An initiative of the National Academy of Public Administration, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, Princeton University Oral History Program Series: Policing Interview no.: B6 Interviewee: Graham Muir Interviewer: Arthur Boutellis Date of Interview: 15 January 2008 Location: Ottawa Canada Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties BOUTELLIS: My name is Arthur Boutellis. I'm an interviewer with the Institutions for Fragile States at Princeton University. I am now sitting with Graham Muir Nikita at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Office headquarters, Gendarmerie Royale du Canada, in Ottawa, Canada. Today's date is the 15th of January 2008. Graham, thanks for your time first. Before starting the interview can you please confirm that you've read, understood, and signed both the informed consent and the release forms? MUIR: I read them, understood them and signed them both. BOUTELLIS: I'd like to start the interview by learning a little bit more about your personal background, the job you held before and how did you start getting involved in policing work overseas? MUIR: Do you want all of my background or just a paraphrased version of where I've been in the last 32 years. BOUTELLIS: That would be good; we'll get into more details of your U.N. mission. MUIR: I have been a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for some 32 years now. Not unlike a lot of members of our organization I joined young, in my case 1975. I did a variety of uniformed police and then plainclothes investigative work in our province of British Columbia, in a place called Surrey and then subsequently was transferred back to Ontario here and the Ottawa Valley. I've done a variety of federal enforcement work over my service relating to national security investigations, commercial crime investigations. I've had the opportunity to do a couple of stints actually off of operations; we call it staff work at national headquarters in our strategic policy and planning area. I have short-term operational secondments to police of local jurisdiction including the Ottawa police. I would characterize myself, when I first became aware of and interested in international policing, and that actually for the record was early 1990s. In effect Canada's first opportunity to do that sort of work was Namibia in 1989. I was a much younger fellow then; I would have been a sergeant with not quite 20 years of service. I did not go to Namibia although there was a small contingent that was selected, I wasn't one of the lucky ones, but I did draw the long straw when it came to our early deployments to the former Yugoslavia in 1993. I would characterize that as Canada's, the Canadian police's first sort of robust deployment. I almost said post conflict, but there was an active civil war in progress when we arrived there as part of the United Nations' Protection Force or UNPROFOR. Our participation there started in '92. I was on probably the third rotation in 1993. But the question you asked is how did I get involved and the answer simply is I just was very interested, intrigued and curious about it and I fashioned myself very lucky. Mathematically the odds are not in favor, even to this day, of anybody, regardless of their expressed interest having an opportunity. I was selected for a contingent of about 45 in 1993 and that was my first experience. At the rank of staff sergeant at that time I followed myself as a station commander in a monitoring environment. I'll leave it at that for the moment, in the former Yugoslavia, Croatia in particular. That mission was, for us at the time, it was a six-month deployment. I went on to do a variety of policing services between then and 2005. In the interim, because I was interested, I stayed, although not dedicated by employment, I stayed involved with our RCMP in-service training of U.N. police officers and I became affiliated with the Pearson Peacekeeping Center in its early days. I have contributed to its agenda over these many years. In fact, I'm proud to say I'm still associated with the Pearson Peacekeeping Center. Anyway 2005-6 I was asked whether I would stand as a candidate for the police commissioner in Haiti for MINUSTAH (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti). In any event I was successful in the rites of passage and I spent one year in Haiti as the U.N. police commissioner, 2005-06 and 2006. I'm going to lose track of the dates. I think I came back in September 2006. BOUTELLIS: OK, I'd like to start asking you about your latest involvement with a U.N. mission, with MINUSTAH 2005-2006 that you mentioned. Can you give us your own description of the history of the mission, the goals and the objectives, when you got there and what was the status of public order and crime in general when you got to Haiti and maybe how it evolved over that one year span. MUIR: That particular mission, and of course, there were several U.N. missions that preceded MINUSTAH was stood up in 2005. The first year of the mission had taken place. Chief Superintendent David Beer, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was the first commissioner. I replaced him in August or September 2005 and then returning a year later in 2006. The context of that mission effectively was first to reestablish a modicum of public security. There was a transitional government in place, provide for sufficient security that national elections could be undertaken, execute that part of the mission, free, fair elections, and concurrent with those two broad thrusts of the mission, to undertake institutional reform of the Haitian national police. Specifically to articulate, draft, or commence the enactment of a Haitian National Police reform plan. In broad strokes those three features would have characterized my mandate as the U.N. Police Commissioner pursuant to the Security Council resolutions of the United Nations at that time. To characterize the mission, that island populated by some 8 million people, 2.5 million of those Haitian folk resident in the urban area of Port-Au-Prince and then out into the regions in smaller urban communities. The economy, the national economy, in ruin, subsistence agriculture. No effective base for commerce other than what you might typically expect to find in that kind of an environment. Public security apparatus provided by an indigenous Haitian National Police, I'll probably go on more to elaborate on it, but in pretty sad state. The mission for the U.N. police provided for-it was first of all an armed mission, suggesting that the police officers actually carried sidearms. Roughly, at any given time, under establishment by 25 or 30% but with a complement of upwards of 1,800 to 2,000 U.N. police officers notwithstanding the vacancy rate. I would say big numbers, 800 U.N. police officers in terms of individual contributors representing 38 contributing countries. Then 1000, a complement of 1,000 comprised of what the U.N. refers to as formed police units, or the FPUs. That effectively was the enforcement arm of the police mission. The formed police units, or FPUs, deploying at unit strength. Military would describe that at or about company strength, three platoons. A typical FPU would number at or about 125 to 150. They brought the tools of public order commensurate with the U.N. policy and that would include armored personnel carriers, light armored vehicles, some weaponry, not heavy, but sticks and shields and gas and a capacity to deploy, to effectively execute riot control, tactical troop, public order, if not in support, in place of the Haitian National Police. The role of the formed police units at that time, and I suspect it is still the case, is effectively to ensure that public order is kept, or, in that