Assessing the Results of Gendarmerie Type Forces in Peace and Stability Operations

In the February and April 2020 issues of Militaire Spectator, the topic of stability policing comes strongly to light. In ‘NATO Should Promptly Implement Stability Policing: Why and How,’ one of the authors describes NATO’s stability policing role in attenuating the public security deployment gap and bolstering spoiler management in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, concluding by recommending how obstacles to adoption of the stability policing concept by NATO can be resolved.[1] In an incisive reply by Hans Hovens in the journal’s April edition, a salient void in the literature on stability policing is exposed: ‘…military police, other military forces, and more recently civilian police, and thus operationally they are ‘an open club.’[3] Indeed, this demonstrates their unique, hybrid character enabling them to operate effectively in both a civilian police and military context.  

Danilo Ciampini and Michael Dziedzic*

The first requirement in addressing the void in the literature regarding evidence of results from use of GTFs to support peace and stability operations is to define two key concepts: Gendarmerie Type Forces and how impact can be measured in these operations. Gendarmerie Type Forces are police forces with military status such as the French Gendarmerie, Italian Carabinieri, Portuguese Guarda National Republicana, Romanian Jandarmeria, Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, and Spanish Guardia Civil.[4] They are defined by NATO Allied Joint Publication 3-22 as follows:

Gendarmerie type forces possess full police jurisdiction in their nations, and as such, they possess all the skills required to cover the full spectrum of police tasks in mission areas according to the assigned mandate. This enables their employment within both military and civilian missions, thus granting the flexibility to address and perform policing functions in the mission area, throughout all phases, specifically during the transition phase from a NATO mission to a non-NATO mission.[5]

Hans Hovens provides a valuable refinement to this definition: '…gendarmeries can differ. In fact, gendarmeries seem to differ from each other more than they correspond to each other…What the various gendarmerie forces have in common, however, is the hybrid character in which military status and organizational characteristics go hand in hand with the performance of one or more civilian police tasks…'[6]

Since the late 1990s they have been employed in peace and stability operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, and Mali. These two decades of experience contributed the operational basis for the proposed NATO concept of Stability Policing (SP).[7]

Stephen Stedman, the originator of the spoiler concept,[8] defines success in an international intervention in support of a peace process in Ending Civil Wars with his co-editor George Downs: '…we choose to operationalize mission success by scoring two variables:…whether large-scale violence is brought to an end while the implementers are present; and whether the war is terminated on a self-enforcing basis so that the implementers can go home without fear of the war rekindling.'[9]

If large-scale violence is brought to an end but the international mission has been unable to depart, the outcome is graded as a partial success.

This analysis should be placed in the context of the UN’s overall record in preventing the recurrence of conflict. In 2005 when he was UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan provided this metric: ‘Currently, half the countries emerging from violent conflict revert to conflict within five years.’[10] Since 2005, large scale violence has plagued UN missions in the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and South Sudan, so the average success rate for missions dealing with internal as opposed to inter-state conflict remains about the same, that is to say, no better than 50%.

Uruguayan peacekeepers on patrol in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: since 1995, large scale violence has plagued UN missions. Photo UN, Sylvain Liechti

A second measure of impact is whether GTFs have been able to close the ‘public security deployment gap’ which is defined in Policing the New World Disorder as follows:

The local public security force commonly lacks either the capacity or motivation to cope responsibly with civil disorder. Consequently, the international military contingent will likely be faced with a need to perform certain police functions, at least until UNCIVPOL personnel [UN Police] arrive and are able to operate effectively. The lag time between the arrival of the two forces creates a deployment gap. [Brackets added][11]

Bearing in mind that most missions involving GTFs have not been able to terminate their operations successfully, we propose the following measures of results:

• Did GTFs prevent a deployment gap from occurring or close an existing gap?
• Did GTFs contribute to ending large-scale violence or preventing its recurrence?

Using these definitions of impact, we assess below the outcomes of the employment of GTFs in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and East Timor.

Bosnia

Filling the Deployment Gap

Nothing in the Dayton Accords anticipated the spoiler menace from Bosnia’s parallel power structures or their use of orchestrated civil disturbances called ‘rent-a-mobs’[12] to obstruct peace implementation.[13] Bosnia’s parallel power structures were, and continue to be, comprised of both formal structures of power and informal networks that exploit revenue from criminal activities (corruption and/or organized crime) to obtain and maintain power. They are bound together by opaque exchanges involving political and economic resources and benefits. They exist in each of Bosnia’s ethno-nationalist communities (Bosniak, Croatian, and Serbian).[14]

The mandate for NATO’s Implementation Force (IFOR) (Annex 1A of the Dayton Accords) was focused exclusively on Bosnia’s formal military forces.[15] The UN’s International Police Task Force (IPTF) was unarmed. When confronted by a rent-a-mob, IFOR troops had two options: use lethal force and risk loss of life and an international incident or stand by and witness the mayhem. This vulnerability was repeatedly exploited by the Republika Srpska (RS) to prevent refugee returns. One of the more egregious examples took place in the fall of 1996 when Moslems sought to return to their homes at Mahala in the Zone of Separation between the RS and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As Andrew Bair and Michael Dziedzic describe in Policing the New World Disorder, ‘RS authorities nearby in Zvornik responded by surrounding the local IPTF station with a surly crowd of demonstrators and effectively holding IPTF personnel hostage for 6 hours until the situation could be defused.’[16]

In August 1998 NATO deployed a Multinational Specialized Unit (MSU) with 226 personnel (203 GTFs from Argentina and Italy and 23 MPs from Romania) to the Stabilization Force (SFOR) that had replaced IFOR.[17] This innovation was intended to provide the means to correct the incapacitating debility in IFOR’s force posture created by the lack of a crowd and riot control capability.[18] Thus, from the very inception of what has now come to be called stability policing, participation has been ‘an open club’ including military police and other military forces and more recently civilian police personnel, as well as GTFs.

