatorial rule. In these operations and subsequent

assistance programs, little distinction was made between military and

civilian security functions. Police forces became instruments of regime

power that were directed against internal opponents rather than domestic crime or external threats. In 1974, Congress adopted Section

660 of the Foreign Assistance Act banning US assistance to foreign

police forces. This action followed disclosures that graduates from the

USAID Office of Public Securitys police training programs had engaged

in torture and human rights abuse. Today, the US is the only country

where assistance to foreign police forces is illegal. All US international

police assistance programs are conducted under waivers or specific exemptions from the 1974 law.
47

In the past 26 years, the United States has gone from legally banning

assistance to foreign police forces to becoming the worlds largest contributor of manpower, money and material to international police missions in peace operations. At present, over 835 American police officers

are serving in three U.N. civilian police missions: Kosovo (605), Bosnia

(150), and East Timor (80). Previously, a contingent of 23 American

UNCIVPOL was withdrawn from Haiti in August 2000. From January

1996 to January 1998, the US contributed 25 of the 400-member

UNCIVPOL mission that served under the U.N. Transitional Administration in Eastern Slavonia. After the area reverted to Croatian control

in January 1998, 25 US civilian police remained as part of the subsequent U.N. Police Support Group (UNPSG) and the follow-on OSCE

police mission that replaced the UNPSG in October 1998. In Fiscal

Year 2000, the US spent $75 million to support its CIVPOL contingents

and an additional $20 million to train indigenous police and support

judicial and penal reform in countries where United States Civilian

Police (US CIVPOL) contingents were present.

The growth in the number of US police serving in peace operations

has been both extremely rapid and on an ad hoc basis. The US CIVPOL

program has no statutory authority and is funded by annual appropriations. The United States has no national police force similar to the Royal

Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), which provides Canadian police officers for service in U.N. CIVPOL missions. Instead the United States

has nearly 18,000 independent state, county and municipal police forces.

There are also 14 highly specialized federal law enforcement agencies

such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement

Agency, the United States Secret Service and the US Marshals Service

that deal with specific types of crimes. No federal law enforcement agency

(including the Justice Department) has legislative authority to recruit

US law enforcement officers for service in United Nations or other international police missions.

Presidential Decision Directive71 on Strengthening Criminal Justice Systems in Support of Peace Operations, which was issued by the

Clinton Administration, directed the Administration to improve the

quality of US CIVPOL contingents and the ability of the United Nations to conduct international police missions. Responsibility for fielding US contingents was assigned to the State Departments Bureau of

International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. The State Department, in turn, contracts out responsibility for the recruiting, training, and logistical support of US CIVPOL contingents to the DynCorp

Corporation, a commercial, government-services firm based in San

Antonio, Texas. Police officers participating in US CIVPOL contingents

legally are independent, sub-contractors who receive a fee for service.

This arrangement allows the federal government to avoid a myriad of

political, administrative, financial and liability issues that would arise

from temporarily placing state and local police in federal service. The

United States is the only country to use contractors of a commercial

firm as police officers for CIVPOL contingents. It is also the only country to provide logistics support to its police officers in the field. For all

other countries, police participating in CIVPOL missions are in national service and the U.N. provides administrative support.

As vacancy rates in US police departments are high, police chiefs and

government officials are reluctant to let qualified police officers take a

one-year leave of absence to serve in a U.N. mission. Active duty offic-
48

ers have had to resign and it has been difficult for them to find appropriate domestic assignments after returning from abroad. The majority

of US CIVPOL recruited by DynCorp are retired officers, although the

number of active duty officers is increasing. US police officers are drawn

from state and local law enforcement agencies of widely varied size and

character. They also come from unique regional, law-enforcement subcultures around the country. The result of using retirees from a broad

range of police backgrounds is that US CIVPOL contingents are experienced, but of highly mixed quality. Utilizing a commercial contractor

also limits the oversight the US government can exercise over the conduct of US personnel in the field.

Although the record of US contingents is significantly better than

most others, DynCorp has hired some American officers who were less

than fit for strenuous duty. One elderly former state trooper arrived in

Bosnia wearing a pacemaker. There have also been incidents of American officers returned to the United States for various types of misconduct. The most senior US CIVPOL officer in Bosnia was forced to resign

amid allegations he accepted financial favors from local officials. Rectification of this situation would require new legislative authority which

would assign responsibility to a US federal law enforcement agency.

