Civilian tasks and capabilities in EU operations

Civilian tasks and capabilities in EU operations Renata Dwan Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Introduction Civilian crisis management is an ambiguous and rather obscured element of the European Union’s Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). To some degree, this is a problem of language: ‘civilian crisis management’, as a term, is broad and difficult to define. Potentially, it denotes any policy or instrument directed at the management of crises that is not a military policy or a military instrument – a description that raises more questions about the definition of ‘military’ and ‘non-military’ than it provides answers. As a subject, civilian crisis management is particular to the EU and has no equivalent parallel in the lexicons of UN, OSCE or non-European regional organizations. Its uniqueness as a phrase has not prompted wider curiosity in the subject. Political and media attention is fixed on the development of Europe’s military capabilities and there is a pervasive assumption that only through better war fighting capabilities will the EU be taken seriously as an international security actor.1 The function of civilian crisis management, in this perspective, is ‘in order to back up military crisis management’. The EU Security Strategy echoes this notion of crisis management hierarchy, defining civilian crisis management as ‘helping restore civil government after crises’.2 None of the EU big states (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK) have put particular emphasis on civilian crisis management and the European Commission remains reluctant, if not hostile, to the intergovernmental development of a sphere in which it sees itself as a longstanding actor. The idea of EU non-military capabilities may have broad general support but sustained attention and resources for capability development have not been forthcoming. Partly as a result of this, the developments that have taken place to date have been shaped more by the institutional parameters of the EU than by a comprehensive assessment of what non-military policies and instruments are required to address crises and how the EU should go about their development. Paradoxically, civilian crisis management is the area in which the EU has made fastest operational progress. Two of the EU’s four crisis management operations have been civilian (the EU Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUPM) and Operation Proxima in FYROM). The two have a considerably longer timeline than the military operations CONCORDIA and ARTEMIS and are, at present, the EU’s only active operations. The EU takeover of responsibility from NATO-led SFOR forces in Bosnia at the end of 2004 will see EU civilian and military crisis management capabilities side by side on the ground and will raise the issue of civil-military coordination and joint

1 See for example, Bertelsmann Foundation, A European Defence Strategy: The Vision Document of the Venusberg Group, forthcoming; Everts, S. et al., A European Way of War (Centre for European Reform: London, May 2004). 2According to Economist EIU Views Wire, 30 Dec. 2003. A secure Europe in a better world: European Security Strategy, Brussels, 12 December 2003. URL <http://ue.eu.int/solana/securityStrategy.asp>.

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operations in EU crisis management. Crises beyond the Balkans, meanwhile – Afghanistan, DRC, Haiti, Iraq and Liberia - are provoking increasing policy and academic debate on the applicability of military instruments to crisis situations, the contexts it which it can prove helpful or not, and the additional perspectives and instruments that need to accompany or replace military approaches to crisis management. At the root of this debate is a fundamental concern over the extent to which humanitarian intervention can be carried out in accordance with the principles that motivate it and the extent to which it can achieve its goals. These issues are not particular to the EU and confront equally the UN, regional organizations and intervening states. The path the EU charts in developing non-military dimensions of crisis management is thus a new one and is as least as important for the future of international crisis management as the practical tools and assistance it brings. This chapter argues that the EU should devote significant attention and resources to civilian capabilities for three important reasons. First, civilian crisis management lies at the core of a human security-based approach to global security. If a European security strategy is to be built on this foundation, then the elaboration of policies and instruments focused on the needs of people in vulnerable, crisis or conflict situations are an essential element. An important component of this is making good on the EU Security Strategy commitment to preventive engagement, wherein civilian crisis management instruments have a potential advantageous role. Second, civilian crisis management is an area in which the EU can make a distinct and unique contribution to global security, reflecting the values and principles it seeks to promote. This is particularly the case in the interface between military and civilian crisis management. Third, the EU has committed itself to developing non-military capabilities. To do so successfully, it must move beyond the rigidities of the EU institutional framework and comprehensively address the conceptual and practical ambiguities of the concept of civilian crisis management. In so doing, the EU will have to negotiate difficult questions about what civilian crisis management can and cannot do, about the boundaries between crisis management and longer term development and where EU crisis management priorities might lie. The crisis origins of civilian capabilities Public order in the Balkans To understand how civilian crisis management has been conceived and developed since 1999, we need to trace its origins.3 Civilian crisis management, as a concept, grew out of European states’ experience of crisis management in the Balkans and, in particular, the attempt to bring peace to Kosovo after the NATO-led intervention in the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in March 1999. There, the greatest difficulty was not the war-fighting but rather the enforcement and building of some semblance of peace. In the first year of the international post-conflict presence, notwithstanding the presence of 42,500 NATO-led forces in the province, the international community presided over the reversal of the same ethnic cleansing that had provided the grounds for non-UN

3 See also, Dwan R., ‘EU policing for peace operations: What does it mean?’ St Anthony’s College, University of Oxford European Interdependence Research Unit (EIRU) Discussion Paper, EIRU/023, July 2002.

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sanctioned intervention in the FRY. The flash point was (and remains) Mitrovica, the divided city in which the international military and police presence failed to prevent repeated deadly clashes between Kosovar Albanians and Serb civilians. The absence of NATO or UN strategies to address public order challenges, the inability of the military presence to negotiate civil violence and the lack of readily available international police personnel for deployment to Kosovo was a fundamental turning point for European governments who had supported the non-UN sanctioned intervention on the grounds that the protection of human rights from wide-scale abuse was an international responsibility. The lack of police was a particular gap: despite appeals by the head of the UN in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner and a personal appeal from the newly installed Secretary General/High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, less than 2,000 of the 4,718 civilian police authorized to the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) were in place by early 2000. Only 22% of these came from EU states.4 This was not the first time that the Balkans had demonstrated the gaps in international crisis management capabilities. It was a riot in Brcko, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in August 1997 which nearly overran a company of heavily armed US soldiers and resulted in the evacuation of the international police officers stationed in the town, which led to the establishment of a Multinational Specialized Unit (MSU) as part of the NATO-led force, SFOR.5 The Bosnian experience demonstrated the limitations of military personnel in terms of equipment, training, policing and mediation skills in transitional phases of conflict. The US conclusion was that international constabulary forces were required to take responsibility for tasks such as crowd control, election security and returnee protection. For the Europeans, however, the issue was less clear-cut: many felt the US position reflected a reluctance to maintain a strong military presence in the Balkans more than a concern for the proper and most effective division of labour between military and policing forces in post-conflict peace operations. Only Italy agreed to provide three companies of ‘constabulary police’ - carabinieri - to form the basis of the MSU. It took nearly eight months before the Italian-led MSU deployed to Sarajevo.6 The debate about what sort of force is required after the end of armed hostilities and before peaceful regulated order is established has been a central theme in every intervention in which the international presence has had more than an observation role. At the heart of the debate is a perceived ‘security gap’ between the war fighting capacities of the military and the public safety and order and crime prevention tasks undertaken by civilian police. In a post-conflict environment, there is little order to keep and the chaos that prevails makes normal, community-centred policing activities next to impossible. The provision of a secure public security environment is a first requirement that demands a) the existence of a ‘law’ to enforce b) a strategy for law-enforcement and c) the appropriate forces to implement it. The debate on the ‘security gap’ has tended to 4 Fitchett, J., ’In a cop-out, Europeans fail to supply promised police’, International Herald Tribune, 22 Feb. 2000. For figures on UNMIK, see Dwan, R, ’Armed conflict prevention, management and resolution’ in SIPRI Yearbook 2000 (Oxford University Press/SIPRI: Oxford, 2000), pp. 86-88 and appendix 2A. 5 Perito, Robert M., Where is the Lone Ranger when we need him? America’s search for a post-conflict stability force (United States Institute of Peace: Washington DC, 2004), esp. chs 1 & 4. 6 The MSU was made up of 350 carabineiri with minor contributions from the Argentinian Gendarmeria Nacional, the Romanian Politia Militari and the Slovenian Military Police.