The efficacy of the MSU and the tactics it employed[19] were evaluated in 2000 by the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute: 'As  of  October  1999  the  MSU  in  Bosnia  had  conducted  263 ‘interventions,’ all but two of which were resolved peacefully. One of the cases when force  had  to  be  used  was the  WESTAR  operation [Described below] against  a  flagrant  violation  of  Annex 1A  in Mostar. This  use  of  the  MSU  makes  an  even  more  compelling  point:  their presence in theater has effectively neutralized SFOR’s vulnerability to civil disturbances when acting to enforce Dayton.' [Brackets added][20]

The Peacekeeping Institute report attributed this remarkably successful record to ‘the professionalism,  operational  expertise,  and  leadership  of  the  Italian Carabinieri,  who comprise  the  vast  majority  of  this  force’ and to ‘the doctrine they have developed.’ The report concludes, ‘Thus the MSU was able to resolve 261 of 263  ‘interventions’  without  the  use  of  force  through  a  combination  of  deterrence, dissuasion,  and  negotiation.’[21]

In Bosnia, a Multinational Specialized Unit was eventually deployed to correct the lack of a crowd and riot control capacity within IFOR’S force posture. Photo Forsvaret, Torgeir Haugaard

Preventing a Return to Conflict

A second success resulted from the employment of the MSU in support of law enforcement activities that were an essential component of the neutralization of the existential threat posed by the Third Entity Movement to the Dayton Accords. The essence of this threat is described by one of the authors in the December 2020 issue of Militaire Spectator:

The aim of the Movement was to create a Bosnian Croat entity (Herzeg­Bosna) co­equal with the Republika Srpska and the Bosniak­Croat Federation. This would have been a potentially irreversible step toward dissolving the Bosniak­Croat Federation, a cornerstone of Dayton, and unification with Croatia, rendering the Bosniak rump state unviable. The result would undoubtedly have been a return to conflict.[22]

Bosnia and Herzegovina. Source: United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations/Carthographic Section

The Third Entity Movement was the aspiration of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. During the early 1990s he conspired with Slobodan Milosevic to divide Bosnia between Serbia and Croatia, and he continued to pursue this ambition until his death in 1999. The components of Tudjman’s parallel or criminalized power structure included a clandestine nexus between the Croatian Intelligence Service and its counterpart in Herzeg-Bosna, a stay-behind unit of the Croatian Army that was converted into the Monitor M Company, the Convict Battalion that had perpetrated notorious acts of ethnic cleansing during the conflict, and the Renner Transportation Company that was a cover for arms trafficking and other transnational crime and the source of violent confrontations with Moslem returnees. The primary source of illicit revenue stemmed from Tudjman’s diversion of proceeds from the sale of Croatian state assets into the Hercegovacka Bank in Mostar that had been established by the Monitor M Company. From 1998 to 2000, 180 million dollars a year was channeled into the bank.[23] This huge slush fund was used in 1998 to elect Tudjman crony and Director of the Monitor M Company, Ante Jelavc, as the Bosnian Croat member of the state-level tri-presidency.[24]  

More than a dozen operations were conducted by SFOR, the MSU, and trusted members of Bosnia’s security forces against the Third Entity Movement. The most decisive was Operation Westar in October 1999 which raided a Bosnian Croat police station in west Mostar that had served as cover for espionage activities conducted by the intelligence services of Croatia and Herceg-Bosna against the international community. Their targets included SFOR, the Office of the High Representative, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the International Police Task Force.[25]  Essential to the success of this operation were the surveillance and crowd and riot control capabilities provided by the MSU.  The results are described in the December 2020 issue of Militaire Spectator:

Operation Westar led to the discovery of the Achilles heel of this parallel power structure: the Herzegovacka Bank and the flow of illicit revenues from Croatia. With support from SFOR’s MSU and the Federation Ministry of Interior and Financial Police, the High Representative mounted an operation to take control of the bank, seizing sufficient evidence to mount twenty criminal investigations against key components of this parallel power structure.[26]

According to Cornelius Friesendorf, Head of the Centre for OSCE Research and a specialist in security sector reform, the MSU performed a number of other roles that were vital for dealing with the spoiler threat from Bosnia’s parallel power structures: 'SFOR thus increasingly drew on the MSU…Some information gathering operations were covert, with MSU personnel wearing plain cloths (the only other element allowed to do this were US Special Forces). The MSU also protected witnesses and provided armed escorts for prisoners. Furthermore, the MSU began to train Bosnian police in raiding crime sites.'[27]

Subsequently, the MSU transitioned from NATO to the European Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUFOR) where it continued to be comprised of GTFs and MPs. According to Friesendorf, the unit: '…supported stability by arresting suspected criminals…helped EUFOR to put pressure on war criminals indicted by the ICTY who were still at large…enabled Bosnian police to arrest lower level suspected war criminals wanted by Bosnian court…Bosnian police trained by the Carabinieri also arrested human traffickers.'[28]