case was kept and specifically in anticipation of demonstrations, public disorder related to the running of the national elections. That U.N. mission, of course, was comprised not just of police, there was a large military component numbering-I'm losing track of my mind these days-I would say, at or about, depending on the ebb and flow, 5,000 military. Of course there was a civilian pillar of the mission that executed civil affairs, humanitarian, UNDP (United Nations Development Program) and, not surprisingly, a component of elections people. That would have characterized the mission, all reporting to the SRSG (Special Representative of the Secretary General). BOUTELLIS: When you were first deployed to Haiti, had you received any records from your predecessor? Was there some kind of hand over? Another side to this question, was there any pre-training from the part of the U.N. before you got out to the mission? MUIR: The answer to the last question was no. The induction part of the mission for me was effectively taking receipt of intelligence briefs here in Canada, specifically from our military. There were briefings provided also by our own international police support unit here. I had one or two rather brief visits with senior officials of our foreign affairs department. The rites of passage in New York effectively were with regard to selection. So there was an interview process. At or about the time that they determined that I was a suitable candidate, I received, although no specific briefing from the United Nations, I did, and I was pleased actually, to take receipt of a fairly extensive set of briefings from the American government actually, their foreign services USAID, other elements of their federal government who were actors or represented actors on the field in Haiti at the time. To be any more specific than that, of my own initiative, I was able to accompany a small court of senior military officers who were doing a reconnaissance in Haiti. Having never been there, I simply benefited by an opportunity to tag along. I did that even before I undertook the interview process in New York. I did that to inform myself. So I had an opportunity to spend some days on the field with the incumbent police commissioner, David Beer. When I was actually named to the post, not the United Nations, but Canada provided for my arrival in mission a week early, effectively a week preceding the departure of David Beer so that I might spend a structured week in mission with him effectively just shadowing and being mentored in terms of the intricacies of the post of police commissioner. The United Nations not surprisingly and typically does not provide for any crossover or any transition, which is in my view a systemic failing of the United Nations, but we'll come to that later. BOUTELLIS: Just really quickly, you came back over a year ago. Did any of the lessons learned from this transition lead to you doing things differently when you handed over to your successor? MUIR: You mean when I handed over to my successor in Haiti? BOUTELLIS: Yes. MUIR: Interesting question, the short answer is no, because my successor hadn't been named before I departed. Now, by way of just a brief explanation, and we really wouldn't want to have to belabor this, in all deference and respect, the United Nations and DPKO (Department of Peacekeeping Operations) in particular I think take their role quite seriously in terms of the identification, long list and short list of executive officers, both military and police in these missions. So I don't-I just want to be clear, I think that they take their job seriously. I think they need to take more seriously how they actually affect transitions so that there is continuity held on the field. In my particular case, and I dare say it is characteristic, there was no transition. They could not, and quite frankly seemed completely-they didn't seem particularly interested in meeting any particular diary dates that would have provided for transition. As it turned out, it was probably two to three months after my departure that they actually named my successor. By way of explanation and it is only and best explained by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, it's a highly politicized process. In other words, there has to be a representativeness of contributing countries at least canvassed for senior positions in these missions. My transition was no different. While it might have been a Canadian, there was no indication that it had to be and, in fact, it turned out that it wasn't. I was literally off the field for at least two months, probably three, having left my de facto Deputy Commissioner of Operations, a senior French gendarme officer as acting. He effectively held down the police post of acting commissioner while they sought a new replacement. BOUTELLIS: Now we can move to the technical areas, as we're talking now about the process of reforming the indigenous police as in Haiti again. I'd like to start by asking you about possible recruiting strategies, if you were involved in that side of the police reform work in Haiti. MUIR: Yes. BOUTELLIS: Was there designing recruitment strategies, because you just mentioned that you were involved in the drafting of the Haitian National Police reform plan, or the actual recruiting itself? MUIR: Both. The Haitian National Police, historically you know the ebb and flow, the size of that organization has gone from shy of a thousand to upwards of 5,000. If my recollection serves me, they were at about 3,005 while I was there and trying to push beyond 5,000, closer to 7,000 as fairly aggressive and I would suggest optimistic benchmark for the future. But at 3,005, and quite honestly they never really were able to account or count all the police officers. They had many of them that were actually on the nominal roll or the payroll, but they actually weren't there. So that's a whole other story. But we were able to not just assist but facilitate the hiring en masse of two rotations of recruits to the Haitian National Police. That was, I think, notwithstanding the difficulties of the moment, a fairly well executed exercise. Just in terms of identification, marshalling-the provision of security so that young Haitian men and women could actually write the exam. Then the processing of that documentation of the successful roster of candidates. That became sort of the induction process or the induction mechanism for the Haitian National Police Academy at the time. So yes, the short answer is we were involved in the recruiting of the Haitian police. BOUTELLIS: You said it was a rather successful initiative. Can you give us some specific examples? Especially, you mentioned ghost workers, the process of retiring ghost workers and how were the new recruits vetted and so on. Can you go into more details? MUIR: I can, but I missed the first part of the question. BOUTELLIS: There were really two questions, sorry. There's one component, you mentioned the issue of ghost workers. Was there an initiative to retire these? Then the second part of the question was, more broadly in the recruitment process what was the vetting system. MUIR: Thank you, I've got it now. I think the key word is vetting so I'll come back to that. During my tenure in the mission, we were successful in terms of assisting the Haitian National Police with their own due diligence to effectively identify and then deny any of those, I would say for the most part, those individuals who heretofore had been members of the Haitian National Police, but were no longer. Even had they been drawing salary, there were efforts made to identify them and effectively sever that connection. I'm allowing for the fact I never once in my entire tenure there delved into the level of