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focus almost wholly on the last element and is articulated most strongly by those who hold that the military is not trained for post-conflict policing and that it is not appropriate for it to be so.7 Formed police units – police with military status – are seen as the answer to the ‘security gap’ in terms of capabilities for crowd control, crime investigation (especially organized crime) and muscular back up to a subsequent civilian police service.8 Police with military status are also seen as a way of overcoming the slow deployment problems endemic to civilian policing in peace operations not least as they deploy (in theory at least) as equipped, self-sustainable units. The opposing view, often articulated by British analysts, argues that post-conflict policing tasks are a central part of the military’s responsibility as the primary international security presence on the ground, that the military can and should be trained to undertake such tasks, and that good military-civilian police cooperation can overcome the ‘security gap’ in crisis contexts.9 A degree of suspicion toward police with military status on the part of some European militaries and police forces is a factor in this approach. Promoting the democratic rule of law in an environment that has likely experienced significant violence and abuse of the state’s monopoly on the use of force through armed police units (‘paramilitaries’ as they are often called) is problematic for many.10

The preoccupation with ‘security gaps’ remains a dominant theme today, not least for the Multinational Force in Iraq. However genuine and difficult a problem it poses, the focus on ‘security gaps’ has had negative consequences for the development of a more human security-based approach to international crisis management. First, it has limited policy thinking on non-military (civilian) capabilities in post conflict contexts to the provision of public order. Why people are rioting and what can be done to pre-empt such action tends to be regarded as a secondary consideration. This was evident particularly in US policy in Iraq immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Second, and as a consequence of the concern with public order, ‘security gap’ prioritisation has focused civilian capabilities wholly on the immediate post-conflict environment rather than a set of policies and instruments that can be brought to bear at all stages of the conflict. Not least of these is the pre-conflict, preventive phase before the collapse of state structures and authorities when international non-military tools might prove a less coercive and more positive way of engaging with a volatile, troubled state. Third, and most significant, it has tended to 7 The infamous quote of President Bush’s National Security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, about the US military not being in the business of helping old ladies cross roads comes to mind. See also, Rice, C. ‘Promoting the National Interest’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 79, no. 1 (Jan/Feb 2000), pp. 45-62. 8 Countries who have a police with military status (gendarme type) with international peacekeeping experience include Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Romania, Poland, Argentina, Uruguay, Jordan, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Nepal. 9 See the paper by Andy Salmon, ’Principles for the use of the military in support of law enforcement operations’ and Kelly, M. Restoring and Maintaining Order in Complex Peace Operations: The Search for a Legal Framework, (Kluwer Law International: The Hague, 2001). 10 See for example, Hansen, A, ‘Civil-military cooperation: the military, paramilitaries and civilian police in executive policing’, in Dwan (ed) Executive Policing: Enforcing the law in peace operations, SIPRI Research Report No. 16 (OUP/SIPRI: Oxford, 2002) and Hill, A., ‘International peace support operations and CivPol: Should there be a permanent global gendarmerie?’, International Peacekeeping, vol. 5. no. 3, Autumn 1998.

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paint a picture of civil society as a dangerous and volatile factor to be controlled and subdued. The fact that much of the discourse on ‘public security’ argues for assertive international postures and the identification of and active opposition to obstructionists/spoilers creates a context in which the civil society is, if not an enemy, then far from a partner.11 This notion of the international-local community relationship stands in stark contrast to the way in which police and other civilian officials are trained to regard it in a domestic context, that is, as a relationship based in good measure on trust, in which the civilian instruments of the state exist to serve, not subdue, the community. International post-conflict administration Of course civilian crisis management in Kosovo, it was quickly realised, was very much more than the provision of a secure environment and public order. The transitional administration established by UN Security Council Resolution 1244, like that of East Timor four months later, involved no less than the assumption of the authority and functions of the state and its administration. These functions, in essence, are the services provided by the state to its citizens: the glue that regulates their relationship. They include the establishment and implementation of a democratic and transparent rule of law, judicial and correctional systems, public safety and protection provisions, regulation and administration of public utilities, social welfare mechanisms, economic development and growth. In a post-conflict context these functions must be carried out in parallel with, and sometimes secondary to, disarmament and demobilisation of ex-combatants, refugee and internally displaced persons (IDP) return, physical, social and economic reconstruction, justice and reconciliation and the (re)creation of a democratic political system. A 2002 project by the Association of the US Army (AUSA) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington categorized post conflict reconstruction tasks into four broad fields across a continuum of initial response, transformation and fostering sustainability. These are 1) security, 2) justice and reconciliation, 3) social and economic well-being and 4) governance and participation (see appendix A). Each field is broken down into sets of issue-areas (e.g., law enforcement as an issue-area within justice and reconciliation) within which different tasks are spelled out. These tasks include both tasks related to institutional steps (e.g. the establishment of police academies to train indigenous police forces) as well measures focused on personnel development and processes such as reviews of institutions. It is worth noting that these four fields correspond somewhat to the pillar structure of UNMIK which is divided into 1) police and justice, 2) civil administration (both under UN lead), 3) democratisation and institution building (OSCE) and 4) reconstruction and economic development (EU). The AUSA/CSIS project assumes substantial international involvement in the post-conflict reconstruction effort but it does not distinguish between executive and non-executive operations in the framework. The tasks are the same, in other words, regardless

11 See for example Stedman, S., ’International Implementation of Peace Agreements in Civil Wars’ in Crocker, C. et al (eds.) Turbulent Peace. The Challenge of Managing International Conflict (United States Institute of Peace: Washington DC, 2001) and Covey, J. et al., The quest for a durable peace in Kosovo: Evolving Strategies of Peace Implementation (United States Institute of Peace: forthcoming).

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of whether indigenous governance structures are in place and capable of taking them on or whether the international community assumes responsibility for them. The accompanying report does stress, however, that ‘every effort must be taken to build (or rebuild) indigenous capacity and governance structures as quickly as possible’.12 Nor does it make a distinction between crisis management and development tasks, although in elaborating a three-stage time continuum the project aims at some task-prioritisation according to the degree of immediacy with which they must be tackled. The framework of tasks, moreover, does not stipulate who – military, civilian, state or non-state actors – is responsible and/or most appropriate for each. What is striking is their variety and specialized nature. It is not simply that court administration is not a job for the average military officer: it is not a job for the average civilian. The realisation that the international administration of war torn territories, as Richard Caplan describes it, requires skilled peacetime administrators has been a painful, if instructive lesson, for international actors.13 As one former UNMIK official described it, ‘In the event, we in the regional headquarters were overwhelmed with the enormity of the many tasks before us: there were too few international officials; those who did arrive generally lacked experience in handling the prosaic issues of administration; and few knew anything about Kosovo’.14 The question of appropriately skilled civilians has taken on a particularly horrific twist in the current examination of prisoner abuse by US military police in the Abu Gahraib prison in Iraq.15 Civilian crisis management entails not only rendering humanitarian assistance and service to civil society but providing the specialised and often highly technical skills of administration and governance. Those skills must be also adaptable and responsive to the different and distinct social, political and economic context of the particular country in which they may be engaged. Important as Kosovo and East Timor have been in demonstrating the gap in international crisis management capabilities to address the protection, safety and welfare of societies during and after conflict, there is a danger in equating civilian crisis management too narrowly as an alternative provider of state services in the face of weak or absent state structures and authorities. Focus on administration and order, however much a precondition to sustainable peacebuilding, tends to encourage a very technical view of the state, its services and their consumers. As a consequence it may well be seen as unresponsive to local views and input. This has been a frequently-voiced perception of local community leaders in East Timor and Kosovo. Civilian crisis management, to be successful, must be capable of incorporating local perspectives. A first step to enable this may involve facilitating the expression of local community needs – community (re)building in other words. The social aspect of civilian crisis management may be

12 CSIS/AUSA, Play to Win, Final Report of the bipartisan Commission on Post-Conflict Reconstruction, January 2003 13 Caplan, R. A new trusteeship? The international administration of war-torn territories, Adelphi Paper 341 (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2002), Chesterman, S. ‘Walking softly in Afghanistan: the future of UN state-building’, Survival, vol. 44 no. 3 (Autumn 2002), pp. 37-46. 14 Mark Baskin in ’Review article on Post-conflict administration and reconstruction’, International Affairs, vol. 79, no. 1 (2003), p.162. 15 Symon, F. ‘US Senate hears prisoner abuse testimony’ Financial Times (Internet edn.), 11 May 2004. URL http://search.ft.com/s03/search/article.html?id=040511007059.