This agency would be empowered to recruit both active duty and retired

officers, swear them into federal service, and provide for their pay, insurance, transportation, equipment and logistical support. This would

place US CIVPOL contingents on a par with those of other nations. It

would also give the federal government the control it currently lacks

over American CIVPOL officers that now wear US uniforms, carry

weapons provided by the US government, have authority to use deadly

force, but report to a commercial contractor.

EUROPEAN RESPONSE

While the US has expanded its role in international policing, European regional organizations such as the EU and the OSCE are also

creating the capacity to assist post-conflict societies to reestablish public security and the rule of law. With peacekeeping operations in the

Balkans occurring on their doorstep, Western European nations are

already organizing the forces necessary to more quickly close the security gap in future Bosnias and Kosovos. The Council of the European

Union has announce that one of the headline goals of its European

Security and Defense Police is to develop a force of 5,000 civilian police

(including constabulary units) by 2003 that would be available on short

notice for peacekeeping duties. The EU police force will have a rapid

reaction capability to deploy 1,000 police (including gendarme units)

within 30 days. Currently there are 3,600 police officers from EU countries serving in peacekeeping roles, including gendarme units serving

with SFOR in Bosnia and KFOR in Kosovo. The EU is currently engaged in developing common doctrine, conducting joint training exercises and up grading the number and status of police advisors and strategic planners in the EU Council secretariat and Crisis Management

Unit. The EU is also creating a ready roster of legal and judicial experts that would be able to assist with reestablishing the other parts of

the justice triad of police, courts and prisons.

At its Heads of State or Government Summit in Istanbul in November 1999, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

announced its intention to create the capacity to field Rapid Expert
49

Assistance and Cooperation Teams (REACT), which would include international civilian police. The Summit also mandated establishing an

Operations Center at OSCE headquarters in Vienna to identify potential crisis areas and to plan and coordinate assistance programs. The

REACT concept called for the creation of national ready rosters by

OSCE member states that would enable the OSCE Crisis Management

Center to deploy civilian and police experts to assist with pre-crisis

management and post-conflict reconstruction in failed states. The plan

called for identification of 500 civilian police, as well as human rights,

judicial, elections, information technology and administration and logistics experts that would be available to engage in the monitoring and

training of indigenous police and other local officials in peace operations

and other humanitarian emergencies. The OSCE is in the process of

creating the capacity to implement this concept.

A DIVISION OF LABOR:

THE U.N. VS. REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS.

The division of labor between the United Nations and European regional organizations in international police operations was reviewed at

a conference hosted by the Stockholm International Peace Research

Institute (SIPRI) on May 4-5, 2001. Participants included the Head of

the U.N. CIVPOL Division and police officials from the OSCE, the EU

and the Western European Union. The Conference concluded that the

United Nations global authority and extensive experience make it the

undisputed leader in international police missions. Those attending the

Conference agreed that OSCE and EU involvement in peace operations

is best accomplished under a U.N. mandate and in support of objectives

established by the U.N. Security Council. In previous peace operations,

regional organizations such as the OSCE have worked with the United

Nations under one of the following four models:

1. Regional succession: Where the regional organization has taken

over from the U.N. in areas that require long-term international

police presence, as the OSCE did in Eastern Slavonia.

2. Joint Policing: Where the regional organization cooperated with

the U.N. in conducting a joint mission, as the Organization of

American States did in Haiti.

3. Division of Labor: Where the U.N. and regional organizations

divide law and order responsibilities, as in Kosovo where the U.N.

is responsible for international police and the OSCE is responsible for indigenous police training.

4. U.N.-sanctioned policing: Where the U.N. authorized the regional

organization to act alone, as in the Western European Unions

police mission in Albania.

The Conference noted that European regional organizations such as

the OSCE have certain advantages that make them effective partners

with the U.N. in international police operations. The OSCE, for example, is largely composed of prosperous, like-minded, democratic nations with personnel and material resources exceeding those of most

U.N. member states. Regional organizations have certain geographic

and cultural advantages and may enjoy greater legitimacy with local

citizens. Interest in regional stability is also likely to result in neigh-
50

boring states making a greater political commitment and staying longer.