Based on the evidence available in the scholarly literature cited above, it is possible to affirm that the MSU successfully closed the deployment gap by 2000. According to the Peacekeeping Institute, ‘the MSU was able to resolve 261 of 263  ‘interventions’  without  the  use  of  force  through  a  combination  of  deterrence, dissuasion,  and  negotiation.’[29] As Friesendorf concludes, a plausible case can be made that the MSU ‘prevented disturbances from escalating into riots, and riots from escalating into large scale violence.’[30]

The MSU also played an essential role in dismantling the threat from the Third Entity Movement, thereby preventing a resumption of violent conflict. It accomplished this by providing critically important unit-based policing capabilities for surveillance and crowd and riot control to defeat the Third Entity Movement by mounting operations that exposed and then seized its center of gravity--the illicit revenue deposited in the Hercegovacka Bank. This thwarted efforts to unify Herceg Bosna with Croatia, a step that would inevitably have led to the return to conflict.

Bosnian Croatian nationalists in Grude clashed with SFOR troops during a protest against the seizure of Hercegovacka Bank. Photo EPA/ANP

Kosovo

Filling the Deployment Gap

The United Nations Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) was authorized in June 1999.[31] In July an Italian Carabinieri-led Multinational Specialized Unit with 269 personnel–including French Gendarmes and MPs from Austria and Estonia–along with a separate French detachment of 125 Gendarmes were deployed as components of the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR).[32] The UN did not deploy its first equivalent capability until five months later when a single Special Police Unit (now called Formed Police Units) was fielded with approximately 125 personnel. As a result of the immediate deployment of the MSU and French Gendarme company, the UNMIK/KFOR mission was equipped to combat the rent-a-mob threat that the so-called Bridge Watchers posed in the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica during the precarious early months of the mission. Although UNMIK and KFOR were persistently challenged by disturbances in Mitrovica, the mission did not suffer a deployment gap owing to the MSU’s rapid deployment and their competence at controlling crowds with minimal use of force.[33]

Ending large-scale violence or preventing its recurrence

The spoiler threats in Kosovo are summarized in Criminalized Power Structures: The Overlooked Enemies of Peace: Initially, Kosovo’s ‘peace process’ was little more than the continuation of warfare by other means, with politically motivated violence continuing to play a dominant role along two dimensions of conflict: one was the overt conflict between Kosovo’s Albanian and Serb communities. The other was a far less visible conflict within the Kosovo Albanian population waged by the KLA against supporters of Ibrahim Rugova.[34] 

As described in Militaire Spectator, ‘UNMIK did not mount a concerted strategy to dismantle spoiler networks until 2002 after Special Representative of the Secretary General Michael Steiner announced ‘now we have the instruments, …in 1999 we didn’t have the means.’[35] The key missing components were an intelligence-led policing capability, international judges and prosecutors with the authority to bring convictions against guilty parties, and secure jails. Once the ‘intelligence-to-incarceration continuum’ was in place, UNMIK and KFOR implemented a strategy aimed at defeating militant extremists in both the former KLA and Serb paramilitary groups.[36] KFOR’s MSUs and UNMIK’s SPUs were used for ‘…a range of operations, including ‘cordon and search’ to seize arms and illegal materials, targeted arrests, confiscation of illicit financial resources, interdiction of trafficking routes, disruption of training bases, and dislocation of communications.’[37] In 2002 alone, over 60 former KLA militants suspected of involvement in a range of violent crimes were arrested.[38] These arrests ‘…provoked the sort of orchestrated civil disturbances encountered previously in Bosnia, including violent assaults on UNMIK police. KFOR’s Multinational Specialized Units and UNMIK’s Special Police Units (SPUs) helped to contain these disturbances and deescalate confrontations.’[39]

The casus belli, Kosovo’s status (i.e., whether it should be independent from or subordinate to Serbia), has now been de facto resolved by Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in February 2008. This was subsequently accepted as consistent with international law by the International Court of Justice in October 2008. Although KFOR’s MSU remains essential to combat transnational criminal activity in Northern Kosovo and inhibit civil disturbances, more than two decades after the introduction of the mission ‘…the specter of renewed conflict between the two countries has effectively been extinguished because the alternative of accession to the European Union is more attractive to both parties.’[40]

The impact of the GTF-led MSU can be encapsulated as follows: By deploying one month after the UN Security Council approved the UNMIK mandate, KFOR’s GTFs (the MSU and the associated French Gendarme company) completely averted a deployment gap. By providing a critical component for intelligence-led operations to bring spoilers to justice and effectively mitigating any consequences, GTFs played a quintessential role in completing the intelligence-to-incarceration continuum transforming a peace process that was initially a ‘continuation of warfare by other means’[41] to one where ‘the specter of renewed conflict between the two countries has effectively been extinguished.’[42]

Iraq

Filling the Deployment Gap

As described in Militaire Spectator, the regime of Nouri al Maliki was a criminalized power structure whose venality created a near-fatal threat to US and NATO efforts in Iraq: ‘…Maliki’s pervasive patronage network hollowed out the combat capability of the Iraqi Army so much that it collapsed in the face of an offensive by the Islamic State in June 2014.’[43] As a result of this debacle, ISIS gained control of the Sunni Triangle and declared a Caliphate.