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quickly forgotten if its focus is defined only in terms of government structures and capacity. Similarly, the emphasis on developing capacities to handle state administration in post-conflict contexts undercuts the potential of civilian crisis management as a pre-conflict tool to prevent or mitigate crises from complete implosion. This potential can include advisory, monitoring, training and technical assessment tasks or operations, mediation, confidence-building, or reconciliation tasks, as well as technical assistance in reform of specific areas such as such as the security sector, media or criminal justice. EU capabilities in civilian crisis management today Progress since 2000 The Kosovo experience continues to directly impact the way in which the EU approached the practical development civilian capabilities. At the Feira Council in June 2000 four priority areas were established: police, rule of law, civilian administration and civil protection. These remain the priority areas for civilian crisis management although the possibility for the addition of new priority areas remains open and work has been done in the Committee for Civilian Crisis Management (CIVCOM) and the Council Secretariat’s directorate for civilian crisis management on establishing monitoring capacities as a fifth priority area.16 The focus in each of the four priority areas has been on developing rapid reaction capabilities for crisis interventions either for EU autonomous operations or as part of an EU contribution to UN or OSCE-led operation. The method adopted to raise capacity modelled the approach used to generate military capacity: establishment of concrete, quantitative targets in each area to be met by 2003 (headline goals), followed by pledging conferences in which Member States voluntarily committed a specific quantity of resources. CIVCOM was tasked to work on the elaboration of concept and planning guidelines in the four priority areas. Police is the area which has received the most attention and in which capacity development has progressed fastest. Member States agreed to provide 5,000 to cover the range of police operations from advisory, assistance and training to ‘substitution’ (executive) missions and to commit themselves to a rapid reaction capability of 1,400 police in 30 days. This was achieved at a police capability conference in November 2001 where France and Italy also offered to provide four mobile police mission headquarters of which two were for rapid deployment.17 Gendarme-type police forces from four countries (France, Italy, Spain and Portugal) make up almost 25% of the 5,000. A number of concept documents have been elaborated on potential operation scenarios (‘substitution’ and ‘strengthening’ missions), command and control in police operations, training and equipment requirements and interoperability of ‘gendarme’ type police forces. Planning for EUPM and Operation PROXIMA drew, to some extent, on these documents although the generic EU Crisis Management Concept (a document drawn up principally by the EU Military Staff) proved the main guide.

16 Council of the European Union, Presidency Report on the European Securirty and Defence Policy, doc. no. 10598/03, Brussels, 17 June 2003. 17 The original target for rapid deployment was 1,000. The Declaration of 19 November 2001 Capabilities Conference is reproduced in Rutten, M. (ed), From Nice to Laeken. European Defence: Core Documents, vol. 2, Chaillot Paper no. 51 (EU Institute for Security Studies: Paris, 2002), pp. 92-94.

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Rule of law was the next priority area where a target of 200 experts for crisis management operations was set during the Gothenburg Council in June 2001. In May 2002 EU states committed up to 282 officials: 72 judges, 48 prosecutors, 38 administrative personnel and 72 penitentiary personnel. Of these, 60 are committed to rapid deployment (30 days).18 An EU concept for missions in the field of rule of law has been elaborated.19 The Greek presidency, in mid-2003, presented a follow-on paper addressing the potential contributions of non-state organisations and experts to rule of law operations at all phases of the mission. A significant step forward was made at the end of the Irish presidency, in June 2004, when EU Foreign Ministers agreed to establish a small rule of law mission in Georgia.20 The targets set in civilian administration are not so precise as that for police or rule of law. EU states have committed to voluntarily providing a pool of experts capable of covering a broad spectrum of tasks for quick deployment in crises. Some guidelines for civilian administration missions have been developed with the emphasis on setting up or ensuring the existence of a functional administrative framework while promoting transition to local ownership as early as possible.21

Civil protection has been the most contested area for civilian crisis management capacity development. Although fairly precise targets were set in 2001 (2-3 assessment and/or coordination team of 10 experts capable of dispatching within 3-7 hours; intervention teams of 2,000 for rapid deployment, and additional or more specialised means which could be dispatched within 2-7 days as needed) and although a call for contributions was launched in June 2002, little real progress has been made in this area. Some argue that civil protection in crisis situations is a subdivision of civilian administration (this is how it is structured in UNMIK) and does not merit a separate approach. The strongest opposition, led by the European Commission, comes from those that believe that civil protection has less to do with security policy and more with humanitarian assistance.22 In this regard, the Commission has energetically defended its competence in civil protection, a capacity that developed, in part, out of the EU attempt to provide emergency relief assistance to Turkey after the massive earthquake there in 1999. In October 2001, four months after the Council set its targets, a Community civil protection mechanism was established. 23 The protection mechanism is directed at short and long term protection cooperation between Member States in the event of natural, technological, radiological or environmental catastrophes covering the areas of search and rescue, fire-

18 European Council, Seville, 21-22 June 2002, ’Presidency report on ESDP’, Annex I: Rule of Law Capabilities Commitment Conference Declaration’. 19 Council of the European Union, ’Comprehensive EU concept for missions in the field of Rule of Law in crisis management, including annexes’, doc. 141513/02, 19 Nov. 2002. Conversations with Secretariat officials. 20 Council of the European Union, General Affairs and External Relations, Press Release 10191/04, 14 June 2004. 21 Council of the European Union, ’Basic guidelines for crisis management missions in the field of civilian administration’, doc. 9369/02, 30 May 2002. 22 See, for example, British House of Lords, Select Committee on the European Union, EU. Effective in a Crisis? HL Paper 2002/03 53 (Stationary Office Ltd: London, Feb. 2003). 23 Council Decision of 23 Oct. 2001/792/EC.