Participation by the EU and OSCE in international peace operations

can begin the process of preparing indigenous police for membership in

European regional law-enforcement organizations such as EUROPOL.

Given these advantages, the Conference concluded that European regional organizations could assist the U.N. with police operations in the

following areas:

In training international police for participation in CIVPOL missions,

reducing the chronic problem of inadequately trained personnel. Many

European nations, particularly those in Scandinavia, routinely provide

training for their police officers and those of other countries to prepare

them for serving in peace operations. These programs could be expanded

to increase the number of qualified policemen available for U.N. approved police missions.

In rapidly deploying police to reduce the delays that have plagued

previous U.N. operations. Geographic proximity and the new rapid reaction programs of the EU and OSCE should give European regional

organizations an advantage in quickly deploying police in future police

missions. Knowledge of the area, language, culture and previous contacts should also work to the advantage of the EU and OSCE in deploying police to assist in regional emergencies.

By providing police with special skills, particularly in the areas of

organized crime and civil disorder management. Given the professional

competence of police forces in Europe, the OSCE and the EU are positioned to provide specialists for future international police missions. In

situations like Kosovo where the U.N. Police are providing full police

services there is a need for experts in traffic control, criminal investigation, forensics, organized crime, VIP protection and other police specialties as well as routine patrol. Regional organizations are a likely source

of such expertise as well as linguistic skills and experience in regional

liaison.

Beyond assisting in international police operations, European regional

organizations can play an important role in the training and development of indigenous police forces. In Kosovo, the OSCE with US leadership and participation from over 20 other member nations, has created

a police training facility, the Kosovo Police Service School (KPSS), which

meets international standards. The US Department of Justices International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP)

provided the schools director, basic curriculum and a quarter of its

teaching staff. The OSCE provided political and financial support, while

other members provided faculty and material assistance. From a standing start in July 1999, the KPSS met its commitment to train 4,000

Kosovo Police Service Officers this summer. The KPSS also trained

U.N. Police who initially served as Field Training Officers for KPSS

graduates. The success of this program demonstrates the advantages of

burden sharing with the U.N. and the constructive role that regional

organizations such as the OSCE can play in future international police

missions.
51

LETTER OF AUGUST 27, 2001, TO

SEN. BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL

FROM GEN. JOSEPH W. RALSTON,

UNITED STATES EUROPEAN COMMAND,

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

Commander In Chief

United States European Command

27 August 2001

The Honorable Ben Nighthorse Campbell

U.S. Senate

Washington, DC

Dear Senator Campbell,

I greatly appreciate the Helsinki Commissions continued interest in

the international civilian policing and law enforcement training efforts

on going in the Balkans. The situations in Bosnia and Kosovo remain

largely unchanged since we last spoke during your visit to the Normandy

American Cemetery in early July. As I mentioned then, we have made

significant progress in reducing American troop levels in Bosnia. I do

not believe, however, that we will be able to make further force reductions, or reach the point where we can return Bosnia to a point of selfgovernance, without making some fundamental changes to the political

structures currently in place there.

As we discussed in Normandy, any exit strategy for the international

military forces located in both Bosnia and Kosovo must begin with reestablishing the rule of law and creating the civil institutions necessary

to make and uphold the rule of law. In Kosovo, thanks to the recognized

leadership of a single entity, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo

(UNMiK), we have made measurable progress in this area in a relatively short period of time. This progress has been made in spite of the

fact that we do not have a political framework in Kosovo as we do in

Bosnia. The U.N. has published more than 100 regulations with the

force of law. They have also appointed more than 400 local judges and

prosecutors, with five district courts and some lower courts, in operation. Additionally, ten international judges and five international prosecutors have been appointed to the district courts, and an international

judge now sits on the Supreme Court.

Another success story in Kosovo is the UNMiK police operation.

UNMiKs 4,358-man-strong police contract force, complemented by 3,846

new officers trained in the OSCEs Kosovo Police Service School (KPSS),

is the only law enforcement unit recognized in Kosovo. As one of the

pillars of the UNMiK strategy in the province, the OSCE is working to

produce enough trained, indigenous, multi-ethnic officers to eventually

replace the U.N. contract force that currently maintains law and order.