detail to the extent that I was flipping through lists of papers, nominal rolls and people's pay records. I'm just suggesting to you that that process did occur. The vetting process, in my view, never did properly occur. There was only ever cursory record checks accomplished. Specifically the induction in the training level. We held to be of significant consequence, while we were there, as part of the Haitian National Police reform plan, to make clear to the transitional government and then to the de facto government, through our involvement with the Director General of the Haitian National Police, his senior executive and then the senior members of the government of the day. We made it quite clear that the actual remediation or reform of the Haitian National Police in the future state could not be accomplished until effectively the vetting of the most senior cadre of the Haitian National Police was undertaken purposely so as to ensure, metaphorically speaking, that the head of the snake was tended to. I left Haiti as that work was just commencing. So that's the answer to the question. BOUTELLIS: What were some of the major obstacles you may have faced in recruitment? MUIR: Interestingly enough in recruitment, maybe logistics, but I must say in an environment like that, if you're able to facilitate the gathering and identification, processing, of a sufficient number of young, in this case, Haitian men and women, and do that in an organized and safe, secure environment, that's an accomplishment in and of itself. The effort that was made just before my arrival actually led to the inadvertent deaths of several young Haitians. They were effectively trampled and killed in a crush trying to jump the queue. It sounds bizarre but true. We ran a recruiting exercise effectively that engaged at the commissariat level all across the island of Haiti, in small-not so-in the smaller urban areas all across Haiti all on the same day. We did a national recruiting drive and effectively allowed for several thousand young Haitians to be processed according to a standard that was held to be mutually acceptable by both the Haitians and the United Nations. BOUTELLIS: When we get into training and the development of professionalism within the police force, can you describe some of the training programs that were put in place? MUIR: I'm going to keep my comments brief on this, brief because, quite frankly, you don't need to make a short story long. In the year that I was there I don't think the Haitian National Police nor the United Nations did much of a job of training, the actual delivery of academy training. Maybe I'll elaborate on some of the shortcomings of at least my part of the enterprise, independent of the Haitian National Police. I went there as a police commissioner having been the Director General of Learning and Development for our national police. No, it is not all I've done in my service, but I had been in a position just in advance of my posting to Haiti responsible for in-service national learning and development. I wasn't completely unacquainted with what it should look like to run a proper induction-level rudimentary training exercise. In this case, for the Haitian National Police. The curriculum, in my view, was shoddy. The United Nations, lamentably, from a lessons learned perspective, and from DPKO itself, did not have any corporate memory in terms of what they'd done before. So there was not only not a curriculum that was defensible, there was no course training standard that supported it. The lesson plans themselves in terms of what would happen on any given day was effectively left to the devices of U.N. police officers, many of them who had: A) no training background and B) no linguistic competence to deliver the training. So you can only imagine then what would happen if you took a cohort of several young Haitians and put them in a place where they were actually in residence and ostensibly or purportedly learning on campus. You wouldn't have to wonder whether or not much of anything of consequence happened there. I remember having interesting discussions with the Director-General and others around the ostensible length of training, which in my view was literally twice as long as it needed to be. I wasn't of the view that I needed to be convinced one way or the other. It's one of the reasons they brought me there, I'm thinking. That's one of the things that ought to have happened on my watch but didn't. One of the reasons why it didn't happen, quite frankly, is we were actually seized up on a day-to-day basis by the operational exigencies of that mission, which was public order and security. We were distracted, frankly, from standing up and shoring up and ensuring that that training process was properly run. But I might suggest, there was no political appetite in Haiti to make it shorter, and there was no political support from either the Canadian, the French, or the American governments who were the key players on the field, to bring any pressure to bear otherwise. Just so we're clear. I was not proposing that induction level-that all training be shorter. I was suggesting that the campus-level training be shortened and that we actually invest in the field coaching-. BOUTELLIS: Field services. MUIR: Yes, which is effectively where you imbed the learning. So as I would make the case, the knowledge transfer happens at the academy, basic skills are demonstrated, and both knowledge and skills are embedded and demonstrated to a defensible level at the commissariat level. I left Haiti with no assurances that it was anything even approaching a field-coaching program in place, notwithstanding that that work had been done before in Haiti. I will say that by the time I did leave there, we had identified, I think, a very competent, eclectic group of police officers from several countries who actually did know what to do. I think the design of the field-coaching exercise was well grounded in best practices that would have stood the test. Now what they did with that, you'd want to speak with the incumbent who is presently there and took over from me. BOUTELLIS: I have a couple of follow-up questions. First you mentioned issues in training, but I would imagine in all the components of police reform were problematic because you were distracted by the routine day-to-day, I guess, security operational issues. Can you give us specific examples of what day-to-day challenges were? MUIR: On a day-to-day basis, we would start the day before the sun came up and we would work until the sun was long down. There were, at any given time, dozens and dozens, for instance of hostage-takings. Sometimes these involved international folk and always garnering the attention of the international press, and local for that matter. It was endemic and it was, according to all of the pundits, of crisis proportion. My personal view of that is that it was a barometer of disorder but certainly not the only indicator of disorder. It was certainly a manifestation of lawlessness to the extent that the gangs controlled, effectively, the downtown urban core of Port-Au-Prince and the renowned slums of Citˇ Soleil, Citˇ Militaire. Of course we did incrementally and have since seen the stabilization of that unstable security environment. But at the time, we were dealing with, effectively, lawlessness, le zone [Indecipherable], as they say in French, or the no-go zones, where effectively the Haitian police had either never been, never been recently, or would not go, and places which effectively the U.N. military predominantly would occupy in terms of the physical presence on the ground and that my component of U.N. police would assist in terms of routine patrolling and supportive security operations. The day-to-day, week-to-week