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fighting, specialised medical and forensic services, evacuation, environmental pollution and emergency relief. Although intended for civil protection within the Union, the mechanism can be used for external missions where it meets the requirements of EC humanitarian aid regulations and with financing from the humanitarian assistance budget.24 In November 2002 the Council declared that it had met or even exceeded the targets set in the four civilian priority areas (having already declared operationality in crisis management one year before) and by January 2003, the first ESDP operation, the EU Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUPM) had begun. While the progress made to date is to be welcomed, the approach falls far short of addressing what is really required for civilian crisis management. In many ways the EU has trailed conceptual and practical developments taking place in the UN and OSCE concepts and, so far at least, is not bringing the ‘added value’ to international crisis management that has been its clarion call from the start. Personnel Capabilities A basic structural problem has been the methodology for raising civilian capabilities. The four priority areas have been conceived of and negotiated separately (a ‘police’ mission, a ‘rule of law’ mission) rather than addressing them as part of a continuum of interdependent tasks. This has limited thinking about what is actually required. A police mission, for example, cannot function without a functioning rule of law and any police reform and assistance that is not accompanied - even preceded - by rule of law reforms, is doomed to failure as diverse examples of international police reform in Bosnia, Haiti and El Salvador have shown. Similarly, and as the High Representative/EU Special Representative Lord Ashdown has highlighted in Bosnia, economic reconstruction and development can make no headway without a regulatory framework, institutions and rule-bound procedures.25 What is required is a much more integrated approach that establishes the rule of law as the framework within which police, judicial and penal experts work alongside civil administrators and human rights experts. A ‘package’ approach, bringing together different civilian components depending on the tasks identified on a case-by-case basis by mixed assessment teams, is what is needed. It is, in addition, also the way in which the UN system has been trying to develop. Already in 2000 the Brahimi Report called for a doctrinal shift in the use of civilian police and other rule of law elements.26 As a consequence, the UN Civilian Police Division now has a small judicial component.27 The limitations of the EU approach were evident from the outset in planning for the EUPM where, because of its ‘police’ identity as a mission, it was extremely difficult to incorporate civilian expertise (for example, financial, budget and management experts) 24 These regulations stipulate that humanitarian aid must be delivered on a need basis and cannot be subjected to political considerations. To that extent, the Commission argues that it is not a crisis management tool. 25 As reflected in the Ashdown slogan, ‘First justice, then jobs’. 26 United Nations, Letters dated 21 August 2000 from the Secretary-General to the President of the General Assembly and the President of the Security Council, UN doc. A/55/305-S/2000/809, 21 Aug. 2000. 27 A lawyer covering judicial reform and a penal management expert.

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into the mission. This was difficult both because of the resistance of many police personnel to the idea of ‘civilians’ being an important part of a police mission and because of the structure of the recruitment process in participating states, i.e. handled largely by the police authorities in EU countries. From a domestic context, civilian personnel capabilities are a particular challenge to provide because so many government authorities are involved: interior, justice and development in addition to the traditional external security-focused defence and foreign ministries. The administration and crucially, the funding, of civilian crisis management tasks must be divided between the different departments, a process that in the past, at least, tended to lead to bureaucratic in-fighting and delays. To this extent, civilian crisis management development carries significant practical consequences for domestic policies and practices in the EU, arguably much more than military crisis management. A second weakness of the methodology adopted is that resources committed on paper do not reflect the reality of what civilian capabilities the EU can actually bring to bear in a crisis management operation. It also provides little guidance in identifying specific civilian expertise. On paper, the EU has 72 judges available for deployment. But at any one time, each of these judges are in service in their domestic legal systems and there is no guarantee that they will be in a position to answer a call for international deployment. The fact that they deploy in a voluntary capacity - a fundamentally different consideration from that of a professional military - is also not captured in quantitative headline goals. Moreover, capacity in civilian crisis management is not interchangeable to the same extent as within the military: a prosecutor specialized in domestic abuse is not equivalent to one with an expertise in organised crime. The rosters of resources drawn up by the EU in civilian crisis management do not identify experts – despite the fact that the individuals involved would be included of their own volition and free to accept or decline requests for missions abroad.28 Yet this is the level of detail that is required to bring together the appropriate mix of expertise on short notice for crisis mission activities. To that extent, therefore, the numbers committed by EU states remain only indicators of the total amount of individuals they would be prepared to fund and support for external crisis management tasks, some of whom may already be deployed to crisis management operations. Thus when the second EU police mission, PROXIMA, was launched, personnel recruitment proved just as much a challenge as it traditionally has for UN civilian police (CivPol) operations. The mission, mandated as 180 police officers, began operations in December 2003 with a goal to be at full strength two months into the operation. By February 2004, however, PROXIMA still faced a personnel shortfall of 30%. EUPM, considerably larger at almost 500 police personnel, is experiencing increasing difficulty in filling posts with every rotation of personnel. This difficulty, again, reflects, domestic constraints within EU Member States. In contrast to the military, the civilians often required for crisis management operations are usually in short supply and high demand at home. The stable space that is Europe means that

28 The OSCE REACT system has the same difficulty, which they have tried to get around through developing different profiles of the types of expertise required in each field. For more on REARCT see, Van Santen, H., ‘The Istanbul Summit – A moderate success’, Helsinki Monitor, vol. 11, no. 1 (2000), pp. 8-10.

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armies are not required for domestic duties on a full time, permanent basis. Civilian capacity is much more conditional and, to date, states have been reluctant to lend out much-needed police, judges and civil experts. Moreover, for the individuals themselves, there is usually little career or social incentive for external service. These personnel are rooted in local systems, trained and employed to work – usually - in a domestic context and are rarely ‘internationalised’. Much can and should be done within EU member states to a) internationalise the cultures of professions such police, judicial, correctional, civil administrators and social work and offer incentives for service in EU crisis management b) provide training for international service abroad29 and c) explore interoperability among experts working in similar relevant fields. Yet for real progress to be made in civilian capacity for crisis management, new personnel must be raised. This could be envisaged at the national and/or European level. At the national level, member states could undertake to expand overall police forces by, say, 5%. A more realistic approach, however, might be for each member state to recruit a smaller additional number but to earmark a cadre of between 30-200 police officers (depending on size/population of state) for international crisis management. This cadre would receive regular and international policing training (which could include specialised training in public order and crowd control, refugee protection, dealing with traumatised victims, war crimes, police training and institutional development issues) and would commit to participate in a minimum of two EU crisis management operations during their career. When not in service abroad, these officers could either serve in the domestic force(s) or, alternatively, work within the bureaucratic structures as advisers and planners to foreign, justice, interior or defence ministries or as consultants to development assistance actors (e.g., the growing number of police and security sector reform advisers working for UK DFID and non-governmental organizations such as Saferworld) on the understanding of the potential for rapid deployment. At the European level, France has raised a proposal for a European gendarmerie.30 Although the limited participation potential of this proposal is bound to raise problems for some states (not least over who pays for it), such a gendarme would open the possibility of a rapidly deployable EU police force in crisis situations and merits serious consideration. A second, more limited option, is the creation of a small professional EU leadership capacity, based in the ESDP structures in Brussels and capable of taking on, at short notice, leadership roles of a civilian mission or element. While SG/HR Solana has suggested that after the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) attention will have to look at the issue of the creation of a permanent and professional core staff for civilian crisis management, there has been little (public) development of what that might comprise.31

29 A number of national and EU level civilian expert training initiatives are underway, see background paper prepared for the Study Group by Sarah Cussen. 30 Made at the EU Defence Ministers meeting on 17 Nov. 2003. 31 For an overview of the opposing positions of the Commission and the Council Secretariat on how civilian planning and mission support capacities should be developed, see ISIS/Tappert, M. ’Developing civilian crisis management capabilities, European Security Review, no. 20, December 2003.