In March 2015, a GTF contingent of 90 Italian Carabinieri was deployed to form the Police Task Force – Iraq (PTF-I) to strengthen Iraqi police capabilities against the Islamic State. [44] By 2019, PTF-I had some 170 personnel, including 130 Carabinieri and Spanish Guardia Civil and 40 military and civilian police from Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Slovakia and Sweden.[45] The purpose of PTF-I was ‘…training the agents of the Iraqi Federal Police destined to operate in the liberated territories, avoiding a dangerous power vacuum following the fighting phase.’[46] According to the Campaign Design for this operation, ‘CJTF-OIR [Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve] uses the term ‘Hold Force’ to delineate between those Iraqi Security Forces being generated for offensive operations [i.e. the Clear Force] and those forces used to secure liberated areas and prevent ISIS from reestablishing an effective presence. [Brackets added].’[47] Providing properly trained police forces to secure or hold liberated areas during a stability operation equates to filling the deployment gap in the context of a peace operation.

An Italian Carabinieri trainer observes as Iraqi Federal Police officers run to set up a riot control formation during a training exercise at Camp Dublin in Baghdad, 2016. Photo U.S. Army, Katie Eggers

Among the topics covered in PTF-I training to ‘hold’ terrain were area patrolling/territorial control, proportionate use of force, arrest techniques, use of non-lethal weapons/crowd and riot control, and respect for human rights.[48] By the time ISIS was evicted from its primary bastion in Mosul in 2017, the GTF-led PTF-I had trained more than 33,000 local and federal police[49]. According to Major General Fabrizio Parrulli,[50] the success of this endeavor derived from engendering a multi-ethnic force: '…the Police Task Force – Carabinieri led - had the peculiar capacity to get Sunni and Shiite people to work together, bringing them together in the same training activities... In particular with regard to the activities carried out by the GTFs, a new perspective has been provided to the new multi-ethnic police force: not only securing the liberated areas from IS but recognizing the need to work together and learn from each other to lay the foundation for a new country based on multi-ethnic integration and cooperation.'[51]

An assessment of the impact of PTF-Is training in Ramadi arrived at this conclusion: Positive results became more evident when the police forces trained by Carabinieri operated again in the recaptured town. Their high-level preparation made it possible to switch quickly from the military governance imposed earlier on Ramadi, to the civilian governance allowing the military units to continue the anti-Daesh operations…[52]

Ending large-scale violence or preventing its recurrence

According to the Global Terrorism Index, in 2014--the year that ISIS captured the Sunni Triangle in Iraq and declared a Caliphate--Iraq accounted for 9,929 terrorist deaths.[53]  By the end of 2017, Operation Inherent Resolve had succeeded in recapturing 98% of the territory that ISIS had occupied in Iraq and Syria.[54] In the 2020 edition of the Global Terrorism Index, the number of deaths from terrorism had declined to 942.[55] If we use the Correlates of War’s threshold of 1,000 battlefield deaths for war as also the end of large-scale violence,[56] then by 2019 Iraq was below that threshold. Although the role of GTFs was a very specific one--to train Iraqi police to secure liberated areas so ISIS could not reestablish its presence--the clear and hold strategy would not have been effective in ending large-scale violence without it.

Taking stock of the contributions of the GTF-led PTF-I, the empirical record supports the following conclusions: Regarding the deployment gap, GTF trainers, eventually supported by MPs and civilian police, provided essential capacity building for a multi-ethnic police force to rapidly re-establish public security in strategic cities of the Sunni Triangle after the Iraqi Armed Forces had evicted ISIS. As for ending large-scale violence, the number of deaths attributable to ISIS declined from 9,929 in 2014 to 942 in 2019, which placed it below the threshold that is used for war. This was largely the result of the success of the clear and hold strategy, the latter portion of which GTFs were responsible for implementing.

East Timor (Timor-Leste)

Filling the Deployment Gap

Four months after the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor received its Executive mandate in October 1999, the Portuguese Guarda National Republicana (GNR) deployed a 120-member Rapid Response Unit (RRU) followed shortly thereafter by a Jordanian RRU.[57] According to Joao Duque Martinho, ‘The RRU was the most critical UN tool to ensure…public order… and it was often deployed throughout TL territory to face of (sic) violent clashes.’[58]

Ending large-scale violence

In 2006 a crisis erupted when about 400 armed men from the Falintil Defense Forces of Timor-Leste defected. The deserters marched through the streets of Dili gathering support from civilians, resulting in ‘37 people dead and approximately 150,000 (15% of the population) displaced.’ [59] East Timor invoked a bilateral agreement with Portugal requesting a GNR unit.[60] Twelve days later a 140-member GNR unit arrived and played a fundamental role in restoring public order.[61] The unit was integrated into the United Nations Integrated Mission in East Timor, remaining until the mission’s end in 2012. The GNR contingent contributed to the process of pacification and stabilization by controlling civil unrest, responding to an assassination attempt against the President and subsequently providing VIP protection, contributing to arrests, securing elections, and training the police. The UN was able to depart in 2012, and the country has remained stable ever since.[62]

In sum, the GNR prevented a deployment gap at the inception of the mission and again after the Falintil Defense Force rebellion in 2006. They also contributed to preventing the recurrence of large-scale violence until the mission ended in 2012. Since more than five years have now passed, East Timor qualifies as a full-fledged peacekeeping success.[63]