I know you have visited this school, and hope that you will encourage

other Members to do so as well. The KPSS graduated its first class on

12 May, essentially achieving its mandated goal of placing 4,000 new

officers on the beat since opening its doors in September 1999. In an

effort to further the transition of all policing duties to the Kosovo Police

Service (KPS), the U.N. has asked the OSCE to extend the KPSS mandate to include training a total of 5,700 officers by December 2002.

In addition to entry-level police training, the UNMiK-OSCE efforts

recently progressed to cultivating indigenous police leadership. On 29

June, UNMiK promoted 28 KPS officers to the rank of Sergeant and
52

one to colonel Two months later, UNMiK advanced another six KPS

officers to Lieutenant Colonel. These officers will be assigned as Special

Advisors to the UNMiK Regional Commanders. Further, the KPSS has

begun to train and certify KPS officers as Field Training Officers and

certified trainers so that they may eventually manage and conduct all

training for the KPS. These UNMiK-OSCE efforts constitute the tangible, first steps toward transferring the internal security of Kosovo

back to civilian authority where it belongs. I was heartened to learn

that the OSCE Permanent Council, due largely to the efforts of the

American delegation, approved funding for additional police training in

both Kosovo and Southern Serbia.

While the Dayton Accords provide a political framework in Bosnia,

the situation there is complicated by an ethnic reality that has three

highly dispersed and intermingled groups with few agenda items in

common. As a result, the indigenous police forces in Bosnia have, in

many ways, remained separate and ineffective fiefdoms. This stands in

stark contrast to the cooperative UNMiK and OSCE law enforcement

effort in Kosovo. Despite the presence of over 2,000 U.N. International

Police Task Force (IPTF) monitors in Bosnia, the existing police and

state border services there continue to be ineffective against organized

crime. Indeed, organized crime, local government and, hence, the local

police, are, in many ways, mutually supporting. There is no effective

means in place to recruit new officers and imbue them with a respect

for the rule of law. As a result, organized crime in Bosnia continues to

threaten its political and economic future.

We should avoid deluding ourselvesthe effort in Kosovo is still in its

infancy. Organized crime exists in Kosovo as well as Bosnia, but

UNMiKs and the OSCEs development of a professional law enforcement capability and cultivation of respect for the rule of law are logical,

initial steps toward addressing this problem. In Bosnia, we cannot begin to take these first steps toward providing a viable alternative to the

presence of international military forces without political change,

In short, Senator Campbell, I strongly believe that we need to reexamine the law enforcement structures currently in place in Bosnia. We

need to reorganize to facilitate reestablishing the rule of law there. The

cooperative UNMiK arid OSCE effort in Kosovo should serve as a model

in this effort. The costs associated with training and fielding police officers from the indigenous populace is miniscule when compared to the

costs of maintaining the international military presence currently deployed to the Balkans. If Bosnia is ever to stand on its own, we must set

the conditions for economic success. This success is dependent upon

capital investment (both fiscal and human), and capital investment will

not occur in an area threatened by crime and corruption and characterized by a vacuum in the rule of law.

I hope you find this perspective useful as you continue your efforts

both in the OSCE and on Capitol Hill. Should the USEUCOM staff or I

be of any further service to you, please do not hesitate to call.

Sincerely,

JOSEPH W. RALSTON

General, USAF
53

MATERIAL SUBMITTED BY POBERT M.PERITO

AMERICAN CIVILIAN POLICE IN UN PEACE OPERATIONS:

LESSONS LEARNED AND IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE

A SPECIAL REPORT OF

THE UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE

 6 JULY 2001

 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 longterm 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-thousandperson 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 post-conflict 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.
54

 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
55

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.

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 con-
56

cept. 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.

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 appropri-
57

ate 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 com-
58

mand 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.
59

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
60

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.

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.
61

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
62

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.

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 twothousand-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.
63

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, crosscultural programs, and the technical roles of police in peace operations.
64

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.

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.
65

 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.

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 BosniaHerzegovina

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
66

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

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.
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