routine was regularly punctuated with spontaneous gatherings. They would not on any given day be a riot, but they would most certainly be demonstrations of public disorder. Large numbers of people in the hundreds or thousands gathering, expressing discontent or upset over anything triggered by the actions of one of the many political candidates or some other affront however characterized in the day-to-day life of Haitian society. It simply was the case for both the military and the police that we were seized on a day-to-day basis of effectively a security situation which absorbed our resources, our time, and effectively eclipsed, for all of the time that I was there, any meaningful effort at institutional reform. I must say, before we get on to it any further, I don't think I would forget, institutional reform in a fragile state to be characterized as such, of just the police, is absolute folly. If ever there was a case where a country was in need of concurrent shoring up of corrections, judiciary and police, it would be Haiti. That did not occur in any meaningful way while I was there, nor did it occur while my predecessor was there. My best understanding of the history of Haiti from early '90s to present is there has only ever been rather checkered efforts by the international community to take that on with any focus or meaning. BOUTELLIS: You mentioned the general lawlessness and hostage-taking and other issues. Did they basically prevent you from implementing the mandate of the U.N. police? I was wondering what was the role of the U.N. police, specifically FPUs, versus the military, the U.N. military at that time? And was that part of your mandate as you went out there or is that something you improvised on mission? Again, we're talking 2005-2006. MUIR: That's a very interesting question. I'm hopeful that the question is posed because somebody is actually tracking the legacy of overall success, or not, of integrated missions, to use U.N. parlance. It's one of the things that I held to be of significant consequence in terms of my own measures of success in that theater. I would say parenthetically that Canada, as one of the contributing countries, probably has better than average appreciation for the importance of integration and interoperability in terms of cross-jurisdictional or sharing of responsibilities, just in terms of our own domestic policing requirements and how we work with other agencies within the security sector, both intelligence and military. So I went there with a very healthy appreciation for the importance of integration. MINUSTAH at the time was touted to be one of the leading and more robust exercises, if not experiments in mission integration at the field level. The reason I give you the context is, the force commander and the police commissioner in particular were seized with the responsibility to work well in the field together. Now what that means on the field at any given time, is effectively left to the devices of the force commander and the police commissioner. I don't think it is that difficult a concept, although it was quite interesting in the execution. I'll give you one or two small examples. The military, for reasons which became clear to me-they were not immediately self evident-were eminently curious about the deployment and the deployment patterns, the mandate and functions of the formed police units. I came to understand that the force commissioner was so interested in that was because effectively they looked an awful lot like the military. They had, by and large, the capacity of a deployed platoon or company and, according to the force commander at least, could be effectively interchangeable on the field depending on any operational requirement. I was well appreciative of that. I also was rather firm both with the SRSG, the special rep for the Secretary General, and the force commander, that while that was so, that the mandate of the police was to serve and specifically in a way that was unique to police. We each had our own rules of engagement. The military rules of engagement characteristically are much more-I would call them finite. Either you use force or you don't. Whereas the police, by nature of the blue versus the green have a more nuanced appreciation for how you bring force to bear, under what circumstances, and our continued use of force is just that, it's more nuanced. We, on the field, are expected, effectively to only use as much force as is necessary so as to accomplish the mission at the moment. That means then, that it is not a question of engaging in shooting, as the military might be inclined to do, as opposed to engaging and talking and then soft hand and then other implements of the trade including sticks and shields and gas and so forth. We had an inventory of tools that we were expected to bring to bear to either complement, or supplant the Haitian National Police in themselves as the indigenous police. So suffice to say the integration and actually the execution phase, we were challenged from time to time, myself and the force commander. He would say for instance, we need you to take up a static post and effectively dedicate that company of formed police unit to effectively static security duties. My response to that was, I will be very willing to support the military on an as-required basis, but not to dedicate, because the difference between you, force commander, and me as police commissioner, is a level of flexibility on the field to move to accomplish our mission. The discussion of what our mission was collectively was a very interesting exchange as well. Where we did have agreement-and I think this is where the lessons learned actually have to be captured-there was very little, I would suggest, difference in terms of our doctrinal appreciation of integrated work on the field. For instance, we would come to agreement in terms of what was green and what was blue and how you would lead those two components of any operation, as an example. So if it was effectively a cordon and search operation, where there was a heightened level of potential for violence, the military might be expected to do the door-to-door and the police would provide the cordon, or the permit of security. Conversely, where we had hostages and information that would provide for us knowing the location, something about the tactical context of that hostage-taking, we had emergency police response capacity both within the U.N. and we were [Indecipherable 40:04 ] when the Haitian National Police, so that we could affect-I would sign an operational plan, the U.N. police supporting the Haitian National Police would execute the plan. So it was blue first and the green, the military, would provide the perimeter. You see what I'm saying? So we had lots of tactical, practical examples of where that level of integration worked reasonably well on a case-by-case basis. I, to this day, do not believe that we spend the time that we should, investing the time that we should assisting, specifically executive levels of both police and military, understanding the mandate and capacity of their respective counterparts. That's something that needs to be taken on if the U.N. over the course of its future years is to actually have success born of that level of investment. BOUTELLIS: Let me come back to something you mentioned earlier on the training. You alluded to the work that had been done before in training. There had been a training program or maybe police reform program prior in Haiti. How much knowledge did you have of it when you first got there and how did that affect your work of police reform that, as you said, was really at the early stages because you indicated you drafted a new Haitian National Police reform plan? MUIR: The short