Haiti

After the devastating January 12, 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 250,000 people, the European Gendarmerie Force (EGF) responded to a UN appeal by deploying GTF assets to Haiti (i.e., French and Italian Formed Police Units) supported by Israeli Defense Forces and a Spanish SWAT platoon.[64] According to the Commander of the Italian unit, Col Nicola Mangialavori, they were fully deployed by May 25, 2010, four months after the earthquake.[65] Col Mangialavori described their contributions as including protection of UN personnel, public order management, support to UN Individual Police Officers, and close protection.[66]  

Owing to the EGF’s rapid deployment with no advanced notice (four months) and the missions they performed--ranging from crowd and riot control to election security--the EGF has clearly demonstrated their potential to eliminate the deployment gap in future missions.

By acting rapidly upon a UN appeal after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti the European Gendarmerie Force demonstrated their potential to eliminate the deployment gap in future missions. Photo UN

Conclusions

We established two measures of success for evaluating the impact of Gendarmerie Type Forces involved in peace and stability operations:

• Did GTFs prevent a deployment gap from occurring or close an existing gap?
• Did GTFs contribute to ending large-scale violence or preventing its recurrence?

The empirical evidence is summarized as follows:

Bosnia

The deployment of the first MSU in August 1998 successfully closed the deployment gap that had been exploited by rent-a-mobs to confound implementation of the Dayton Accords. During its first year, ‘the MSU was able to resolve 261 of 263  ‘interventions’  without  the  use  of  force  through  a  combination  of  deterrence, dissuasion,  and  negotiation.’[67] A compelling case can be made that the MSU ‘prevented disturbances from escalating into riots, and riots from escalating into large scale violence.’[68]

The MSU played a decisive role in dismantling the threat from the Third Entity Movement, thereby preventing a resumption of violent conflict. It accomplished this by providing critically important unit-based policing capabilities for surveillance and crowd and riot control by mounting combined operations with other international and trusted Bosnian security forces that exposed and then seized the Movement’s center of gravity--the illicit revenue deposited in the Hercegovacka Bank. This thwarted efforts to unify Herceg Bosna with Croatia, a step that would inevitably have led to the return to conflict.

Kosovo

KFOR successfully prevented a deployment gap by deploying the MSU and a company of French Gendarmes one month after UNMIK received its mandate which allowed the mission to effectively parry the rent-a-mob tactics used by the Bridge Watchers in Mitrovica. 

GTFs also  gave UNMIK the capability to conduct intelligence-led operations to apprehend violent spoilers from both Kosovar Albanian and Serb paramilitary elements and to effectively defuse demonstrations that frequently resulted from their arrest. Thus GTFs played a vital role, in close collaboration with UNMIK, in transforming a peace process that was initially a ‘continuation of warfare by other means’[69] to one where the prospect for conflict between Kosovo and Serbia ‘has effectively been extinguished.’[70]

Iraq

GTF trainers and advisers provided essential capacity building for a multi-ethnic police force of over 34,000 personnel which enabled the Iraqi government to rapidly re-establish police forces in the Sunni Triangle to hold strategic cities after the Iraqi Armed Forces had cleared ISIS from them.

As a result of the success of the clear and hold strategy, the latter portion of which was executed largely by GTFs, the number of deaths attributable to ISIS declined from 9,929 in 2014 when it overran the Sunni Triangle to 942 in 2019. This places Iraq below the threshold of 1,000 that is most commonly used for a war.

East Timor

The GNR prevented a deployment gap after the Falintil Defense Force’s incipient rebellion in 2006 and contributed to preventing recurrence of large-scale violence until the end of the mission in 2012. More than five years have now passed, qualifying East Timor as a full-fledged success.

In sum, substantial numbers of GTFs have been involved in four peace operations with the UN (Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, and Haiti). Although other mission elements were essential to achieving these results, the UN has been able to close one of these missions and none of the other three has reverted to conflict after 16-25 years. This is a sharp contrast to the UN’s own record which has seen 50% of its interventions reverting to conflict within five years.[71]

GTFs have been involved in two stability operations: Iraq and Afghanistan. Although GTFs made contributions to the latter, that mission ended in failure. Thus in the more challenging context of stability operations, the GTF success rate of 50% equals that of the UN in peace operations.

In conclusion, GTFs make it possible to eliminate the deployment gap thereby potentially allowing future missions to seize the ‘golden hour’ and combat spoilers successfully. By arriving with GTFs prepared to neutralize inevitable spoiler threats, future NATO missions can accelerate the transition to a follow-on peacekeeping force or, in a stability operation, to professional local police ‘hold’ forces that can tip the balance toward stabilization. In both cases GTFs play a critically important role in advancing prospects for enduring peace.

