Bundesheer

Vorwort
Peace operations, from their beginning in the nineteenth century and increasingly since the end of the Cold War, have included varying degrees of "police activities," ranging from supervising indigenous police agencies to actually performing law enforcement duties. Until recently, this aspect of peace operations has often been overlooked or under-appreciated in favour of the military, humanitarian, and political components of such missions. The following paper gives an overview of peace operations which involved police functions — known as "civilian police," or CIVPOL, in U.N. language.

I became involved in the study of police in peace operations while I was a Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1995-96. A first conference on this subject was organised at the USIP in May 1996, followed by a series of conferences and workshops convened by Ambassador Robert B. Oakley and Colonel Michael J. Dziedzic at the National Defense University in Washington D.C. in 1996-97. This resulted in their recent volume Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security, perhaps the most comprehensive contribution to our knowledge of police aspects in peace operations.

The following paper is a summary of peace operations including police aspects, both by the United Nations and outside the U.N. framework. The information is based on a variety of sources, and is accurate as of July 1998. Two new missions have not been included: in April 1998, a U.N. operation was established for the Central African Republic (MINURCA, Mission des Nations Unies en République Central-Africaine) which includes 17 police officers. Just weeks later, two police officers were attached to the U.N. observer mission in Tajikistan (UNMOT). At the time of writing it appears too early to try and draw any lessons from these recent developments.

For their help and assistance in the preparation of this study, I would like to thank Ambassador Oakley, Colonel Dziedzic, and Eliot Goldberg, at the NDU’s Institute for National Strategic Studies, as well as the participants in the conferences mentioned above. Dr. Joe Klaits and my friends at the USIP provided additional ideas, as did Brigadier Roland Ertl of the Austrian Permanent Mission to the U.N., Col. Larry M. Forster of the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute, Captain Gerald Hesztera of the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, Dr. Laura L. Miller, Professor Michael F. Noone, Alex Morrison and Dale Anderson of the Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Lt.Col. Michael A. Rauer, and Dr. Donna Winslow. Special thanks go to the practitioners: Superintendent Karl-Georg Anderson, Colonel Harry Broer, Jarat Chopra, Ambassador Kai Eide, Michael Emery, Superintendent Peter Fitzgerald, Fabrizio Hochschild, Björn Johannson, Superintendent Jules Lalancette, Susan Collin Marks, Captain Andreas Pichler, Chief Superintendent J. O’Neil G. Pouliot, Col. Steven R. Rader, Superintendent Om Prakash Rathor, Gen. Indar Jit Rikhye, Dr. William Rosenau, Ivan Sturm, Lynn Thomas, and Cedric Thornberry, for sharing their experiences and knowledge. Dr. Marilla Guptil and her colleagues at the U.N. Archives as well as Joyce Rosenblum of the U.N. Photo Section in New York were helpful as always. Without their continuous help and assistance, completion of this study would not have been possible.

At the Institute here, I would like to thank DDr. Erich Reiter for his consent to publish this paper, and Theresia Kainz, Franz Stierschneider, Warrant Officer Johann Jakob, and Corporal Peter Lutz for their technical assistance.

Vienna, August 1998

Erwin A. Schmidl
Senior Researcher,
Austrian Ministry of Defence:
Bureau for Military Scientific Studies