answer to your question is my knowledge of what came before me was anecdotal. My level of disappointment was profound when I traveled to DPKO, the office of the Senior Police Adviser, Mr. Kroeker, and then of course his staff, to go in to find that body of preexisting knowledge and wisdom that we would refer to as best practices. Even on a mission-by-mission basis, I might have expected that there was some recorded legacy of what had occurred before in other missions; not so, not there. Key critical failing in terms of institutional capacity, in this case, of the United Nations, to take on, over time, it's obligations for institutional reform. Does that mean that I could not and did not take the opportunity to find and to garner materials or means derivative of other police officers, senior and junior who had done work before? The answer is, of course, we did that. We had great contribution from members of other police contingents, American, Canadian, French, specifically those three contingents because they had time on the field from previous missions and they'd effectively brought some of their materials with them-but by default and not by design. I think that's a serious failing of any cogent exercise in favor of institutional reform. BOUTELLIS: We're into the next area. You mentioned a number of different areas of expertise of the police where the Haitian National Police was being trained, different domains. Were there any challenges in integrating and sort of amalgamating the different types of security forces, police services, within a coherent police unit in Haiti? MUIR: You mean the indigenous police themselves? I don't think I understand the question? BOUTELLIS: In terms of the different police services, were they integrated as you took on the mission or were there challenges? I was thinking for the hostage-taking for instance, did you develop new capacities? MUIR: OK, let me characterize, if I can briefly, just what the overall competence and capacity was of the Haitian National Police on the field. It was, by and large, a uniformed police service with nominal capacity to have a presence at the community level, just have a presence, not actually to affect the mandate of the indigenous police, but at least to look like they were the police while they had a presence. What you would typically look for in terms of the composition of a fully constituted police service, while they had sort of the commissariat level uniform policing in very modest numbers, they had little else. As an example, they had an investigative function within Port-Au-Prince that you would typically expect to find in any police service, the detecting, investigating function. It stood apart, and in my belief was systemically corrupt and not particularly responsive to the direction of the Director General of the Haitian National Police. That's one key function. Another key function was actually their public-order units themselves. Frankly, it was a variation on a theme. They had a public-order function, in other words, the formed police units that would be expected to do public-order demonstration work and so forth. They had a nascent capacity in terms of what we call emergency response or SWAT. We would, with regards to both their public order and their emergency response teams, we effectively spent a fair bit of our time and effort working with and developing that particular capacity with them, coaching and mentoring in particular and placing a threshold number sufficient with those types of public order and emergency response teams to at least get a nominal level of service from them on any given day. Forensic sciences and so forth, by and large nonexistent. Any of the enabling functions of that police service, finance, human resources, procurement, completely if not nonexistent, dysfunctional. The Director-General of the Haitian National Police at the time, his name was Monsieur Mario Andresol. A gentleman that I worked with closely with over the course of one year. I can only characterize his leadership team as not a team. So, effectively, he was as good on the field as he could be on any given day left to the vagaries of circumstance associated with both availability of his senior officers and his capacity to communicate with them. On any given day, by design or by default, you never really knew. So it sounds rather lamentable, but the truth of the matter was, even though the police service at the time was numbering ostensibly in the range of upwards of 3000, 3,005, there was really only a dozen people of all of the Haitian National Police that you could name that would actually have a de facto leadership position. Maybe half of those could be counted upon even to be located in the field on any given day. BOUTELLIS: Related to this I was wondering if you could address the issues of the strengthening of the internal management, core elements including the promotion system, we're talking about the disciplinary system, record keeping, and then what you were mentioning, the enabling system, accounting, everything in support. MUIR: Once again, a very short story. I was joined there halfway through the mission by a gentleman by the name of Richard Warren, an Australian fellow. His first vocation was that of military engineer. He had effectively re-invented himself as an institutional-reform expert. He had had some significant success in Kosovo by reputation, was identified, recruited and came to Haiti. Notwithstanding no knowledge of French, by and large, certainly in terms of oral interaction, he could understand French in passing, I was very impressed with his-and this is wisdom born of experience-his ability to articulate and then effectively to craft and to draft, with my team, and with some help from others in DPKO, an institutional-reform plan. It was to be referred to in the vernacular, the Haitian National Police Reform Plan, but it bears referencing that that plan was as much a business case for the revitalization of the Haitian National Police specifically focused on the enabling elements of the organization. Strategic policy and planning, HR, finance, procurement-the things that effectively would enable the placement of a constable or a police officer on the field and support and to pay, all of that sort of thing. It was the hard work of institutional reform that, in my view, where the downstream payoff would come, were there to be any ostensible commitment, political or otherwise, to the government of the day, to take on that responsibility and to execute the plan. It was only ever in place and accepted at the time I was leaving the mission, so I can't comment on whether it had any durability at all. BOUTELLIS: Moving on to the next area, enhancing accountability to both the community and policy makers, including, basically improving the capacity to collect, analyze information about performance and outcomes, responsiveness to the communities and needs and oversight. Have you worked in this specific area with the Haitian National Police? MUIR: Yes, but only in passing. Once again, quality of service is in the eye of the beholder, so my message to my colleague, the Director-General, was the litmus test or the hallmarks of success that you would have as a professional police service is only measured in indicators of both public satisfaction and trust and respect as given you by your community. I know of not one systemic effort to meaningfully gather and report on those indicators of success. There was no appetite on the part of the Haitian government, nor was there appetite on the part of the Haitian National Police, and frankly, there was no nascent capacity within the U.N. police to cause it to happen. Now that sounds like a very harsh indictment, but I might say, by way of explanation, or