As we look to the future, it is demonstrably clear that GTFs have the potential to join the UN or other international organizations on a hybrid mission affording them the ability to prevent a deployment gap. With regard to ending conflicts or preventing their recurrence, however, GTFs provide a necessary but insufficient capability for combating spoilers expeditiously. As was demonstrated on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol, a failure to anticipate an ominous threat to internal security can render even highly capable policing and military forces ineffectual.[72] The antidote is clear, and it was articulated in Militaire Spectator:

Essential for the success of future NATO peace and stability operations will be developing an assessment methodology that is mutually accepted by its prospective international partners to identify likely spoilers prior to drafting a mandate. The NATO Stability Police Center of Excellence initiated this endeavour in October 2019 in collaboration with the United Nations, European Union, and African Union.[73]

Thus, the NSPCOE has already taken the lead in developing a spoiler assessment methodology that could resolve the primary obstacle to seizing the Golden Hour in future missions thereby enabling the effective use of GTFs and other essential mission capabilities to end large-scale violence or prevent its recurrence.

 

* Michael Dziedzic, Col, US Air Force (Ret.), Adjunct Faculty, George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government and Affiliate Faculty at the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center; Danilo Ciampini, Carabinieri officer on duty, graduated  from the University of Studies of Macerata, with training at the University of Reading (United Kingdom), and the University of Studies of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’. He is the author of articles and a book about stability policing, gendarmerie type forces, military history and the extensive network organizational model. The authors would like to express theire gratitude for the invaluable information and suggestions provided by Col Nicola Mangialavori on the section dealing with Haiti, by Maj. Helder Manuel Gonçalves Garção on the section dealing with East Timor, and to Hans Hovens, Karen Kinkenbinder, and Major General Fabrizio Parrulli for their careful review, critique, and constructive comments. Any errors or inadequacies that remain are exclusively our own.

[1] Michael Dziedzic, ‘NATO Should Promptly Implement Stability Policing: Why and How’, Militaire Spectator 189 (2020) (2) 56-71.

[2] Hans Hovens, ‘Stability Policing: Why is it taking root so slowly?’, Militaire Spectator 189 (2020) (4).

[3] The term ‘open club’ is derived from Col Giuseppe De Magistris, the Director of the NATO Stability Policing Center of Excellence. His often repeated ‘mantra’ is that ‘Stability Policing is an open club where everybody can do something but not everyone can do everything.’

[4] The International Association of Gendarmeries and Police Forces with Military Status (FIEP) includes over 19 members from around the world. See http://www.fiep.org/member-forces/.

[5] North Atlantic Treaty Organization Standardization Office, Allied Joint Doctrine for Stability Policing (AJP-3.22), July 2016, 2-6.

[6] Email to one of the authors, May 1, 2020.

[7] See Headquarters Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, ‘NATO Stability Policing Concept’, April 5, 2018, 1.  

‘Linked to the 2016 Warsaw Summit’s aspirations of ‘Projecting Stability…The development of a NATO Stability Policing Concept will support the identification of the requirements needed to develop and implement a coherent Stability Policing Capability, in order to fulfil the aspirations from the 2016 Warsaw Summit Declaration.’

[8] Stephen Stedman, ‘Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes’, International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Fall 1997) 5-53.

[9] George Downs and Stephen Stedman, ‘Evaluation Issues in Peace Implementation,’ in Stephen Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elizabeth Cousins (Eds), Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder and London, Lynne Rienner, 2002) 50.

[10] UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, ‘In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All,’ United Nations General Assembly, March 21, 2005, 3. Available at https://undocs.org/A/59/2005.

[11] Michael Dziedzic, ‘Introduction’, in Robert Oakley, Michael Dziedzic, and Elliot Goldberg (eds), Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security (Washington D.C., National Defense University Press, 1998) 9.

[12] The rapid mobilization of civilian demonstrators to thwart peace implementation efforts such as the return of refugees.

[13] Michael Dziedzic, ‘The Dayton Accords and Bosnia’s parallel power structures: Impact and security implications,’ Militaire Spectator 189 (12), Dec 14, 2020, 620-2. Available at https://www.militairespectator.nl/sites/default/files/teksten/bestanden/militaire_spectator_12_2020_dziedzic.pdf.

[14] Michael Dziedzic (ed.), Criminalized Power Structures: The Overlooked Enemies of Peace (Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). See also Dziedzic, ‘The Dayton Accords and Bosnia’s parallel power structures’.

[15] The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, initialed in Dayton on November 21, 1995 and signed in Paris on December 14, 1995. Available at https://www.osce.org/bih/126173?download=true.

[16] Michael Dziedzic and Andrew Bair, ‘Bosnia and the International Police Task Force’, in Robert Oakley, Michael Dziedzic, and Eliot Goldberg (eds), Policing the New World Disorder, 298-9. The full quote is ‘The most serious of these clashes, at Mahala in August 1996, was aggravated because the RS reacted to an influx of Moslems by sending armed MUPs [RS Interior Ministry Police] to the scene in flagrant violation of the Dayton Accords. After IFOR detained and disarmed the offending policemen…’.

[17] Italian Ministry of Defense, https://en.difesaonline.it/evidenza/interviste/loperativit%C3%A0-dellarma-dei-carabinieri-allestero. Austria provided two Infantry platoons to the SFOR MSU from June 2001 and until 2005, see  https://www.nato.int/sfor/indexinf/172/p10a/t02p10a.htm; Hungary provided a Cavalry Unit in 2002. See https://www.nato.int/sfor/indexinf/172/p11a/t02p11a.htm.

[18] Dziedzic, ‘The Dayton Accords and Bosnia’s parallel power structures’, 623; See also Michael Dziedzic, Peter Garcia, Sandy Levinson, Tyler Randolf, Susan Remis Silver, and Mac Warner, ‘SFOR Lessons Learned in Creating a Secure Environment for the Rule of Law’, U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute (May 2000) 10.