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Although the discussion above focuses on police personnel, elements are applicable to rule of law and civil administration specialists. While the bulk of this expertise will remain located within national state structures, it is easier to conceive of professional European cadres in these fields. The Commission has been developing rosters of non-state experts available for potential short and mid term emergency relief and assistance that, contrary to the Council priority area rosters, include names and details of the individuals.32 Were EU civilian crisis management to have such a roster among its capacities, it would mark a real advance on current and past practice in the UN and OSCE. It could conceivably be supplemented by Member State-supported schemes whereby civil servants, public prosecutors, judges, etc., could sign up to the list for a specific time period (2-4 years) on the basis that their government authorities would a) give them leave to service in operations overseas and b) continue to provide their salary (this would, in essence, be secondment). Another potential option is the notion of a European voluntary corps, paralleling the UN volunteer service.33 Although a potential valuable addition to civilian crisis management, such a corps, unless narrowly defined, would be inevitably limited in its degree of technical expertise and professional know-how. What it could bring is capacity to expand crisis management efforts among the local community and help address a wider range of tasks (social support, community engagement and support). The bulk of such a voluntary corps could be based on younger Europeans (e.g., graduates etc) and offer a mechanism through which a wider European public could engage with EU external action. A permanent core staff would be required to lead and support any corps. The creation of EU-level personnel capacity raises fundamental questions for the financing, training, management and accountability of such personnel – questions that have, to date, not been addressed. EU member states deploying individuals to EU crisis management operations assume responsibility for funding, training and, ultimately, discipline of seconded personnel. The small number of non-seconded civilian personnel recruited to EU operations is financed out of the mission’s budget, receives no pre-deployment training and is accountable, ultimately, to local laws. While the Commission has sought, through its roster of individual experts and framework agreements with non-governmental organisations (NGOs), to promote the use of non-state actors in the Union’s conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction activities, it has not taken significant steps to develop non-state actor capacities for crisis management. Equipment and logistics capabilities Apart from gendarme type forces, civilian personnel come unequipped. Many civilian tasks do not require much heavy or specialised equipment but they do depend on a basic infrastructure – computers, cars, electricity generators, telephones, office supplies – that may either be destroyed or limited in availability. So far, EU civilian capacity

32 The profile of such experts is likely to be individuals who have moved from the state sector to work as (often highly paid!) consultants to EU assistance programmes (PHARE, TACIS, humanitarian, relief and development programmes) and who usually compete for EU contracts on the basis of winning tenders. 33 In 2001 the European Parliament proposed the creation of a European Civil Peace Corps, to be placed under the responsibility of the Commission. European Parliament reoslution on the Commission Communication on Conflict Prevention, doc. no. A5/0394/2001.

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development has paid almost no attention to this issue – in part because CFSP budget funding for civilian crisis management operations is intended to cover start up and common costs. The EUPM and PROXIMA experiences have shown that under the current Community financing system, the shortest possible time in which operation procurement and delivery can take place is between 6-9 months.34

A number of options exist and all are required if the EU is to make good on its commitment to operationality.35 1) The establishment of standing start-up kits. The UN holds start up kits of key transport and communications equipment at its base in Brindisi while the OSCE has made some arrangements for standby equipment (held in a warehouse in Vienna). No such EU capabilities are even under discussion at present. 2) Pooled cooperation between coalitions of EU states, for example, cooperation between Scandinavian countries for civil emergencies or standardised equipment pooled between countries with gendarme-type forces. This could enable burden sharing in equipment raising and logistics and, thereby, contribute to interoperability between civilian actors. 3) Civilian use of military assets in EU civilian operations and the provision of military support in logistics and equipment in complex EU operations. Joint planning and coordination are, clearly, central to this. 4) Subcontracting to private companies for provision of equipment and logistical support. This is not only a longstanding element in US crisis management but also a growing feature of UN operations. While the administration of subcontracting lies with the Commission under community competence (and as such, subject to EC tendering procedures) and may often be answered best by local contractors on the ground, rapid capability requirements raise the question of whether framework contracts might be envisaged for the provision of equipment and/or logistical support (e.g., Ericsson for telecommunications). The question of subcontracting, inevitably, raises the question of private security companies – not least given the safety considerations involved for civilian actors. Where civilians operate alongside the military in an EU operation, the task of their protection might be expected to fall within the military’s mandate. In an EU civilian-only operation, however, safety is a consideration. The EU has already availed of the option of private security contractors for the provision of bodyguards to the head of EUPM. The questions of accountability, transparency and administration this raises are important. To date, however, this issue does not appear to have come on the EU crisis management radar or, for that matter, the EC development one.36

Planning capabilities A large part of the reason why the development of EU civilian capabilities has taken place in such an ‘un-joined up’ fashion has been due to the absence of an EU strategic planning capacity for civilian crisis management. The insistence on an intergovernmental

34 Council of the European Union General Secretariat and European Commission, ‘Lessons from the planning of the EU Police Mission in Bosnia Herzegovina (EUPM), Autumn 2001 – December 2002’, 11206/03, Brussels, 14 July 2003. 35 The proposals here are taken from my presentation to the seminar on EU Security Strategy: Coherence and Capabilities in Stockholm, 20 October 2003. 36 Responses by Commissioner Nielsen at a meeting in Stockholm, 13 May 2004.

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approach to ESDP has made crisis management capability committee-bound. Committees such as the PSC, CIVCOM and the politico-military group are staffed overwhelmingly by professional diplomats. Many of them have no direct operational experience and, in some cases, little background in multilateral crisis management. In many cases, delegates on EU committees have little idea of parallel activities – in UN, OSCE or NATO crisis management. There is often duplication between the committees and a lack of regular exchange. The risk of reinvention of the crisis management wheel is high in Brussels. Civilian crisis capabilities have been further hampered by the perception that this is less of an expert-led field than the military. Whereas the establishment of a sizeable military staff (134) was one of the first steps undertaken in the military capability’s development, it took a year for agreement to be reached on the establishment of a police planning structure and then only on a restricted basis. In the summer of 2001 a police unit of seven seconded police officers was set up within the civilian crisis management directorate of the Council Secretariat – itself comprised initially of seconded diplomats and Council fonctionnaires. Not before the second half of 2003 was there formal recognition of the need for EU mission planning and support capacity with the Secretariat although at a level less than that proposed by SG/HR Solana. In early 2004 recruitment of 12 new civilian experts to the Secretariat began of which only 3 of which were permanent posts (the remaining 9 were to be seconded by Member States).37 In December 2003, agreement was reached on a new civil-military planning cell in the Secretariat and this marks an important step toward the professionalisation of EU crisis management planning. If it is to succeed, however, it will need to be robust and also balanced. The relative size difference between the EU Military Staff and civilian crisis management component, and the fact that the planning cell is to be based within the military staff itself, suggests that the balance may be already heavily tilted in the military direction. Building civilian capabilities through coordination It has become a cliché to state that the added value that the EU brings to global security is the range of instruments, military and non-military it has at its disposal. In theory, this is true but in practice, it has been avoided. The most crucial and difficult prerequisite to making good EU’s commitment to providing non-military tools and a genuinely integrated crisis management capacity is improved coordination between civilian capabilities and two distinct constituencies: the military and the humanitarian/ development arms of ESDP. Civil-military coordination requires ambitious and comprehensive approaches if it is to break the moulds of Member States’ national patterns. However, it is arguably in the area of civil-civil coordination that the most significant challenges lie for effective EU civilian crisis management capabilities.

37 Documents dealing with the development of the Secretariat’s mission planning and support capacity are not publicly available. However, unreferenced details of the Secretariat’s proposal and the Commission’s (negative) response are given in, Gourlay C. ’Feasibility Study on the European Civil Peace Corps’ International Security Information Service (ISIS) , accessible at URL http://www.isis-europe.org.