offer up two observations. The first observation is, it is not in the nature of the Haitian people, nor any of their traditions to even know of, yet alone to enact, what we would call the rudiments of community policing. It's not part of the cultural fabric of their lives, to my knowledge. They have rooted, in their culture, effectively, to the best of my knowledge, more of what can be described as sort of Napoleonic code or system of jurisprudence and effectively the trappings of what is expected of their police. Suffice to say, the police are not known to be, nor have they ever been, a helping service. They have typically been an agent of the state. While they may have a presence in the community, it is not necessarily a trusted or respected presence in their community. So it wasn't, as I explained to some of those folks who cared to listen, it wasn't so much a question of teaching the Haitian National Police how to behave, what the police had to learn how to do, it was a question of how do you make a society unlearn what they expect of their police? If all they've ever known is distrust and disrespect, something has to happen to qualitatively change the nature of the contract between police and their public. I'm not trying to wax philosophic here; I'm trying to get the point across. It's the international community that holds that there are models of policing that apply and that might bring some dividend in places like Haiti. I think if the United Nations only ever sent U.N. police representatives who came from systems or models of policing that were what we would call community-based, we might have some modicum of success. But I did say in an earlier comment that there were some 38 or 34 contributing nations of U.N. police on my watch during the year that I was there and you didn't have to take your shoes off to count the ones that had any knowledge or respect for what we would call models of community policing. Most of them came from gendarme police functions or other systems of police where the U.N. police themselves, had no legacy nor appetite to "interact with the public" in a way that we would hold to be of consequence in terms of the overall reform of the Haitian National Police. Not surprisingly then, the coaching and the mentoring of the Haitian National Police was nominal at best, because the presence of the U.N. police with the Haitian National Police was nominal at best. BOUTELLIS: Over time the police force might have been used by certain political groups or to serve different political ends; how did you go about working on the neutrality of this new police and maybe what we would call depoliticizing the police force? MUIR: I think it would have been na•ve in the extreme to think that the U.N. police or any one member of the U.N. police could take on in any meaningful way the depoliticizing of indigenous police in terms of that particular mission. It was eminently politicized. The appointment of the Haitian National Police Director General was effectively heavily politicized. So, you know, by nature and predisposition, highly politicized. Now if you're suggesting that there were factions within that were influenced by the party politic of the day, the answer to that question would be yes, I dare say that that was so. It was not only suggested but asserted by persons and agencies known to have a reputation, some U.N., some other internationals asserted that the local police, in some cases, were instruments of political will and in fact that political will was expressed in terms of crimes of violence, beatings, intimidation, kidnappings, extra-judicial killings and murder, all things to have been held to be acts of police of local jurisdiction and politically motivated. To any extent that that was so, and I dare say that it was, by the way, it was so with relative impunity. That is to simply say there was neither the U.N. police capacity, by and large, and certainly no willingness or capacity within the government or the traditional government of the day, nor the Haitian National Police, to do much about that. Full stop. BOUTELLIS: Of course there were challenges to the authority of the police force over keeping the rule of law, other non-state security groups challenging this authority. There might also have been private security groups. Can you describe in Haiti at that particular time, what some of the non-state security groups were and what challenges were faced? MUIR: What comes readily to mind in terms of non-state security is private security. That was an industry that was alive and well. Any person or any institution of means, by necessity had acquainted themselves with some level of private security. Typically young men with shotguns, making a pittance of a wage, were everywhere. They were ubiquitous in their presence and bringing whatever service one might expect, whether it was guarding the front door of a grocery store or the compound of a person of means. Much was said, by the way, upon my arrival, of a former Haitian military, the FAD'H. They were held to be non-state at the time, although a previous element of previous state government apparatus. In fact, they were characterized as a source of, not just some disquiet, but a source of at least potential destabilization, specifically as it related to the execution of national elections. It never came to pass, never came to pass. Small enclaves certainly, identifiable in some of the more remote communities but nothing akin to what might have been anticipated when the mission opened. In terms of non-state security, I would suggest that might have been it. If you were to allow for the fact that from time to time there was the odd-how best to put it?-the presence. I'm just thinking characteristically it would be the presence, however temporary and however brief, of American law-enforcement actors, DEA, FBI, specifically as it related to their own legitimate interest in movement of drugs and guns specifically between the island, Hispaniola, and Miami. They would interact from time to time in assistance to the local police or acting based on information received and at times directing and/or participating with Haitian National Police and/or U.N. police. But that's, I think, all I can say about non-state. BOUTELLIS: Just one follow-up question. You mentioned private security companies. Was there any attempt on the part of the police, either the Haitian National Police or the U.N. police to work with these groups, or were they perceived as at odds with principal state groups? MUIR: I think neither. If I could characterize it, I was privy to some information for instance suggesting that many of the key players or some of the people who either owned or influenced these private security firms might have been complicit in organized criminal activity, specifically trans-shipment of guns, ammunition and drugs. Do I have any further comment on that? No. To the extent they did or did not get along with police of local jurisdiction, I think, I would describe their presence amongst us at that time as benign. I don't recall any incident or group of incidents or initiatives that I undertook with the Director-General of the Haitian National Police that was focused on, targeted on or even passingly concerned with private security. BOUTELLIS: All right, let's move away now from these technical areas, take a step back. I'd like to ask you about the broader challenges in reforming an indigenous police and maybe to start by asking you what were some of the tasks that you would prioritize over others and some of the main challenges. You mentioned earlier the importance of enabling system; you mentioned the importance of conducing police reform along with broader reform, justice, prison, and other sectors in a