[19] The MSU applied a ‘Blue Box/Green Box’ concept to integrate the capacity of SFOR troops for use of lethal force with the capacity of GTFs to control crowds through negotiation or graduated use of less-than-lethal force. This innovative concept gave the MSU tactical control inside the blue box, and SFOR troops were arrayed in support on their periphery in the green box. The decision to transfer tactical control to SFOR troops, if it were to become necessary, belonged to the MSU commander.

[20] Dziedzic et al, ‘SFOR Lessons Learned in Creating a Secure Environment for the Rule of Law’, 10.

[21] Ibid., 10-11.

[22] Dziedzic, ‘The Dayton Accords and Bosnia’s parallel power structures’, 622.

[23] Dziedzic, ‘Conclusion,’ in Dziedzic (ed), Criminalized Power Structures, 323.

[24] Dziedzic, ‘The Dayton Accords and Bosnia’s parallel power structures’, 622.

[25] NATO, ‘Operation Westar Preliminary Results’, December 17, 1999. Available at  https://www.nato.int/sfor/sfor-at-work/opwestar/t991216a.htm.

[26] Dziedzic, ‘NATO Should Promptly Implement Stability Policing,’ 62.

[27] Friesendorf, How Western Soldiers Fight, 53.

[28] Ibid., 125.

[29] Dziedzic, et al, ‘SFOR Lessons Learned in Creating a Secure Environment for the Rule of Law’, 10.

[30] Friesendorf, How Western Soldiers Fight, 125.

[31] UNMIK Factsheet, Available at https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/unmik.

[32] Italian Ministry of Defense, ‘Since 1999. A new MSU is set up for KFOR’. Available at https://www.carabinieri.it/arma/oggi/proiezione-internazionale/vol-ii-1936---2001/parte-iii/dal-1999-kfor/msu_kfor.

[33] Didier Francois, ‘KOSOVO. French gendarmes curb Serbian extremism. In Mitrovica, they arrest a paramilitary leader,’ Liberation, July 3, 1999. Francois confirms that the deployment of French Gendarmes to Mitrovica averted a deployment gap by stating that this ‘was greeted with relief by the French soldiers who would quickly like to relinquish the law enforcement missions on these specialists.’

[34] Dziedzic, Criminalized Power Structures, 162-3.

[35] Dziedzic, ‘NATO Should Promptly Implement Stability Policing’, 62.

[36] Ben Lovelock, ‘Securing a Viable Peace: Defeating Militant Extremists—Fourth-Generation Peace Implementation’, in: The Quest for Viable Peace: International Intervention and Strategies for Conflict Transformation, eds Jock Covey, Michael Dziedzic and Leonard Hawley (Washington D.C., USIP Press, 2005) 183.

[37] Ibid., 213.

[38] Dziedzic, ‘NATO Should Promptly Implement Stability Policing’, 62.

[39] Dziedzic, Criminalized Power Structures, 176.

[40] Dziedzic, Criminalized Power Structures, 170.

[41] Ibid., 162-3.

[42] Ibid., 170.

[43] Dziedzic, ‘NATO Should Promptly Implement Stability Policing’, 65-6. The full quote is ‘In addition to governing in a sectarian manner that alienated the Sunni population, Maliki’s pervasive patronage network hollowed out the combat capability of the Iraqi Army so much that it collapsed in the face of an offensive by the Islamic State in June 2014. Maliki’s replacement as prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, revealed that the army’s ranks had more than fifty thousand ghost soldiers. This, along with Maliki’s penchant for promoting loyalists over competent professionals to command positions, contributed directly to the collapse of four of the army’s fourteen divisions in June 2014.

[44] See Italian Ministry of Defense, ‘National contribution’. The Italian Ministry of Defense itemized their contributions in Iraq in this document, specifying that in June 2015 the Police Task Force Iraq was composed of 90 personnel. Available at

https://www.difesa.it/EN/Operations/InternationalOperations/Prima_Parthica/Pagine/National_contribute.aspx.

[45] According to Major General Fabrizio Parrulli, who was responsible for overseeing the Carabinieri contribution, in an email to one of the authors, May 8, 2021.

[46] Italian Ministry of Defense, ‘National contribution.’

[47]  U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General, ‘U.S. and Coalition Efforts to Train, Advise, Equip, and Assist the Iraqi Police Hold Force’, Report No. DODIG-2018-147 (September 13, 2018) 4. Available at https://media.defense.gov/2018/Sep/14/2001966068/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2018-147.PDF.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Italian Ministry of Defence, ‘Mission in Iraq’, Sept 18, 2019. ’From June 2015 to today, the Police Task Force trained more than 33.300 units of Iraqi Police forces and from the Kurdistan autonomous region using  basic courses, advanced courses, and T3 (train the trainers) specialized courses.’ Available at

https://www.difesa.it/OperazioniMilitari/op_intern_corso/Prima_Parthica/notizie_teatro/Pagine/Missione_in_Iraq_GIS_addestra_la_Polizia_Irachena.aspx.

[50] At the time, Col Parrulli was the Commander of the Train Advise Assist Carabinieri Task Force – Iraq.

[51] Email to the authors from Maj General Fabrizio Parrulli on Apr 14, 2021.