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Civil-military coordination38

The challenge of coordination between the military and civilian elements of crisis management has been a predominant theme throughout the 1990s and the evolution of peacekeeping into what is often called ‘complex peace operations’ or ‘second-generation peacekeeping’.39 The interrelationship between the military and civil is usually characterized as one between distinct entities with the military providing support and backup to the civilian presence in the field. This support is grounded in the military’s ability to wield overwhelming force.40 Thus the military are the principal providers of the secure environment that is usually regarded as a prerequisite to civilian crisis management efforts. The mandate of an international military presence usually includes responsibility for the security of international civilian staff and military logistics, equipment and communications’ capacities usually provide essential enabling and back-up support to civilian elements in multilateral peace operations. It is only relatively recently that policy and research attention has focused on the military-civilian relations in peace operations as a joint operation and begun to address what an integrated approach might imply. In the EU context, civil-military coordination (CMCO, in EU parlance) has been acknowledged as an area to be addressed and an Action Plan on the subject was introduced in October 2002.41 This grew out of the experience of the first crisis management exercise, CME02, which demonstrated a substantial number of shortcomings in civil-military coordination problems. The thrust of the Action Plan, however, was not on integrated planning and operational capabilities so much as on the development of formal guidelines for internal coordination across the conflict phase (with particular emphasis on who is the lead actor in what phase).42 To some extent, this reflects a wider civil-military cooperation culture in which mutual respect combined with healthy distance, has been a dominant theme.43 Coordination at the EU level is also made complicated by multiple different national civil-military cultures which often manifest very different approaches to cooperation with the police (gendarme or civilian) and the substance of the relationship between the military and external civil actors (often termed CIMIC). The lack of a common model for civil-military coordination in crisis management potentially offered an opportunity for innovative thinking on integrated civil-military crisis management. 38 The question of joint information sharing is not discussed in this paper as this is addressed separately in the Study Group paper by Alex Rondos. 39 Berdal, M., ‘Ten Years of International Peacekeeping’, International Peacekeeping, vol. 10, no. 4 (Winter 2003), pp. 5-11. 40 Hills, A., ’The inherent limits of military forces in policing peace operations’, International Peacekeeping, vol. 8, no. 3, Autumn 2001, pp, 79-98. 41 Copenhagen Council, 12-13 December 2002, ESDP presidency report: Action plan for the further strengthening of civil-military coordination in EU crisis management’, doc. 13480/1/02, 29 Oct. 2002. 42 Dwan, R. & Lachowski, Z., ’The military and security dimensions of the European Union’ in SIPRI Yearbook 2003 (OUP/SIPRI: Oxford, 2003). p. 224. 43 This is in part shaped by western approaches on the role of the military in democratic societies, especially the influential Huntington approach of the military isolated from power through its professionalisation, see Huntington, S., The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Practice of Civil-Military Relations (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1957).

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This has not turned out to be the case, however, for a number of reasons, not least the divide between the military and the ‘Eurocrats’. A walk through the headquarters in the Secretariat, where the military and civilian staffs are collocated feels different from the mixed NATO Secretariat in the same city. Partly it is an issue of time: ESDP structures are new and still developing. In part, however, it is also a question of dominance: in NATO the military is a much more predominant actor. In the EU, by contrast, it is the EU fonctionnaires that dominate the institutions along with, in ESDP at least, member states’ representatives. The complex and Byzantine world of EU policymaking encouraged the first round of officers to the EU Military Staff to retreat, somewhat, into the more familiar and logical world of military structures. This may have benefited intercultural cooperation within the military staff and may be important in helping the development of a future EU military culture. It has not, however, been particularly helpful in building close civil-military links in EU crisis management. Another practical constraint, touched on earlier, has been the size imbalance between the military and civil components in the Secretariat. This meant that the military were responsible for setting the framework and drafting the first texts for EU crisis management concepts and guidelines. Civilian input came later and did not generally result in a fundamental rethinking of the framework offered. Part of this problem was, again, who the civilians were. The lack of civilian crisis management experts meant there were little alternatives to the strategic planning approach put forward by the military. Added to this, of course, is the traditional reluctance of potentially relevant development experts (with emergency relief planning experience) to engage with the military – experts located primarily in the Commission. One of the first tasks that a joint civil-military planning cell might wish to undertake, therefore, is a review of core planning documents such as the Crisis Management Concept, CIMIC concept and CMCO concept. Addressing civil-military coordination in terms of crisis management functions, rather than in terms of conflict phases, might be one way in which a more integrated approach could be developed for EU operations. The draft ESDP training project for joint civil-military training has identified nine civil-military interfaces around which training modules will be developed.44 These include public order and organised crime, border security, DDR, civilian protection, elections, intelligence, security provision to humanitarian actors, transportation and telecommunications. Welcome as this is, it is important that a functional approach toward doctrine and training in civil-military coordination goes beyond traditional areas (provision of military equipment and logistics support and emergency evacuation to civilians) and addresses the full range of civilian crisis management tasks. This includes questions of cooperation in less traditional areas such as human trafficking, organized crime, witness protection and security sector reform which bring together a wide range of state and non-state expert actors. Again, the Balkans continues to prove the laboratory for the development of EU crisis management. SFOR and KFOR have been involved in ‘non-traditional’ tasks such as those identified above and it has been in these areas (e.g., raids on brothels or banks) that 44 A project being developed by the Folke Bernadotte Academy in Sweden. See also background paper prepared by Sarah Cussen.

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difficulties in civil-military coordination have been most acute.45 The EU is belatedly confronting operational civil-military coordination in preparation for its takeover of the international military presence in Bosnia at the end of 2004. Planning was deadlocked for weeks in the Spring of 2004, however, over the question of the role of the SFOR MSU – whether its function should remain restricted, primarily, to public order or whether it should take on a greater role in tackling organized crime – and, even more important, whether it should be under the control of EUPM, the military EU operation or a combination of both. It is inevitable that the transition of an operation from one organization to another will pose problems, given the fundamentally different natures of NATO and the EU. However, the fact that the EU takeover of SFOR has not prompted wider rethinking of the entire EU crisis management presence in Bosnia and the extent to which the military and various civilian elements can be integrated in a unified presence give some indication of the distance between civilian and military capabilities in ESDP. Training will be a key element in ensuring operational coordination. In order to maximise short training courses, however, planners may wish to assess a range of potential models for operational civil-military coordination. Joint military-police patrols in urban environments are one area in which the potential for common EU doctrines or standards might be useful. This could then pave the way for common training programmes (within, for example, the future European Security and Defence College envisaged in the European Convention). The fact that most EU militaries have significant Balkan experience suggests that models used in Bosnia and Kosovo, the latter based on the UK experience in Northern Ireland (in turn developed from British colonial counter-insurgency efforts in Malaysia) might be appropriate starting points for the development of an EU approach. The Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) concept underway in Afghanistan is a more comprehensive model of civil-military joint operations that might be suitable for unstable, disparate and/or rural environments although they are, largely, mono-national in composition.46 Moreover, the PRT concept appears to have developed in a fairly ad hoc way with significant differences in structure and operation between national teams. This type of scenario-based training allows diverse civil and military actors to bring their different experiences to address a common challenge rather than prescribing any single model. Joint training is likely to be the only way in which a commonly understood, genuinely unified body of theory and guidelines for integrated civil-military operations can be developed over the longer-term. Command and control remains, however, the thorniest issue in EU civil-military coordination. The military chain of command in EU operations is, currently, distinct and separate from the civilian side. An EUSR, if present, has no authority over the military command despite his/her being the leading political representative of the EU on the ground (the military commander takes political instruction from the PSC in Brussels). Given the political nature of any international intervention and the particular sensitivities of a context in which the EU is potentially represented by a variety of actors on the ground, it is important that an EUSR have some coordination role over all EU actors (in

45 See Hansen, op cit, and Perito, op cit. 46 Oakley, R. & Hammes, T., ’Securing Afghanistan: Entering a Make or Break Phase?, Strategic Forum, no. 205, March 2004.

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line with the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General’s authority in a UN operation). The link between the EUSR, as the senior EU civilian representative and the EU Force Commander is especially important. Liaison and coordination between them on all matters should not be left solely to the good sense and personalities of individuals: it is worth thinking about integrating the senior civilian actor into the military operation’s chain of command. Other steps which could facilitate an integrated approach include a) collocation of civil and military crisis management elements (probably not advisable for humanitarian/development actors) b) a joint political advisor unit c) joint reporting mechanisms to HQ and d) joint media office in the host country. However much progress the EU might make in increasing military-civilian coordination in crisis management, there are distinctions that must be taken into account. One of the most important of these may well be the extent of contact with local populations in conflict situations. The military, by and large, are trained for minimal contact with civil communities and, where deployed to a crisis, rarely tend to be in close proximity to the local population. Civilian experts, as noted already, are trained to work in a public, local context. This has practical consequences for crisis management contexts. In the EUPM and PROXIMA, for example, EU mission personnel live independently among the population (rented accommodation). This is rarely the case with the military. Even where the military comes into daily local contact with locals in its work (for example, refugee protection, urban patrolling etc), this takes place at the collective, as opposed to the individual, level. A degree of distance between the international military presence and the local population might be no bad thing – indeed, the lack of military uniforms on the streets may be a signal of a return to greater stability. At the same time, the presence of an EU civilian crisis management component should not be interpreted as a way of distancing the military from engagement with the populations they are there to assist. It is important, therefore, that CIMIC programmes be continued. In NATO-led operations, these are usually funded and run as national contingent projects.47 In an EU operation, commonly funded and administered EU programmes would be desirable, not least as they may help to encourage a common EU approach to military-civilian relations. During Operation Concordia in FYROM the European Agency for Reconstruction financed CIMIC activities and there is hope that the Commission might provide similar funding for CIMIC when the EU takes over SFOR. The EUFOR liaison teams that design and implement CIMIC should include relevant civilian crisis management capabilities. Civil-civil coordination In addition to ESDP crisis management capabilities, the EU has a wide range of possible instruments to address human security needs. Most of these are long term political, trade, development and cooperation assistance measures administered by the European Commission. In addition, the Commission also has civilian crisis instruments that can be employed on a short-term emergency basis (Annex B lists possible EC crisis actions and related instruments).48 However, cooperation between Community instruments and ESDP

47 Siegel, A., ’Associating development projects with military operations: Lessons from NATO’s first year in BiH, International Peacekeeping, vol. 8 no. 3, Autumn 2001, pp. 99-114. 48 EC Conflict Prevention and Crisis Management Unit, Civilian instruments for EU crisis management, April 2003.

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capabilities has been far from comprehensive, notwithstanding the current financing arrangements for civilian crisis management operations. At the strategic level, there is little linkage between Community assistance and the Union’s external priorities. The decision to launch EUPM in early 2002, for example, prompted no reassessment of the Commission’s funding and programmatic priorities in Bosnia or the wider region. Yet an essential objective of the Commission’s activities there (under the CARDS programme) is respect for democratic principles and the rule of law through i.a., institutional reform. The first joint meeting between CIVCOM and the EU Development Committee took place only in April 2004 and no institutionalised dialogue is yet in place between civilian crisis management and development structures in Brussels. Although the Commission administers the CFSP part of civilian crisis operations’ budgets, no fundamental assessment of what changes to contractual, funding, disbursement and procurement procedures are required for crisis management has, as yet, taken place. The effect of this institutional fencing off has been to separate rather than integrate, the EU’s broad range of non-military tools. The emphasis remains on distinguishing competences within the civilian area and this is often played out in debates over state versus non-government instruments/expertise and crisis management versus longer-term development policies and tools, with the intergovernmental Council pressing in the former and the Commission staking its claim to the latter. To some extent, the lack of coordination in EU external action is a function of bureaucratic politics and may be mitigated by strong leadership and good communication within the Commission and between it and the Council. Efforts at better coordination at the strategic level have been initiated through regular reviews of the coherence of EU’s external policies and instruments. Explicit focus could be developed on coherence between EU development assistance and EU crisis management activities in a given context. At the more practical level, crisis management planning could be facilitated by the incorporation of specific EC development personnel/expertise into the civil-military planning cell. This could be done on a case-specific basis according to the particular state/region under consideration. Another important step in EU crisis management planning would be the incorporation of conflict impact assessment analyses into generic and specific scenario planning, an approach with which many development experts are familiar. The constitutional reforms proposed in the draft European Convention, notably the appointment of a European foreign minister and the creation of a Joint European External Action Service might, over time, mitigate further the structural barriers to a coherent EU external policy. This integration process, in itself, however, will be an enormous challenge. Many of the practical coordination challenges take place at the operational level. In the EU operations that have taken place to date in the Balkans, the biggest challenge has been the sheer number of different EU actors on the ground. There is growing recognition of the merits to all parties of a more coordinated and visible EU presence and semi- formalized arrangements such as regular EU Heads of Missions meetings in BiH, Kosovo and FYROM (and elsewhere). While coordination, as opposed to subordination, remains the order of the day, the idea that the EU Special Representative, where present, should organise and chair meetings of EU operational actors is gaining ground. Such coordination is particularly important in terms of the articulation and maintenance of a

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common EU position to the host authorities and in relation to crisis management efforts. In FYROM weekly meetings of EU operational representatives were initiated by former EUSR Alexis Brouhns in 2002 and look likely to be established in BiH under Lord Ashdown as EU prepares to take over the NATO-led SFOR military operation.49 Colocation of EU crisis management actors with the Commission delegation in a country is another option being explored in Bosnia: in volatile situations or where infrastructure is very weak, it may be a necessity. A third area where the merits of coordination are obvious is in media reporting and campaigns targeted at public opinion. The proposed common external service provides potential grounds for improving the chain of command between EUSRs and Commission delegations. Beyond intra-EU bureaucratic struggles, however, there are genuine questions to be raised as to where the boundaries of civilian crisis management can and should lie. The increased willingness of multilateral and individual actors to forcibly intervene in states and to assume responsibility for the administration of governance has introduced to crisis management tasks and functions that previously tended to be classified within the framework of humanitarian and development assistance. In many ways, this is to be welcomed as part of a growing understanding of the roots of conflict and the requirements of sustainable peace. Yet there are some within the humanitarian and development communities who view this with apprehension. Civilian crisis management, for some, is a further step in the blurring of security and development – a linkage that runs the risk of politicising aid and removing the focus away from longer-term people-centred poverty alleviation.50 This concern is all the more real given the short time perspective of crisis management – Haiti is only one recent example of the errors of overly optimistic assumptions as to what can be done to build sustainable peace in a crisis management context. The development of civilian crisis management must start with an acknowledgement of the limitations of external state-building and focus on what the essential prerequisites for human security in a crisis or immediate post-conflict context. These are the (re)establishment of the basic structures and functions of the state and the framework of governance in which civil society can develop and be sustained.51 Longer-term development policies and instruments are essential to help sustain these basic structures and, according to this perspective, involve instruments and policies that are distinct from civilian crisis management tools (police, rule of law, civilian administration and civil administrators). Civil-civil coordination in this context is about acknowledging the centrality of a longer-term approach and putting in place a framework that allows this perspective to be taken on board from the outset of a crisis management operation, rather than at the end. This approach would go some way to addressing the concerns of the development community and also to ensuring that the development of EU civilian crisis 49 It is complicated in Bosnia given Ashdown’s dual role a High Representative and EU Special Representative. 50 For example, Macrae J. & Harmer A (eds) Humanitarian Policy Group Report, Humanitarian action and the ’global war on terror’: a review of trends and issues, HPG Report 14, July 2003. Many in the Commission share this view: see the tentative Commission Communication on Governance and Development COM(2003)615, October 2003. 51 A point made by Kaldor M., Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (Polity: Cambridge, 2003) p. 132.