holistic manner. Do you have any other general recommendations or just observations on what would be essential to success? MUIR: I think, on reflection, at the level that I was working in that mission as an executive officer of the mission, I was forewarned and forearmed with the knowledge of and the importance of certainly a more purposeful and eclectic approach to security-sector reform, or effectively commitment to rule of law. Any and all initiatives toward the remediation of what can only be described as systemic weakness within the Haitian government and agencies supporting it, specifically police, corrections and courts. It just makes so much sense that if you wanted to take it on, that you would take that on full of the knowledge that you had to vote with your feet. In other words you'd want to see, right from the beginning, actors working in a much more integrated fashion on that level of rule of law reform. So without putting too fine a point on it, police, corrections and judicial reform experts and capacity brought to bear concurrently and purposefully. And with, not just the passing acquiescence of the government of the day, but with a commitment to take that on. So that you could see measured progress on all three fronts concurrently. Allowing for the fact that to a lay person, it is very difficult to understand, or accept for instance, that according to the Constitution of the island of Haiti, or the country of Haiti, the correctional system reports to the Chief of Police, but it does. So any institutional reform to be taken on in any meaningful way, has to allow for the fact that that is the fact and that they have, and comfortably so, about 200 and now five or six years of history with preventive detention. That is very difficult to accept on the face of it, especially allowing for the vagaries of circumstance that visit themselves upon Haitian society and the manner in which the law is enacted. So I can't say enough about a more purposeful approach, specifically by the international community, and if it is the United Nations then so be it, in taking on rule of law reform in a much more purposeful and integrated fashion. Now let me just say that there are typically donor communities that ostensibly are there to underpin meaningful reform initiatives. There is, at the very best, passing collaboration and, at worst, internecine competition between what I would call the principal donor communities that could bring derivative benefit to a country like Haiti. It was an absolute disappointment to me to see how that played itself out in theater and in that mission and in the face of the Haitian public. I saw no effort, ostensible effort, for purposes of collaboration amongst the donor community to bring any measurable progress to the Haitian National Police. Even that, notwithstanding very succinct, very clear and eminently justifiable requests on my part and that of the Director-General of the Haitian National Police for very simple things; it just seemed impossible to accomplish. Now there are reasons for all of these things, but it doesn't in any way abate or otherwise mitigate my overall level of disappointment, having learned that by experience over the course of one year. BOUTELLIS: Do you have any specific examples to illustrate how this lack of donor coordination or shortcomings in donor coordination directly affected your ability to make a difference? MUIR: Very simple things. The best efforts-a good example in best efforts, the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the day, for most of my time in that mission was Juan Gabriel Valdes. A hard-working, fine gentleman, Chilean national, who with great regularity and sincerity gathered principal members of the donor community, the international community that was resident at the embassy level in Haiti, and quite frankly, clearly well-enough connected to their permanent offices at the United Nations and their own foreign affairs departments back home. This was, if not a weekly, a bi-weekly affair where those people were effectively physically brought to a room. The discussions were always and characteristically about the security situation and anything that could be done to improve that so as to facilitate free and fair elections. There were other purposeful meetings called of smaller subsets of that donor community, those who there was obviously a clear capacity to render assistance. Simple things like body armor for police officers so that they might be safe on the street, some tangible demonstration of a commitment to better the lot of that police corps. Now, credit where due, the American government effectively led their donor support with that kind of material assistance. Regrettably with little or no ostensible effort to coordinate that with the executive level of the U.N. mission. So when I would say, for instance, to my American counterparts, please do not bring motorcycles without helmets and trucks that burn diesel gas when there is no diesel to be had; it's not helpful. If you want to assist with a much broader, purposeful, institutional-reform exercise, we need all the help we can get, but we would want to do that at one table. That was, in my view, a systemic failing of the mission and not of any one government. Those arrangements in fact can and ought to have been brokered through the permanent missions in New York, Department of Peacekeeping Operations, so that some sense and sanity might have been brought to bear on the field at the level at which the police commissioner and the force commander were working. That did not occur to my knowledge. Not withstanding the odd embarrassing moment I caused by having conversations, the likes of which I'm having with you, with them. BOUTELLIS: We talked a little bit earlier in our conversation about the recruitment now of the U.N. police itself, of its own personnel and its deployment. I wonder if you had maybe a couple of recommendations for improving both the recruitment, the quality and any kind of predeployment needs in terms of training or briefings or so on that come from your own experience of the different contingents. MUIR: I say this with all humility because to the point-much improvement can be made and I understand perfectly well why we may have the failings that we do in terms of how we, we being the United Nations if I were to wear that hat for a moment. There is a real politic associated with how it is that contributing nations in fact contribute on a mission by mission basis. There is no easy answer to this question. One would think, as an example, in a mission like Haiti, where local folk speak Creole and French, that there would be an asserted effort made to populate the mission with U.N. police who were at least passingly conversant with the language, or, conversely that there would be knowledge aforethought that that not being possible, that the United Nations might provide for a complement of interpreters, as they have in other missions so as to affect the mission granted to the U.N. police derivative of a Security Council resolution. But I've also told you about 38 contributing nations and a contingent of 1,800 police. So no surprises then that a Nepalese police officer might struggle at the community level in effectively making contact and conducting the business of a police mentor with a Haitian National Police counterpart on any given day. We had systemic difficulties in terms of what I would call the bench and the strength of the bench on any given day. Once again, left to the vagaries of circumstance, I am reticent to say that we could do much better were we only to provide for predeployment induction training domestically or more systemic rigor in in-mission indoctrination training for U.N. police. While all