[52] Simona Vasta, ‘Operazione Prima Parthica’, Informazioni della difesa, No.1 2016, 35.

[53] Global Terrorism Index 2015: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism, Institute for Economics and Peace, Nov 2015, 20. Available at 02/Global%20Terrorism%20Index%202015%2C%20Institute%20for%20Economics%20%26%20Peace.pdf.

[54] Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release, Jan 1, 2018. Available at https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/1406615/defeat-isis-coalition-reflects-on-2017-looks-forward-to-2018/.

[55] Global Terrorism Index 2020: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism, Institute for Economics and Peace, Nov 2019, 13.  Available at https://visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/GTI-2020-web-1.pdf. ‘Deaths committed by the group fell from 1,571 in 2018, to 942 deaths in 2019, a 40 per cent drop from the previous year. This marks the third consecutive year of decline and a significant decrease from its deadliest year in 2016, of over 90 per cent.’ Global Terrorism Index 2020: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism, Institute for Economics and Peace, Nov 2020, 16.  Available at https://visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/GTI-2020-web-1.pdf.

[56] The Correlates of War Project defines war, in this case ‘extra-systemic war’ between a state and a non-state entity as follows: ‘sustained combat required a minimum of 1,000 battle-related fatalities for the system member alone during each year of the war.’ See Meredith Reid Sarkees, The COW Typology of War: Defining and Categorizing Wars (Version 4 of the Data) 3. Available at https://correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/COW-war/the-cow-typology-of-war-defining-and-categorizing-wars/view.

[57] Relief Web, ‘First Rapid Response Unit officers arrive to Dili’, UNTAET Daily Briefing, Mar 2, 2000, Available at

https://reliefweb.int/report/timor-leste/untaet-daily-briefing-02-mar-2000. They were tasked with responding ‘to major security threats.’ Later the UN would use the term Formed Police Units for this capability. During the four months before the GNR deployed the first Rapid Response Unit, UNTAET Civilian Police trained a 50-person crowd and riot control unit to respond to civil disturbances.

[58] João Duque Martinho, ‘Building a CPC in Timor-Leste’, The CoESPU Magazine, Vol 2, 2020, 2. Available at

https://www.coespu.org/sites/default/files/magazine/2020---n-2_1.pdf.

[59] Ibid., 2. See also Tiago Filipe Alves Fernandes, ‘Potencialidades/vulnerabilidades das forças tipo gendarmerie nas Operações de Apoio à Paz: a GNR em Timor-Leste’. Available at https://comum.rcaap.pt/bitstream/10400.26/7340/1/GNR%20347%20Tiago%20Fernandes.pdf;

Carlos Martins Branco, ‘A participação de Portugal em operações de paz. Êxitos, problemas e desafios’. Available at https://journals.openedition.org/eces/365.

[60] ‘After the outbreak of the crisis, the Timorese authorities asked for international aid and, as intervention at the multilateral level seemed to take a long time, TL requested that cooperation with Portugal, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia, in the initial phase, be developed bilaterally. The reference to GNR in the request sent by TL to Portugal reflected the good work that the soldiers of the Guard had carried out in the Timorese territory, between February 2000 and June 2002, through the four contingents of the GNR, which constituted the Portuguese RRU, integrated into the ‘UNTAET’; Alves Fernandes, ‘Potencialidades/vulnerabilidades das forças tipo gendarmerie nas Operações de Apoio à Paz’, 19-24.

[61] Duque Martinho, ‘Building a CPC in Timor-Leste,’ 2.

[62] Helder Manuel Gonçalves Garção, ‘Chega ao fim a missão do Subagrupamento Bravo em Timor-Leste’, Pela Lei e Pela Grei, Jan-Mar 2013 No.97, 46-57. See also Joao Duque Martinho, ‘Building a CPC in Timor-Leste’, 2.

[63]  Duque Martinho, ‘Building a CPC in Timor-Leste’, 2. ‘The TL independence was a truly successful process in which the international community support and Portugal in particularly has reason to take great pride.’

[64] EUROGENFOR, ‘Haiti’ (2010). Available at https://eurogendfor.org/2010-minustah-mission-in-haiti/.

[65] Col. Nicola Mangialavori official interview ‘Danoperhaiti’, November 18, 2010. Available at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSohYcL1frY. See also Francesco Semprini, ‘Interview with the Commander of the Italian Contingent in Haiti’, La Stampa TV. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sksVv12wDW4.

[66] Ibid.

[67] Dziedzic et al, ‘SFOR Lessons Learned in Creating a Secure Environment for the Rule of Law’, 10.

[68] Friesendorf, How Western Soldiers Fight, 125.

[69] Dziedzic, Criminalized Power Structures, 162-3.

[70] Ibid., 170.

[71] UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, ‘In Larger Freedom’, 3.

[72] See Annie Grayer, ‘Democrats stunned by briefing on Capitol’s security before insurrection: ‘It was only by pure dumb luck’ more weren’t killed’, CNN, Jan 26, 2021. ‘…it is clear that the failure was not due to a lack of intelligence, but rather a failure to properly act on this intelligence. This is unacceptable and left our law enforcement men and women on the ground unprepared for the danger they would face.’ Available at https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/politics/democrats-stunned-by-capitol-briefing-insurrection/index.html.

[73] Dziedzic, ‘The Dayton Accords and Bosnia’s parallel power structures’, 634.