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management does not duplicate capacities already existing among European development actors. At the same time, it would also be an important step in recognising the need for a more ‘joined up’ approach between EU crisis management and development instruments at all phases of the conflict cycle. Cooperation between EU civilian crisis management actors and longer-term development programmes is particularly important in the area of mission programme planning. Preparations for civilian crisis operations will require at least one assessment mission, in which the appropriate Commission expert should be part. The elaboration of the substance of mission activities, however, will take place on the ground and the projects initiated, whatever the field, will set the framework for longer-term reform and development. This is vital for complex areas such as refugee protection and return, disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR), border management and security sector reform. It is important, therefore, that Commission field delegations are brought into that process. Buy-in could also be explored through earmarked crisis management operation support funds intended to facilitate the implementation of the mission’s mandate and the putting in place of a framework that would allow a smooth transition from crisis management activities to longer-term development activities.52 Finally, the termination of EU crisis management operations and the possible transition of programmes and activities to longer-term EU actors require substantial preparation (EUPM, for example, is scheduled to end in December 2005). The UN, for its part, has been putting considerable focus on how transitions from peace operations can be better managed – the EU has yet to address the issue comprehensively (although some experience was gained in the follow-up to Operation Artemis in DRC).53

Finally, the emphasis on distinguishing civilian crisis management from development instruments should not undercut the EU’s potential for conflict prevention action. This would be to undercut the potential for civilian crisis management and runs contrary to the emphasis on preventive engagement of the EU Security Strategy. Civilian crisis management capabilities are, this paper has argued, uniquely placed to contribute to vulnerable pre-conflict situations. They are not as intrusive as military tools and can be a way of engaging with weak and failing states in a manner that offers carrots as much as sticks. At the same time, they are more assertive than the EU development assistance tools (political dialogue, sanctions) that have repeatedly failed to impact on crisis situations in countries as diverse as Belarus, Zimbabwe, Haiti and Cote d’Ivoire in recent years. Thus while it is important to acknowledge and address the overlap between short-term and longer-term conflict management and development, the framework for civilian crisis management should avoid a too narrow and rigid definition. Conclusion 52 The Commission earmarked a small amount of CARDS funds for EUPM-support related activities in BiH and for CIMIC activities in Operation Concordia. An example might be Commission-funded training courses for senior police or judges that have been identified by the crisis management operation as potential leaders. 53 UN, Report of the Secretary-General, ’No exit without strategy: Security Council decision-making and the closure or transition of UN peacekeeping operations’, UN doc. S/2001/394, 20 April 2001. Council of the European Union, Council Conclusions on Operation Artemis, 12784/03, 24 Sept. 2003.

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Civilian crisis management is, in essence, an instrument for international actors to help create the structures and capacities that enable the state to provide for the security and safety of its population. It is not a ‘soft’ option for intervention but a fundamental element in building a sustainable peace. Civilian crisis management represents a new way of thinking about, organising and conducting international efforts to prevent and address conflict, an approach that is centred not on the application of overwhelming military force, but rather, on the provision of security and safety to the citizens of a state through a human rights-based rule of law. It is thus an area where the EU can add to, rather than duplicate, existing multilateral and national crisis management tools. This very newness poses challenges. At the national level, civilian crisis management puts new demands on government structures and authorities and blurs traditional distinctions between external and domestic-oriented institutions and policies. At the EU level, it raises questions about the sustainability of the current EU institutional separation between the intergovernmental ESDP and the Community’s external and development assistance policies and programmes. These challenges pose substantive issues, not least over who provides the resources, where their financing is to come from and what are the contexts for their engagement. This chapter has argued that the EU has, to date, been slow to grasp the significance of its commitment to civilian crisis management and less than ambitious in its development of civilian capabilities. Substantive improvement requires a rethinking both of how civilian crisis management capabilities are to be developed and the resources that are required. As a first step, the civilian Headline Goals should be revised with the emphasis on an integrated approach to civilian tools. Flexible, needs based case-by-case assessment should guide the provision of EU civilian crisis management capacities, incorporating all elements of police, rule of law, civilian administration and civil protection.54 In addition, the EU’s concept of civilian capabilities should be expanded beyond a technical approach to the administration of state services after conflict and include capacities to address social needs. These include capacities in human rights, community building and reconciliation processes. Greater emphasis on an integrated approach is also required in coordination with the military dimension as well as the longer-term development dimension of EU activities. This coordination, this chapter suggests, might be best organised around functional areas, such as DDR, and needs to take place at the strategic and operational level. At the strategic level, the proposed joint civil-military planning cell represents an important opportunity to begin integrated planning for operations and requires additional civilian experts to fill positions. Given that the only civilian capacity that has been institutionalised so far in the Council Secretariat is a small police unit, experts in the rule of law, civilian administrators and human rights are particularly required. The need to bring development expertise and perspectives, particularly conflict impact assessment analyses capacities, into the cell, is important. Coordination with development actors is, 54 At the time of writing the EU was about to agree an Action Plan for civilian aspects of ESDP that may well go some way to overcoming this segregated approach.

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in addition, particularly important at the level of mission programme planning, so as to ensure that the activities of any crisis management operation assist and facilitate longer development goals. It is, moreover, a prerequisite to successful transition from a crisis management operation to sustainable peace building. At the operational level, areas for improved civil-military and civil-civil coordination include information sharing, joint media and press policies and collocation, as well as integrated chains of command. Ultimately, a genuinely capable EU civilian crisis management requires increased resources – personnel, equipment and financial. Civilian crisis management depends heavily on personnel seconded from EU Member States, personnel that are in short supply. Their effective and timely deployment requires national states to increase their numbers and also the incentives for service abroad, so as to make it a feasible option for individuals who voluntarily elect to participate in an operation. At the EU level, a basic core professional staff in the Council Secretariat is the minimum required to enable mission planning and support as well as to provide a core leadership capacity for rapid deployment and mission start up. The provision of Commission fonctionnaires (seconded or on leave of absence) to this staff could be a valuable way of bringing in technical, budgetary and/or country-specific expertise. A third area, so far underexploited, is the engagement of non-state experts in civilian crisis management. Their participation could be explored in a variety of ways including through the Commission’s rosters of experts, engagement with non-governmental organisations and, more ambitiously, through the establishment of a civilian voluntary-type corps. Personnel capacity is the central challenge to effective civilian capability but equipment and logistic capabilities are also important. In cases where military and civilian capacities are simultaneously engaged, military logistics can be expected to provide support to civilian actors. This cannot be relied upon in all cases, however, and this paper has set out some options that might be explored to enable civilian capabilities to deploy with some degree of speed and effectiveness. In the end, however, improvements in this area will depend as much upon the political will of EU member states to address the financing of civilian crisis management as upon the EU’s willingness to increase the overall budget for Common Foreign and Security Policy and better coordination between structures in Brussels. The implication of all this is that the EU civilian crisis management will be dependent on strong political will from Member States. This in turn will influence where the EU undertakes civilian crisis management and the type of commitments it is willing to countenance. Substantial EU-led operations may be limited to those parts of the world in which the EU is prepared to countenance a substantial and sustained intervention; to parts of the world in which European state models and political cultures are not unfamiliar; and to situations in which individuals are prepared to serve in (i.e., a degree of stability). In other areas and contexts, however, EU civilian crisis management engagement may be limited to a supportive role to a UN or regional organisation peace operation or to a host state. Examples of this might include rapid assessment or monitoring teams, training functions, individual or small advisory teams, provision of concepts, guidelines, information, many of which might be limited to a specific time period. Civilian crisis

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management, this paper has argued, is a flexible tool and can accommodate a wide variety of contexts and functions. However, if this is to be realised in practice, considerable further thinking needs to be given to political issues, such as chains of command for EU civilian crisis management contributions to operations undertaken by the UN or regional organisations (e.g. OSCE) or mechanisms by which EU civilian crisis management can be employed in preventive contexts with the assent of a host state. Finally, as this paper has argued, civilian crisis management is about the functioning of the state and its relation to its citizens. The EU, inevitably, brings to this a cultural and historical-laden vision of the democratic and functioning state. The model may be a relatively flexible but it is founded on western European ideas about the state and its relationship to its citizens. The EU has not shied away from describing itself as a system of values and principles. Putting this into practice, however, means negotiating domestic support for civilian crisis management within the EU and also among the local populations in the countries in which EU civilian crisis capabilities are employed. These challenges are not particular to the civilian dimensions of crisis management but they are highlighted to a far greater degree here than in the military dimension. Capability development in this area has yet to even begin.

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