of those things might make for some prophylactic difference, it is in no way a replacement for just confronting the realities of U.N. police deployment in any one mission. Now I've got to put a little water in my wine here. I understand only too well how difficult it is to attract, to find and to commit contributing countries and to ask of them to give up their police independent of how good or bad those police might be. There is a difference between a police officer and a soldier at home domestically. Soldiers, when they're at home domestically, are either in garrison or training, or preparing to deploy. Police officers when they are at home typically are doing a day's police work. So when you take them from their communities you are in some way diminishing the quality and the level of service to any police community in any of those contributing countries unless, of course, there is some arrangement in place to offset that loss. Now there is in Canada and other countries as well. We have, I'm very proud and pleased to say, at least in its modest beginnings, an arrangement which provides for federal funding to support provincial municipal police officers abroad so that others may be put on the field to replace them. But it doesn't change the fact that, by and large, when a country gives up its own police, they are in some way, in some measure, diminishing the quality and level of their own policing. It is a stretch to ask, or to expect, even philosophically, that a council or government at whatever level will give of themselves knowing that there is some derivative benefit to peace and security in the world. So I must just simply say that it is characteristic of the United Nations that this will always be a struggle. I would say, and this is I think lessons learned, to the extent that we can, and we have found a way to bring better value-added here, regional security arrangements can and should be brought to bear, either leveraged by the United Nations or facilitated or otherwise. Haiti in my view would be an example of where there could be a much more purposeful commitment. I say that perhaps not giving credence to the political exigencies of the day, but nonetheless, I think there are stakeholders that have more of a stake in Haiti than others, the Canadians and the Americans. This is a small example, perhaps should be reflected in larger numbers, but that would require a brokering of arrangements by permanent missions in New York to provide for that to happen. I am also aware, and I accept that these kinds of U.N. missions do provide for an international opportunity and experience for police corps that, in fact, benefit them in the longer term. So as an example, you could take contingents of French-speaking police officers from countries in Africa, deploy them to a place like Haiti. They bring derivative benefit to Haiti and they return to their own countries better and hence derivative benefit to their home countries. I believe that to be so, I've seen that happen on the field. That's a good step forward in my view. So to the extent that we, the United Nations, can be more purposeful in how it does that, that's a distinct advantage all around. BOUTELLIS: Before we wrap up, I'd like to ask you are there any innovations or experiments that you have experienced first hand or that you know about that we haven't talked about and that would merit some attention. Beyond that, if you had to write a handbook, what would be the key topics or thoughts that you would put into that? MUIR: Just for the sake of brevity-and I realize I haven't been that brief-three things come to mind, this born of my most recent experience in Haiti. I am very respectful of, notwithstanding some of my harsh comments; I continue to be optimistic about the potential for future success. There are some caveats associated with that. I think of all the places that need some capacity building, the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations needs some capacity building. The idea of bringing to life, through experience and continuous learning, the reality of integrated missions is well worth the pursuit. The JMAC in Haiti is an example, Joint Mission Analysis Center. Tortuous in many ways watching the many actors try to reconcile themselves to functional integration, military, police, civilian and so forth, but a very, very worthwhile effort and endeavor. So I'm pleased to say, and hopeful to say, we're past the experimentation phase, we can and will be much better in the future. I know that, because I can benchmark myself against a previous lifetime in the former Yugoslavia, where joint anything was typically a handful of stragglers tacked on to a military entity. So we've come a long way, and that's progress in small measures. Secondarily, I believe, notwithstanding the logistics, that the U.N. would be encouraged to pursue, with vigor and purpose, its doctrine around formed police units and their deployment. Taking up from the European experience and their SPU (Special Police Unit) models, police and gendarme, the Vicenza experiment, or reality, that USIP (United States Institute of Peace) is supporting. A very fine gentleman, an American by the name of Mike Dziedzic and others. I know that the U.N. is a player, I don't know how active they are, but I do see tremendous potential in deploying the U.N. police at unit strength. It doesn't solve the problem, but it renders the problems a lot less acute in terms of U.N. police as individual contributors on the field. You might deploy as a contingent of 25 or 225, but U.N. police typically, at the end of the day, are individual contributors in a multinational policing environment. There is much to be said for U.N. police deploying at the unit level. I think that there is already doctrine sufficiently well described, that were there the will between police and military, were there the will, it would have to be mutual, that the formed police unit model itself provides an excellent leveraged point to transition a mission in maturity from green to blue, from military to police. The transitional piece could be leveraged with much more efficacy were there to be a willingness to explore a broader mandate for formed police units. I might also say that if you're at the command level of a U.N. police mission, coordination and facilitation are not particularly helpful words. So a formed police units or units provides for a built-in command control structure, it provides for accountability and efficacy on the field where that is largely lacking in many other respects. So those are two things. I think there was probably a third thing but maybe I will just wax philosophic for just a moment, lest I be judged as being unnecessarily harsh in some of my previous comments. I know from experience that the worst day in a U.N. mission is the world's best foot forward. I have come to live it and I understand it. It is not the will of the people, it is the will of the international community that places and characterizes U.N. police mission or military mission for that matter, on any given day in any given theater. So as bad as it gets or as good as it gets, that's as good as it gets. So for all of its warts and wrinkles, and they are many, some remarkable things happen by virtue of the presence of the United Nations on the field. I've seen it happen a million times over. So better days ahead, we might hope, and I hope that my comments have been of some help. BOUTELLIS: Graham Muir, thank you very much for your thoughts and your time. Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Policing Oral History Program Interview number: B6 ______________________________________________________________________ 17 Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties