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.:	A10






Interviewee: 		Anthony Howlett-Bolton
			
Interviewer:		Daniel Scher

Date of Interview:	12 December 2007

Location:		Gerrard's Cross
			United Kingdom




Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice
Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA
www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties




SCHER:	My name is Daniel Scher, I the Associate Director of the Institutions for Fragile States project. I'm here with Anthony Howlett-Bolton in Gerrards Cross, just outside London. The date is 12th of December, 2007. Anthony, before we continue, I'd like to just make sure that I've spoken with you about the informed consent information and we've spoken about the legal release. Do you have any questions about it?

HOWLETT-BOLTON:	No that's fine. I've seen the paperwork and I've signed it and I'm very happy and content to go forward.

SCHER:	Great, thank you. Let's move straight on then. Before we get started into the kind of nitty-gritty areas that we're interested in, I'd like to just ask you a little bit about your background, just learn a little bit more about your biography basically. Would you describe the position that you hold now and maybe tell me a little bit about how you got to this point? 

H-B:	Yes, currently I'm working as a strategic justice and security sector adviser which is quite a mouthful. That comes as a result of spending 32 years in the police force in the United Kingdom starting at the bottom and finishing as a Deputy Chief Constable which in county police force is second to the highest ranks. That has given me experience both at the practical and operational policing level and also at the strategic level and, of course, running the business itself. 

	I got involved some four years ago now in police advisery work and started off that work in Lesotho, working with the Lesotho Mounted Police Service and working with what is now called the National Police Information Agency, the NPIA, with whom most of my contracted work is. I also work with the British Council on their business development side in terms of justice and strategy. 

	As a result of the work that I did in Lesotho, that finished in the summer of 2007, I was asked at short notice to take up a role in Sierra Leone as the security sector-no, that's not correct-the safety and security adviser, component manager for the justice sector development program. That's a 25 million pound program over five years. We just finished the first phase, the inception phase, and now we're in the implementation phase. That work has been assessed and I've now moved on from that role of component manager now to be one of their strategic advisers. I particularly worked in Sierra Leone with the police, with the prisons, and currently working with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. I think it is relevant to say that I also worked with the Ministry of Home Affairs and public security in Lesotho. That will become relevant when we speak about depoliticizing the police.   

SCHER:	Excellent. Actually I'd like to hear a little bit more about what you were called into Lesotho to do. What was your responsibility there?

H-B:	Certainly the Lesotho program was again a five-year program, it was a justice sector development program as well, ultimately sponsored by the Department for International Development (DFID) in the United Kingdom. My responsibility there was to provide strategic development of the police service. They'd had difficulties in terms of civilian insurrection and had a very military-style police service and in fact had to be bailed out at the time of difficulties by South Africa who came in. There are also sensitivities around that, of course being a Kingdom surrounded by South Africa, much like Swaziland. 

	But I was invited to work as adviser to the minister of home affairs in terms of an extended troika. What had happened was after the troubles they had really purged the armed services and found that to be quite successful and felt that there was a need to do the same with the police service. It was felt that the police service had a lot of staff within it who were still associated with the difficulties. So the government invited, and in fact paid for, a police officer to come from Botswana, from Zimbabwe, from Mozambique and from South Africa to assist them with this total review of the police service, the extended troika. For my part, obviously having come from the old colonial powers, it wasn't seen that it was appropriate that a UK former officer was involved actually in the review. However, they wanted to capture the experience. So that's how I became a ministerial adviser and basically secretary to the troika. It was run by the permanent secretary. I prepared the final document that was published. It wasn't actually published, it was published to the ministry. It formed the basis of what they wanted to do, so that's how I got involved in that. Of course, that did involve depoliticizing the police service and the whole top team was changed.     

SCHER:	Let's kind of dive right into that depoliticization issue. Could you just talk a bit about what the problem was in terms of the police service being politicized and what kind of strategy there was to resolve this issue?

H-B:	As I say, rightly or wrongly there was felt to be a lack of trust and it was felt that the police service were not open to change nor welcoming it. The government felt uncomfortable with the position that it was in and wanted to be able to trust its senior officers. Within the African experience, the civil society is not strong and where civil society does exist it is generally very fragmented. I think it can be true in most countries. Who represents who? Often people from civil society just seem to represent themselves. Also didn't have any particular mandate from the wide population. So that causes some difficulties because you don't have things, as you have in the United Kingdom, like tripartite arrangements with police authority made up of independent people. You obviously have the ministry's oversight and you have the police, but the ministry does not appoint-or police authority does not appoint the commissioner of police in these countries. 

	They are, in the case of Lesotho, royal appointments, and in other countries presidential appointments, obviously on the recommendations of ministers of state. But you don't get that level of independent appointment that you have in Western countries. So it's very important to get the right person in and then to have a top team that reflects a balance and a modern policing style. Now to depoliticize the police, obviously in terms of Lesotho, what was decided was that the former commissioner had retired and come to the end of his tenure. As I recall he wanted to stay but the government did not decide to extend him. So an interim commissioner who was one of the deputy commissioners, they have two out there, a commissioner and two deputy commissioners and various other chief officers. 

	So it was decided to represent him with an acting deputy commissioner, or deputy commissioner acting in the role of commissioner. That caused something of a problem when the troika started because of course the troika was chaired by the permanent secretary, I think called the principal secretary. Each country does it differently. So I think it is the principal secretary out in Lesotho and permanent secretary in Sierra Leone. Anyhow, the principal secretary was chair. It was quite a high-powered local team including the head of the army was involved, the head of the secret service out there was involved. Obviously members of the civil service and public services reform were involved. They needed to have the commissioner involved. Of course the difficulty was that you couldn't have the commissioner involved, one was looking at him as an individual.

	It was pretty much decided around that time that they were going to develop an Inspectorate of Police, much like you have in the police service in the United Kingdom to provide that oversight mechanism from a government point of view. The guy decided to become the first of the inspectors of constabulary which meant that we had very much a free run on taking things forward. So procedures were put in place to interview all of the top team and applications were invited. Throughout the organization decisions were made about having vetting for people, basically from senior rank upwards. Within the police service every country is different, but you've got the very junior operational ranks. In the case of Lesotho it would be trooper and sergeant and inspector. The ranks were, actually used to be military equivalents, much like you sometimes find in the United States of America. So the head of police would have been a brigadier at one time. That's not really suitable for civilian normal policing function. So all the titles were changed but they had equivalencies within the military.

	So up to inspector or it might be captain level in a military context, they were purely internal appointments and required low-level vetting. But above that the major to colonel or superintendent to chief superintendent, then obviously the security services were going to get involved in that together with the commissioner or, in the case of Lesotho, her designee which had been one of the deputies. But for the chief officer appointments, the very senior ones, that was at the firm involvement of the Minister of Home Affairs, and of course the commissioner herself was appointed by the King. So they've got quite a modern constitution in Lesotho. It was brought about by an old UK colonial model. The fact it is an old UK colonial model doesn't make it wrong. I mean, it is just now being modernized. 

	But I think one could go out there and pretty much recognize what happened. So, as I said, a new commissioner was appointed and given a mandate and a top team. We then provided some training for them. Certainly in the Sierra Leone context, all of the-that was handled somewhat differently and that's before my time, but what happened there was after the difficulties in 1998, and if the countries I'm talking about aren't clear, I'll clarify it. 

	Now I'll turn to Sierra Leone. In 1998 there were difficulties and the President felt that he didn't have the confidence in the current police hierarchy so the international community and particularly DFID were asked to assist. At that time we had, and still have, quite a significant military presence which is now called IMAT which is the International Military Advisery Team. It used to be BMAT, I think it used to be the British Military Advisery Team but now it is international. That was a full time-we'll come to the role that plays later on. But what was decided there was to appoint an expatriate commissioner of police, or Inspector-General as it is in Sierra Leone. For him to train, not the next generation, but the generation below that. Rather, not the current generation, the one below that. A lot of time investment was spent in liaison with what is now the National Police Improvement Agency in the United Kingdom. They were all brought over here and trained in the United Kingdom. Of course that went a long way as well to depoliticizing it and ensuring there was a robust leadership team. 

	The Inspector-General, the expatriate Inspector-General lasted about two years and lasted isn't a negative word, that was just the tenure. Speaking to the Inspector-General last week about this very issue, he was very supportive of it. A lot of effort went into identifying people. He was identified as a person to take over. A lot of people said when he took over it would fail, but it hasn't, it has actually gone from strength to strength. 

	Now, that's quite a difficult model because it is very much a colonial model, but it was at the particular request of the President. Looking at the police service, given a free hand it is exactly what I would like to do in Sierra Leone there, but politically it is no longer acceptable. Where that country is at that particular time-. The dysfunction of that is, of course, you ended up with a chief officer executive team with skills that were far in excess of the rest and we'll pick that up when we talk more about training.

	But again, in Sierra Leone, it is a presidential appointment and we've just got a new government in place. The current Inspector-General played the elections very carefully with a huge amount of sensitivity around that. It was not the first election since the difficulties, but the previous election wasn't hugely contested and there was a large United Nations military presence in Sierra Leone at that particular time. While I'm not sure that the military presence did an awful lot, what it was was a comfort blanket and stability. That election was successful. This election we've just had this summer was more important, it was contested. There was a groundswell to have a regime change and that has happened. That has all been a very peaceful transition. So we'll wait and see whether it changes. But the Inspector-General played it down the middle and seems to have, all the indications are that he and his top team have the confidence of the new government and we'll wait and see. But I'm fairly confident that he'll stay for the foreseeable future.

	The new change of government did have an impact on the ministry. I ought to say that from a practitioner's point of view, I am strongly of the view that for regime change in any police service, it has to be done through the normal processes of government and therefore the key has got to be, effective key for civilian oversight mechanism, it has to be through the Ministry of internal Affairs in Sierra Leone. I would say that's true of any country, but sticking with Sierra Leone. My difficulty has been that we've been doing quite a lot of work to prepare the Ministry of Internal Affairs out there to start to take on this role. But a decision has been made, there was a review by the government reform secretariat in 2005, 2006, on the state of all of the ministries, and just focusing on the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it said it was defunct. That was quite a worry because the models in Lesotho and Sierra Leone are very much UK models and based on British policing models. That's a strength and a weakness. It's a strength if you happen to come from the UK, but it's a weakness in terms of United Nations assistance which is a practical implication I'm sure we'll talk about further. The UN has a very rigid policy, and one can understand why, of rotating experience from its constituent countries. Each of these countries has a different style of policing. That's difficult when a police force has adopted a particular model. It can cause resentment I think within the international community as well.

	Anyhow, to come back to the point, what was decided was that we would work with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The government has now decided-the point I was going to make was had the Ministry of Internal Affairs been disbanded, and there was talk about this as a consequence of the government formed secretariat, that would have quite significant implications because the sort of discussion was around-whether it was a donor-only discussion I don't know, but it was certainly a discussion-I don't think it was. I think it was within government at the time, because I don't think the former regime thought there was going to be a particular threat to them. I think they thought they were going to get back in the game, rightly or wrongly. Wrongly as it turns out. But that would have meant an appointment of a Minister of Internal Security which happens in some countries and carving other bits off to local government and foreign ministry.

	That would have undermined a huge amount of work that had taken place through the Department for International Development. So there was obviously interest to make sure that the work wasn't thrown away. Clearly it's down to the country, whatever model they want. The donor community and DFID in this case from the United Kingdom's point of view-I think there are two UK funding streams in there. One is DFID themselves, Department of International Development, and the other is the Africa Conflict Pool which is the Ministry of Defense, DFID and the Foreign Service. So that is where the majority of the monies come from. The rest of the money has been UN money, but the UN doesn't have a huge amount of money. So DFID is the main player out there, because DFID is the main funder for the Africa Conflict Pool as well.

	That was an interesting time. But to cut a long story short, that didn't happen. But what they did decide to do was to merge the Ministry of Internal Affairs with that of local government. So it is now the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Local Government and Community Development which is quite a mouthful. But that only happened in October. Of course, we have a new minister. We've had discussions with him about the importance of civilian oversight. The role of the minister in the interfacing with the police, because there is a police council out in Sierra Leone which also he sits on as does the Inspector-General of Police. It is set up not as a police authority in the United Kingdom context, but to provide some checks and balances in what is going on. Also I think initially was set up, so it was seen that the police, to a degree depoliticized because other people were represented on it. 

	However, it is chaired by the vice president. So one could argue that it is probably not quite as depoliticized in terms of its work as others. Of course, the Minister of Internal Affairs, and I won't use his full title because it is just too long, but the Minister of Internal Affairs also sits on that. It does undermine his ability to provide oversight because a lot of things are now done directly through the police council and get government approval. So that's something that we're going to be looking at over the next year or two. It's quite clear that there is an appetite for the Ministry of Internal Affairs to work properly. So that will be quite a challenge. Obviously, because it is such a newly formed ministry, from our point of view we're waiting for that to bed down. Then we will take that forward. But what we have already agreed is a framework with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and that will go to cabinet early next year. There will be, in the first instance, secondees from the police, the prisons, the National Fire, National Registration and Immigration which forms that security element to work on policies and procedures and to see how proper oversight can be obtained, civilian oversight. Now, that will not take away the civilian oversight of the police, depoliticizing it as well, because the police have followed a model. 

	I mean we're probably go into detail and probably coming away a little bit from what you wanted are we? 

SCHER:	No, keep going.

H-B:	In terms of all of this, the Sierra Leone police have adopted a policy of what they call local-needs policing and community policing. They have in Lesotho as well. They claim to have done it in Sudan but I question that. It's just in name only. You've got to look for what's happening. But within Sierra Leone, they have set up local police partnership boards which are quite useful. Now they are distinct from the internal security organizations that are out there. There are provincial security committees and divisional ones called PROSEC (Provincial Security) and DISECs (District Security) in Sierra Leone. They're very much around the intelligence functions. There is an Office of National Security out in Sierra Leone. There is a central intelligence support unit called CISU (Central Intelligence and Security Unit). Then there is Special Branch which is a policing organization and obviously normal criminal intelligence services. 

	So the PROSECs and DISECs have played an important role in stabilizing the country, but they're not quite what we're looking for for civilian oversight and actual involvement in what's happening out there. So the local police partnership boards exist. They exist in every district. We are experimenting in taking them down to chiefdom level as well, because obviously what I'm only talking about is the formal policing system, not the customary justice side at the moment which also exists out there. So that seems to be important. They have agreed on some guidelines on how they're going to do the business and structures and we'll see how they perform. They'll obviously need some support. But again, monitoring and evaluation is key to all that goes on in these countries. 

	Often I find that when you go out there you'll find all the titles that you would expect in a more developed country, but there's not really the comprehension of what that involves. That's not policing because I think the police officers are fairly clear about what they want to do. But when you have people like the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Attorney Generals, the Solicitor Generals, Chief Justices, in my experience they all work in different ways. So a conversation with the Chief Justice about the importance of stating cases came as something of a surprise to him, that he was actually involved in that. 

	Of course, I think in fairness, the other thing is that the infrastructures don't exist in the country either. I mean particularly in the case of Sierra Leone, there's no power most of the time. People run of generators because national power is currently not in a position to provide that. It's one of the key areas of the new government. They've promised everyone will have electricity by Christmas, but I'm not sure which Christmas. But they're doing their best. The contracts have been let. But it's that sort of background where power surges from nothing to 350 volts and blows up computer equipment. Particularly in the case of Western Africa, the environment is extremely harsh. The Harmattan winds that you get there, blowing the Saharan Desert, all affect the communications, computers, everything gets covered in dust. So the life of these things-it's fairly difficult.

	Sometimes I think we as an international community have to stand back and be really clear about the environment in which we're operating. Now obviously, all of the people, the players, the local players want to be as good as anybody else in the world, and that's great. Sometimes these international courses have the dysfunction of raising expectations about what can actually be delivered. So if you take something like forensic science, it's very difficult to argue in a policing context, that a police force should not spend a significant amount of money on forensic science. The history of that in the UK, South Africa, America and so on, shows the importance of that. The success with cold cases, with DNA analysis, is hugely important. But you've got to look at the environment in which you're collecting it, the ability to get around the country. It's very difficult to get around Sierra Leone. It can be difficult to get around Lesotho. It's certainly difficult to get around Sudan. So all of these African countries have a real infrastructure problem. So while there are very strict rules in developed policing countries about protecting scenes of crime and gathering evidence and having an audit trail of evidence of who said what and ensuring there's no cross contamination and so on, that's very difficult in the African context. So how do you actually say to people, well you shouldn't be spending your money on it. 

	Now what I'm trying to do is urge, in Sierra Leone and, in fact in Lesotho, rather than setting up their own structures and particularly, well in both countries, they can look to South Africa for example. It's far better to find a solution I think on the continent than an international solution. That I think will come to when we talk about types of assistance. But just gathering it and having a sample that is credible, and then educating a justice sector that really hasn't had the amount of money spent on it. Within Sierra Leone, 25 million pounds was spend on the police alone in the last five years. 

	Now, the justice sector program that I'm currently involved with is 25 million pounds over five years, but for the whole of the sector. So the rest of the justice sector, and we'll come to this as another point, has clearly lagged behind the police. The prisons have had nothing; they've had nothing since the '60s. That presents something of a problem. I think there's also a problem, and it's still all really, just on your depoliticizing I'm afraid around where do the police sit. Now there are different schools of thought around the security and justice dimension. While on the one hand it excites academics, on the other hand it has real implications on the ground. 

	Generally policing in Africa is more on the traditional security side. For me, as a sort of working definition, security is about threats to the nation state. So the borders, the suppressing of civil rights, human rights often, is very predominant in countries that are in post conflict. Actually I understand that. Now the justice divide is more around the rights of the individual as you would find in a democratic country. Now, when you're in post conflict it is less of a debate because something like about 80% of what you do in the first two or three years will be about stabilizing the situation, will be about being visible and reassuring and ensuring that the organs of state can function. So it has to create an environment in which normal ministries can do their business. But as you start to come out of that, you then have-to one of economic growth and development, the balance should change to about 80% for the justice side and 20% for the security. Now I think it's foolish to say it's one or the other because it's never one or the other. 

	I think they change their positions over time. So while I see a graph that starts high on the security and drops down, and then has a crossover point between justice coming up, but you still have to fund both. In my experience, the post conflict and security side is funded at the expense of the justice side. So when people wake up, and I don't mean that in a rude way, to the fact that now the world is changing and you need inward investment, you need to fund education and health and all of those-. I think one in five women in Sierra Leone die in childbirth, huge mortality rates out there. In Lesotho 35 is the average, as I recall life expectancy because of AIDS and all the rest of it. 

	So you've got to start funding that right early on but in the full knowledge that you're not going to see a return on your investment for several years. So when you are ready to invert the security justice levels, the organizations are ready to take that on. In my experience they're not. They certainly are not in Lesotho, they certainly are not in my view in Sierra Leone. So that means that actually, the international donor programs will have to run longer than perhaps one would want them to. So there is a time lag around that. This sort of work is cultural work and it's development work and programs tend to be around five years. That's too short. These programs need to be commitments for 20-odd years. 

	I think in fairness to Department for International Development, certainly their agreement between the United Kingdom and the government of Sierra Leone was a ten-year agreement. But you've got to get through one or two generations of change before it is internalized and that's what you're looking for, internalization on the ground. So those are all of the things it actually impact. Now, when I said, the juxtaposition changes. So when you have something like an election in Sierra Leone, as we've just had, of course security predominated again and it was all around election operations and so on and the UN were very interested. But now that has happened, that has dropped away. I have a concern that the security element actually is dropping away too quickly because, as I mentioned earlier, nothing can flourish unless the country is stable. I'm not convinced that has been internalized. I think it is fairly stable. Obviously from a donor point of view they're saying what about our exit strategy. But I think we need to be more realistic about the time of that exit strategy. 

	Now also a problem, a practical problem that affects the post conflict and the move to economic growth and development, is thought has to be put in right at the outset and, to my mind, documented about sustainability and affordability. What do we mean by sustainability and affordability? You could argue that in the current context a country like Sierra Leone that has roughly 70% of its GDP from the international community can afford nothing and can sustain virtually nothing. But, nevertheless, to give an example, when the police support was first given post the war, the conclusion of the war, it was important to have as many police vehicles out and about so policemen were seen and were reassured. Of course it goes in assumption with that, that having policemen about does actually reassure people. But nevertheless, that had to be done, and frankly we'll look very carefully at police perception surveys now as a monitoring and evaluation point of view for whether we actually have what I call the normal policing function which one would have in economic growth and development.

	So they bought loads of vehicles, some 150 vehicles. Well they started rolling up on the docks. No drivers for them of course, nobody trained. So there needed to be a driver training program. But just to give you an example. I wouldn't hold in terms of the figures, but roughly let's say 400 vehicles arrive on the dock, 300 drivers maybe, but 400 vehicles disappear. When I came along to take over this particular elements under the justice sector, because it was the rump of the old program, the first thing I said is we need to know exactly what we have here and we need to do a business case review in relation to that in terms of affordability and sustainability. They got very used to the fact that if they crashed a vehicle and it rolled over and all of these other things, it didn't matter, there was going to be another one on the docks, just drive down to the docks and pick one up. But of course now, and I've been working for certainly 18 months on this, a realization that that is not going to happen any more and that their fleet of 850 vehicles cannot be sustained. They can't afford the fuel, they can't afford the spares. What do we do? 

	It's a huge worry because they've become totally reliant on this. The Inspector-General in Sierra Leone runs the biggest fleet of anybody in the country and there is no money to develop that. Yet, from an international donor point of view, what have we done? Well one of the things I did a couple of years ago was work on an exit strategy and we have now exited. We finished the program in September and the last indents have been raised. We trained local mechanics. We trained forced transport officers. It was a vehicles and communications problem. 

	We put in a whole VHF (Very High Frequency) and HF (High Frequency) communication system for the country; but they can never afford to replace those radios. Because of the harsh environment they're in-it's bad enough when they crash the vehicles, but with the dust and everything else, the life of a radio probably is about three or four years. We've done very well to keep them out there for five years or so. But what now happens. The worry is that that will cause instability. Now, if you take another thing that impacts practically and for very good reasons I have no doubt, the World Bank and the international community stopped the funding of the Sierra Leone government around May, June time of this year. The timing was interesting given that we were just about to go into an election. What it meant politically of course was that the then party, which is now in opposition, were quite vociferous in saying, this is the international community trying to force a regime change. I don't know. But I actually think there were real issues about they're not accounting for the money because corruption is a huge issue. 

	The anti-corruption commission had not been a huge success in Sierra Leone and that's another story all together but I have high hopes for the future with a new commissioner who has been appointed and we'll be looking to work with him over the next year or two. But what it meant was-certainly there was that sort of political fallout, but in practical terms it also meant that nothing could be afforded or sustained at all. So where as I had worked up as part of the exit strategy to buy in some vehicle engines and spares that I knew were going to be difficult to afford. The consumables, the oil, the water, those sort of things-well water not particularly, but tires, they could afford to do. But they can't afford big engines and stuff. What actually happened was really as soon as the stuff hit the docks it was just taken and absorbed.

	So the two, the strategy to provide them with a cushion for another year or so actually hasn't happened and the money is now finished. So we will have to see. So again, there is a real need I think also for the donor coordination. One of the things, again, this all comes from depoliticizing, but it all flows from that, is around setting up proper strategies and accountabilities. In the two countries that I've been particularly involved with I've developed or helped developed, or we partied to develop strategic development plans. They have got to have an outlook for the next five years. 

	Now, what we did in Lesotho was, prior to my arrival there had been a five-year plan called Beyond 2000 and I went beyond 2000. It had been written by an international adviser who was full time out in Lesotho but it hadn't been understood and got the involvement of the Lesotho people. So when I asked, "What have you done?" The answer was absolutely nothing. This document which was something that would have been proud to have written, actually had no practical impact at all. So we then totally revised that, put together working parties chaired by the commissioner or the deputy commissioner of police out in Lesotho, involving the Minister of Home Affairs. They had a strategic plan and from that we divided that into chunks for an annual plan and then did the annual reporting on that. So that was the way that we were looking to depoliticize and provide some monitoring and evaluation. 

	There wasn't always an understanding that if you had a strategic plan that you couldn't just do what you wanted. Equally I think within the ministry-I tried to encourage the Minister to set some operational goals and targets, just three or four high level things that were really important to the government in its widest sense as opposed to political ones and then for them to be incorporated and absorbed into the strategic plan. Unfortunately again, the monitoring and evaluation wasn't as one would expect and therefore the reports back in the annual plan were pretty shaky. But this is a long-term strategy and I take the view that you should just start it and live with what you've got. This is where I think, to a degree, I come into conflict with some, not all. A lot of people think that you should take a very robust, theoretical position. I think that's the province of academics who don't actually have to deliver on the ground.

	We don't start with a greenfield site. There are all sorts of personality issues. There are power issues. There are corruption issues. There are the practical issues of getting around the country. What in my mind as a practitioner you do is you have a very clear idea, I mean obviously you have to have an absolute understanding of the theoretical position and where you're going and that is where I would not argue with anybody, but I sometimes have to come at things three, or four, or five different ways, to roll up my sleeves, be prepared to get my hands dirty to achieve it. 

	The other thing is, you have to check this out regularly. I can't speak about the French-speaking countries, but if I stick with those that are, were protectorates or old colonies of Britain, English is an important language for them, because it's the only way they can be international players in the world and they understand that. I've had these discussions in Sierra Leone and in Lesotho and everywhere in the world people speak English. I don't think it has anything to do with the English, I think it has more to do with America if I'm honest in today's context, but it's the only way of doing business in the world. It is the international language, whether one likes it or not. But it is not the only language. So in Lesotho there are Basuto people who speed Sesotho and that is what they speak most of the time. Of course in Sierra Leone they speak Krio, Mende and several other languages. So the fact that they speak English doesn't mean that they have the comprehension that goes behind the words. So as a practitioner you may think you've got the message across and of course culturally they'll never say no. They'll never say no because they don't want to be rude. They'll never say no because they know that you've got pounds, shillings and pence attached to them, or dollars or whatever it is. There's donor money. So there are not going to be turkeys that vote for Christmas, they're not stupid. They're very, very adept at playing the international community, particularly in Sierra Leone, they're very adept at that. 

	So that's why I think you have to check out the concepts to make sure they're understood. You can't just take policing context from whether it be UK or South Africa or America or Pakistan and just plant them in to another country, it's a recipe for disaster. So you have to contextualize it and see what can be achieved and when. It is again with corruption. At the risk of sounding awful about this, you can't have a zero tolerance to corruption, it just doesn't work. You have to reduce corruption to a level by which the organs of state can operate effectively in the early stages. I would look at any civilized country and say, "Well, have you, have we in the United Kingdom, in South Africa, in America, really stamped out corruption, white collar crime which is corruption?" Obviously we didn't. There are different definitions of corruption and I understand about public service. But it's questionable. I think one can't go as a hypocrite. I think the approach to these countries is to go in as an equal. 

	Certainly  in Sierra Leone, and this is back to the sort of advice that one needs to give from a practitioner's point of view. I think you have to go in and try to establish yourself as an equal. 

	So when I first went I was asked to be an adviser in Sierra Leone to the Inspector-General of police. I refused. He didn't need or want an adviser. Need is perhaps a different thing, but he certainly didn't want one. So if you go in as the great and the good, here am I to tell you how to do it then you get resistance and friction. As I said, you get the surface courtesy and cooperation, but as soon as you turn your back it goes straight back to the way it was. So the approach, I think, that one has to do, is as an equal. So my approach to the Inspector-General, and it was a very difficult relationship, and he will be the first to say when I first got out there it was an extremely difficult relationship. I went out there to administer a program, not to give him advice and certainly to steer away from this direct financial support of the sector support or institutional support of the police into one of the wider justice sector. 

	So he had to understand that I wasn't just going to give him money because he asked for it. So we had a lot of discussions around no and the meaning of no and who called the shots. So what we did is we established ourselves as saying, look, we are both grown adults here. We are both experienced. I have over 30 years experience just in policing and then development experience on top of that. He has 27 years of policing. What does he want to look like from his point of view. So we spent an awful lot of time discussing what the police service was going to look like. That links into something you were talking about earlier, about the SSD (Special Security Division) and the OSD (Operational Support Division) and the migration.

	Actually the main cause of difficulty, I would say, in my early years in Sierra Leone not in experiencing interest, or the difficulty I experienced in Lesotho, but they come from a different background. Certainly, they had all this direct support and it was all very much around, as I said, traditional security. So while-I mean some work had been done. Some will give you the impression no work had been done. But while people were talking about community policing, there was no evidence of community policing. Consultants had come out and done some useful pieces of work but it wasn't really all hanging together. The strategic direction had been lost to an extent. That as much as anything, the particular program that I took over or started, the old program was, frankly the old program was coming to an end. They were just-our program was late in starting so it had just run on a bit longer than they thought it was going to. But what had actually happened was the strategic focus of pulling it together, so that you ended up with some symbiotic outcome as opposed to just different individual pieces of consultancy. So there was that element to it.

	Also I think that I had picked up a couple of key documents in Sierra Leone. One was the 2004 agreement between the government of Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom when it talked about that they were ready to move from post conflict to economic growth and development. That term that I love and I use a lot is actually something I stole from that document, because I think it does identify very clearly that sort of transition that needs to be made and how that should work. Really, one could say, whether it be half of a bell-shaped curve or whether it be two slices of cheese inverted I don't know. But either way, I didn't pick up, I heard the words and I certainly heard the words in the United Kingdom about the need to move, but I didn't see that translation on the ground. Part of that was because I think you need different sorts of people  for different times. That's a terrible generalization because clearly some individuals are able to change and take the wide strategic view and international view about where a country is at the time and adapt their position. Others don't. 

	You could be doing an outstanding piece of work post conflict and be a total liability in economic growth and development. That has to be handled. Of course, I came in as economic growth and development, normalization of policing function, recognizing the importance of that security element. But of course that made life difficult because people then though I was devaluing what had gone before, but it was in a temporal context. I was saying it's time to move on. So don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Let's not get stuck in-terrible mixed metaphors-but don't get stuck in a rut. We've got to move things forward. So my early conversations were around this SSD, OSD. Well the SSD was actually, originally, very much a, not a secret police, but certainly a political arm of the police from what I understand. I have no practical experience. That's purely from what I've picked up and read. But it was very much an enforcer for politicians.

	That moved into the Operational Support Division, OSD. Quite a lot of consultancy was put in on that. I think there was a change. Certainly when I went there I got no evidence that it was being used as a political arm, but what it was was a third of the police force. So it was roughly 3,300. They were armed and they provided the public order and facility and really were the traditional security side of policing. More controlled. Certainly the guy advising them had done a good job in terms of setting up the infrastructure within that. But nevertheless, I grew concerned that the Inspector-General had one-third of his police force that were not doing the normal policing function. Given the nature of their role, that they had to be mobile, they had the lion's share-others will contest this-but they had the lion's share of the resources. They were well equipped for communications and well equipped for vehicles. 	That meant that if something did happen in the normal policing function, the chances were they were going to get their first and yet they were the least qualified to do it. 

	Now you did talk about recruitment. So while I've not personally been involved with recruitment, I have abstractly been involved in recruitment. Now the recruitment process obviously for the police service in Lesotho and in Sierra Leone is through some level of examination and appointment. Of course jobs are very difficult there. But to the OSD, to my concern, I found that they were pre-selected. You've got to remember this is around the time of truth and reconciliation which was nothing like South African truth and reconciliation. But there was an attempt-it sounds patronizing and I don't mean it to be. But there was some move towards it but certainly nothing as you would know from South Africa. There were a number of bush fighters and these sorts of things.

	There was talk at the time, and there has been reduction of the military, downsized the establishment. What was being talked about at the time is you downsize the RSLAF (Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces) as it is and you upsize the police. There was talk about well you just take the soldiers and put them into the police. Well, that's exactly what you don't want to do. Quite a lot of work has been done on demobilization and redundancy for the military and that will carry on. Figure 9-1/2 thousand for the Sierra Leone police one could argue is very high but you've got to look at it again in context of getting around the country and so on. But that will have to be reviewed at some particular point but certainly not on my agenda as the highest of things to deal with because labor is cheap out there, so it is not a huge issue.

	Anyhow, what we got was an OSD just doing that. I argued to the Inspector-General that he needs to start thinking about what post election. The conversation I would have with him is what is your legacy going to be. That is different from your obituary. It sounds light-hearted but actually I had long discussions, as an equal with him, saying look, you can either sit here and contain things, and possibly be a popular man, or you can be a statesman in the widest sense and deliver a foundation that will be a springboard for Sierra Leone in the future. Giving that I come from this real position, personal position, that you've got to have normal policing function, you've got to have a really strong justice sector to attract inward investment into the country to raise GDP. 

	While security is important, it cannot predominate forever, which is why I talked about the change over, the bell-shaped curve and the cheese slice. So to start with that fell on deaf ears. It fell on deaf ears for a variety of reasons and there were good reasons. Nothing against them at all. Firstly there was an election coming up and that had to work. I certainly, I put in a report in 2005, in June, I'd only been there three months. The transition from the old regime of support to the police to the new justice sector support to the police. I had said that clearly within the mandate of the justice sector it was not appropriate for us to buy arms, ammunition and riot gear, that sort of thing. We should do nothing that would atrophy the ability of the police to handle security. 

	Also you have got to bear in mind that during the war the RSLAF were not trusted. Well, they proved themselves not to be reliable but the police were. So there was a view that by having one-third of your police force who were armed and well equipped, in the event that it went wrong with the military, there would be a cushion for the government. That had proved worthwhile before. I understand that and I never argued against that. But what I was saying is okay, let's talk post election about how you want to leave things. So now discussions are taking place around using the Operational Support Division in a mobile, community policing response, but having the ability to call them together if you need to to deal with any particular difficulty. Also I encouraged and, it has happened, the hierarchy, the management of the Operational Support Division to be integrated more into the general policing function. Certainly when I went out there, the Inspector-General expressed no confidence in the general policing and no confidence in their leadership. 

	Because I'm quite a blunt man, said, "You know you've just written off two-thirds of your police force now. If you're not happy with the leadership then you've got to look at what leadership you're providing." So we've gone a long way. So I suggested he start interchanging his command structure and that has started. They haven't got a proper HR policy and still, in most African countries it is some sort of patronage and certainly promotions are field promotions done on a whim and not as one would expect them to be. But, again, we've made a start by moving people around. We are certainly talking around what is going to happen to the OSD. But I've always stayed away from reducing the numbers until I'm really satisfied that the country is stable. I think that's where we'll go. The danger is, of course, now that the election is over, the attention of the international community is pointing elsewhere and rightly so. I think I mentioned this earlier on, we've just got to be careful that we don't dump the security side too fast, because it will then all start to unravel. 
  
	Long answer to a first question but it probably covered several of them I hope.

SCHER:	It covered many, many areas. There are quite a few things I'd like to follow up on but I'm going to suggest we take a break. 


SCHER:  	This is the second part of the interview with Anthony Howlett-Bolton on the 12th of December, 2007. I'm going to follow up on a few points that Anthony made in  the first half of the interview. First going right back to de-politicization issue. I was interested in what you said about how the police in Lesotho were not trusted by the government and how there was an effort to make them more trustworthy. I was wondering if, from your perspective, there's a difference between seeking loyalty from the police and building a really credible, nonpolitical institution. Was that something that you had to work through? Was the government looking for allies in the police, looking to put in people that they could count on, or were they looking to genuinely create a nonpolitical force in the country?

H-B:	I think from an international point of view, they were looking to develop a nonpolitical police force that had credibility. Sometimes, I have to say, I suspect whether that is because, without certain things in place, it is very difficult to attract donor money. Things like anti-corruption and so on. But the reality is, in a country, and the police service is always an operational arm of government. It is in the United Kingdom and I would suggest it is everywhere in the world. So I am a little bit circumspect sometimes, when one talks about the independence of the police. Clearly the normal policing function has to be carried out independently. But the police work with the laws of the country and it is the politicians and the parliaments that pass the laws. 

	Where I think there is a problem, again one often finds in the African context, is where people are looking to use the police as allies for overt party political purpose to stay in power and/or to drive out the opposition. So the raids in people's houses and so on. That's really what we were talking about earlier in the Sierra Leonean context about the SSD. That is not acceptable. The world is shrinking from a global point of view. Obviously, physically it is not changing at all. Therefore things are a lot more visible. I think it is becoming more and more difficult for countries to be seen to be overtly following this path. I actually felt in Lesotho there was a genuineness. I had no doubt, I think the government had reached a point, they were severely shaken by the difficulties they had had. They obviously had to call on the help of South Africa to assist them. I think there was very much a genuine attempt to have independence. That said, as I said, they'd always look for some support if they could, when the chips were down. 

SCHER:	Along those lines you mentioned that there was a vetting process to kind of elect this new cadre, the top team. You also mentioned in Sierra Leone the Inspector-General, the new Inspector-General they had was identified as being somebody who was good for the job.

H-B:	Yes.

SCHER:	I wonder if you would mind talking about both those processes in Lesotho and then in Sierra Leone, how people were identified, how they were selected, how they were vetted. What was the kind of process?

H-B:	In Lesotho I can probably talk more authoritatively because I was there at the time, but I can reference Sierra Leone as well. Certainly in Lesotho they were looking around at the organization. They looked from commissioner down to senior superintendent which can be a chief superintendent in some countries. That was the range that they looked at. Certainly there were issues around people being educated. Education is extremely important in all these African countries. It's the only way you can lift yourself above the bar. To the extent that credentialism sometimes is ridiculous. So there is that element of it. They were looking for international flavor. Certainly they were looking for people who were going to be acceptable both internally and again to the international community. Then of course, there were checks on the individuals. So that's how it was done there. I mean, they didn't have to sack anybody, they were able to maneuver it in a way that nobody lost face because there's a big issue about not losing face. Of course retiring and going on pension in a number of countries isn't too much of a problem, but out there it is because suddenly your income stream is gone altogether.

	In terms of Sierra Leone, the identification was again by having the expatriate, the international commissioner or Inspector-General. At the time there was a program running. So there were two international advisers there at the time who could reference each other. So there was that 25 million pound aid program. I think it was just before that started, in fairness, but there was still sufficient money being pumped in. Then they spent a long time looking around at people who were amenable for training and appeared to have-I tend to use the expression oil in their lamp and it's lit. As opposed to some people who haven't got a lamp at all. So they picked good people. That was very much personal selection. 

	I think again, in Sierra Leone, because they've exposed so many people to the UK and training programs, I think they have plenty of people to pick from. It seems now to be embedded. Certainly from a human resources point of view there's lot of work that needs to be done, but at that senior superintendent level, there doesn't seem to be a shortage of good people. Not true of the prisons of course which is totally different.

SCHER:	Okay. 

H-B:	In Sierra Leone they've had no investment, no support. They've had nothing since the '60s and they're just a dire strait. Lovely people doing the best that they can in very, very difficult circumstances. 

SCHER:	Maybe we can talk a bit about that later. I just wanted to pick up on one of the things you said, that it was quite difficult to get people out of the door, basically to get them to retire without losing face. How was that handled? Were there voluntary severance packages or anything like that? How were people quietly ousted? 

H-B:	Well, I think they were just moved sideways really. Other organizations were created or other places in the civil service because the grades were transferable. So they were able to transfer out into less controversial outward-facing roles. One or two just didn't have their contracts renewed and that was it. They did bite the bullet there. Certainly from a military point of view in Lesotho yes they were retired, physically, forcibly retired. But that didn't prove to be necessary-I think there was sufficient around, vacancies. Of course, at that time, we were able to discuss the establishment and increase in the size of the establishment. So in some ways you could corral those that were not good. I'm not suggesting that everybody who wasn't any good left. But they were marginalized as best as possible and allowed to move with some dignity. Dignity is a big cultural issue out there.

	While I find that you go from a normal conversation in to a blazing row in ten seconds, you also go back to normality in ten seconds. There doesn't seem to be anything from nothing to full on. They won't, unlike Westerners, they will not, in my experience, take the difficult decisions and bite the bullet. They will always find a way around it as best as possible, using the ministries and so on. That's generally what they've done there. 

SCHER:	Can I pick up actually on this kind of cultural aspect? Would you have a couple of examples maybe of times when a particular cultural factor, an aspect of the cultural context, has made doing something either easier or much more difficult? 

H-B:	Yes. Clearly as an international technical adviser one has to remember one is exactly that. One is not a Lesotho or Sierra Leonean or whatever it may be, Sudanese. There are other pressures on. Certainly in Lesotho, a big issue was the extended family, most of whom would not be working. So the person that was working may walk ten miles to come to work, will be the only person working. Then, of that family, half will have AIDS. It makes it very difficult to have a serious conversation about performance, management, development, monitoring evaluation, because their priority is different. The priority is to work and to survive. That said, there is huge enthusiasm and certainly amongst key people in key posts, that wouldn't necessarily be true. But it is always underlying.

	For example, you couldn't do anything on a Friday afternoon in Lesotho because that's when they went to gather the dead because all the burials took place on Saturday. You just see queues of vehicles going to the cemeteries. So you finish work Friday-obviously we had work to do, but interface work on a Friday. Nothing on a Saturday and nothing on a Sunday. Sierra Leone, again, one takes into account 70% of the people there are Muslim, so they go to prayers. While that doesn't paralyze in the same way as it did in Lesotho, it has an impact on who is around and who wants to be around. So that's the sort of thing that would have an impact. 

	In Lesotho again, currency of wealth was actually cattle. So the dowries and the influence would be in the number of head of cattle you had and herd boys and so on, sheep less so. But what it meant was that everybody was doing something else. I think in fairness that's true in Sierra Leone as well. Most of the people you're dealing with in Sierra Leone will have another job. Will be running a security agency. Somebody might be running a fashion boutique or a bakery and so on. They don't know whether they're going to have a job tomorrow, so they can't be reliant upon it. So again, that impacts on the way they do their job. I remember talking to somebody in the ministry of home affairs, her husband was a lawyer and she would not do anything that compromised the influence of lawyers because that meant she was doing her husband out of job. She wouldn't have been, but it was that sort of thinking.

	It was about being, always there was that element of survival. People were enterprising, but enterprising in a subsistence way. But, as I say, in terms of doing their professional job, you could have a sensible conversation. But translating that into practicalities-. Sometimes it would be a case of looking over the border, particularly in Lesotho, in South Africa, seeing what they've got and thinking we must have the same, but different, because obviously it is a different country. So the expectations were more difficult to handle.      

SCHER:	You mentioned there in passing and this is something that has come up before, a police officer might be running a security agency on the side. I wonder if you would mind talking a bit about the non-state security groups in Sierra Leone and in Lesotho? What form did they take? What services did they provide, that sort of thing?	

H-B:	I think in both, non government organizations abound. That stems from the civil society involvement. But again, in reality, it was about having a job and getting a contract. So you'd find they'd be robbing Peter to pay Paul. It wasn't just the NGOs doing it. For example, if I wanted the University of Lesotho to do something with the police, what they would charge would be ridiculous. They were trying to put themselves up at international consultancy rates, yet the government was supporting the police and the government was supporting the University of Lesotho. So there was no reason why it shouldn't be done at cost, if any cost at all. But that didn't happen. So the NGOs certainly do provide a level, and certainly my approach, and it is not a unique approach is wherever possible use local resources first. If you can't find them locally, use regional sources, and if you can't find regional sources, then you can go international.

	Unfortunately policing is difficult to use local resources. You can use statisticians and people from the university and that sort of thing, but not often. But in terms of actually moving it forward, you've really got to have international experience which is very expensive. So you've got to bear that in mind. As I said earlier, civil service tends to be fairly fragmented. Of course, in terms of policing itself, again in Lesotho and in fact in Sierra Leone, and I'll use the one term to cover both, the paramount chiefs had an important role to play. That's historically and practically. Interestingly the West is spending a fortune on trying to reintroduce restorative justice, and yet the components for restorative justice are found both in Sierra Leone and in Lesotho. They're to be built upon. The practical reason for that also, that it exists, is because the infrastructure is so poor.

	The downside of the nonformal justice system is consistency and corruption. Clearly the chiefs would be appointed and sometimes were appointed by government. But nevertheless there would be the chiefs to administer the land. So I'm pretty much-I have to be careful with Sierra Leone, because part of it, the western area was a colony and the rest of Sierra Leone was a protectorate of Britain, so they had different rules. Certainly in Lesotho you could not buy land because it belonged to the King. Certainly internationals couldn't buy land. So in Lesotho what should happen is the chiefs should allocate land out to the villagers and so on. Then it passes back to the chief for reallocation at a later-no permanence with it. Of course what actually has happened is the chiefs have been selling the land and for whatever reason the courts seem to be endorsing that as not legitimate, not taking people too much to task. 

	So it does work, it has to work out that way. It is far better to have local problems with local solutions. Things move very quickly and you don't get the sort of backlogs and delays that you get with the formal justice systems in both of them. But, as I say, you don't always get something that is fair. So if you sleep with a girl in Lesotho, it could be you just have to marry her and pay cattle, or it could be that you're flogged, or both I suppose. Also in both countries there were issues of corruption also at the local level which, theoretically at least, the formal state system should go some way to mitigate against although we know in both countries that's still very much the case, there is corruption.

	I think the last thing I would say is that it is very easy to fall into the trap with thinking that you're dealing with educated people. Certainly the people that I interface with are extremely well educated and Masters are very common. You don't tend to get a lot of Ph.D.'s in my field, but you do get people with Masters degrees, also come to universities in England to get their Masters degrees. Part of the credentialism that I mentioned earlier. But in the villages you still get witchcraft. People still think, in the mountains, that if you sleep with a young girl or a virgin, it will cure you of AIDS. It is that sort of knowledge-people think, as I say, the witches and wizards do exist. So you've got to be careful about what you put in place. It has to build on the existing culture. It's very easy for people coming from around the world internationally with their ideas, just to plug them in and think it is going to work, and it won't. It's a recipe for disaster. But mitigated against that from a donor point of view, clearly where governments are putting in taxpayers' money, from wherever, they need to ensure that money is well spent. 

	So one is continually asked, what is the impact that you're having on the ground. So the program in Sierra Leone, for justice sector is about access to justice for the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized. But it is difficult. It is difficult to find that ultimate link because you have to work with the organizations that exist. Now ideally, civil society should be sufficiently strong, but as I mentioned earlier, it is not that well organized and it makes it quite difficult. But from that donor point of view, they're looking to assess virtually every year what you've done, what progress you've made. Most people like me will come along and help with that assessment or my sort of background, although I've not done that because I've been the practitioner. Nevertheless, sometimes when you explain what I'm talking about today, it sounds like an excuse for not doing anything. Everything is possible but you might have to wait a year, two years, for that window of opportunity. You know when it's right and suddenly you'll move forward at lightening speed. But you'll get frustrated in terms of making progress time and time and time again. It could be just something in the person you're dealing with's personal life hasn't worked out or somebody gets moved, or the President says something and suddenly it is a matter of great interest.

	Also I think there are competing donor perspectives. Every donor agency, from wherever it is, and it's just a fact of life, comes with its own perspective of what it wants to achieve. We all talk about donor harmonization, but it is donor harmonization within a framework that provides the release of funds in the first place. That sometimes makes life difficult. Some organizations are more willing to share success and work on partnerships, some are less so. In my experience, partnership working is incredibly important. 

	One of the things that we've done in the justice sector program, working with the UN police out in Sierra Leone, is-because they had the people and not the money and I had the money and not the people-I funded some UN training. So everybody got a tick in a box and Sierra Leone benefited. Now, the next phase is I think they're ready to go alone. So we're going to fund them now because we talk about training, people travel miles. Unless you are prepared to pay for the fuel to get them to the training, and to pay for the fuel for the generators, and to pay for the rations, nobody will turn up for the training, because it is just not possible for them to get there and too difficult. So you end up paying for the lot; you don't just pay for the instructor. I know in the grand scale of things it is not a significant amount; but I think it is better to put that money direct, but to dictate what it is going to be used for. One of the problems with Sierra Leone, given the elections and where we were, is they needed to recruit up to 9-1/2 thousand. So all of the training was either recruit training or training for the Operational Support Division. Little or no training for the rest of normal policing development. Just out of capacity, not out of-organizational capacity and the capacity of the organization to absorb that level of abstraction. Now, of course, I think they're ready to do that. 

	While I've indicated we're prepared to release funds for that, it is for normal policing. We're saying-having agreed with them what it should be spent on, we will only release the money for that, otherwise it will be absorbed and go into something else. It will still be training but it won't be the training that delivers the strategic program. People come along, somebody came along from one of the countries just last week, and I won't mention which one it was, but offered 2 million Euros. It was a European country, it wasn't the EU per se for the police. Well, it makes a difficult for me, working on a long-term strategy to say to them, don't take it, or take it and, a terrible development word, apply conditionalities. So you don't just take the money. What happens is a donor comes along and says, I have this money, I want it to be spent on this. Here you are. They say yes, because they're not going to turn it away. Whereas I'm trying to say to them, you've got a strategic plan, you know the direction, sit down with the donor and say, "This is what we want to do, how can we take what you want to do and fit it together. So I always say to them, get your plans ready. Because you don't know what's going to come along. It could be capital investment, it could just be training assistant, but be ready. Don't get diverted off into doing some sort of training that's not relevant to your thrust. But of course that's quite difficult. It's easy to say as an international but difficult when your money has been cut from an organization.  

SCHER:	Lets talk about that donor angle for a little bit. Are there any mistakes that you think Western actors or international actors commonly make when they go into a host country and they're dealing with local people and trying to offer some reform process but maybe not going about it in the correct way. 

H-B:	I think the biggest mistake is applying-this is quite a difficult one, it is applying a different mindset to what predominates. Clearly you're looking to move things from where they are to where they want to be, but sometimes the conditionalities, which is the international development word, are such that they do constrain and make it very difficult. So, for example, taking the justice sector program, I'm sure there are lots of people in Sierra Leone that would say just give us the 25 million pounds and we'll spend it wisely, or we'll spend it, rather than having a managing agent, an infrastructure that goes with it, internationals coming in. Because you never do get a sensible conversation with local people about disposable income. They look at what an international earns and look at what they earn and they want to earn the same. The fact that they don't seem to realize the taxes are different elsewhere in the world. That's too sophisticated. So I think that's the big mistake that people make. I think the next mistake is one of timeframe. 

	From an international donor point of view, there is an opportunity and some of this is so difficult culturally, it's going to take one or two generations for it to be internalized. So short-termism I think is a problem. Less so now I think, but pooling is important, the pooling of resources. I think success is having a donor committee sitting alongside the government so that sensible discussions can be taken about what suits which donor. That seems to be the approach. So go it alone I think is probably a mistake other than in an emergency. 

	I think the other thing is, and it is evident around the world, is that a crisis happens in a county and you often see it with national disasters, flooding and all of this. It's all over the television, the money pours in, transport planes pile in with all sorts of stuff. What happens two years down the road. It is no longer attractive. There are certain organizations, charities and donors that very much focus on post conflict. But unless-as I mentioned earlier, about keeping things at a lower level. Unless you keep that stable nothing else will develop and you'll be back to square one. I think if you look around the history of the world, and I wouldn't want to quote which countries where you can see post conflict, pulled the post conflict, not the stability, back to post conflict again. And repeated post conflict of course is a disaster for a country.

	When you see the state of Sierra Leone compared to what it was, I wasn't around at the time, but it had a huge reputation, it can get there again. If this government, and I pray that it will turn things around, if it was really committed there are some huge success stories there to be had. What has happened so far has been a success story, so I'm not indicating it's not, I'm just picking up on some of the implementation difficulties. 

SCHER:	Directly along those lines, let's take Sierra Leone, what do you think will be the biggest challenges that the police force face when donors and international actors-or if donors and, when donor and international actors withdraw. Whether that be in 5 years or 10 years.  

H-B:	Certainly sustainability and affordability. I talked earlier about the examples about the vehicles and the communications. IT has been put in. Even the provision of uniforms and so on, the quality and all of that, all has attracted donor funding. That will be the biggest difficulty that the police will face in terms of keeping it going. I'm convinced that they understand the concepts of modern policing and I am amazed what they have achieved so far. So you can have a very sensible conversation around modern policing and there will be evidence of comprehension. Implementation is not quite on the same level but it is getting there. 

	I think the worry also is that because they have become so dependent on donor assistance, a mindset forms that there will be another one along in a minute. Whether there will or not, I don't know but it does mean that they could well swing away to a different sort of  model, depending on where that money came from. Certainly the Chinese are not doing anything in policing as such. They've done some military provision I think for boats and things. They're extending their influence throughout Africa. Of course, I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but they certainly come from a different mindset. So I think that is what we have to be careful about in terms of the challenges. Certainly exposure to international ideas-. I don't think in Sierra Leone all the suit of it will unravel. I'm fairly sanguine. This comes back to the sort of assistance one gives that I touched on. Generally, other than in immediate post conflict, I personally don't favor full time technical assistance. What actually happens is you become a crutch. So you end up, because of different experience and a different culture you end up doing things. I mentioned earlier the Beyond 2000 strategic plan. That's a typical example, it was written and has no impact whatsoever. 

	I think it is far better to go in and give some training, some coaching, mentoring, set them on the right road. Come back in three, four months, see what they've done, get them back on the road again and so on. What that means inevitably is you will not move forward so quickly but it will be more sustainable. There is absolutely-in my personal view, there is no doubt about that at all. Where that comes into conflict, and I have voiced a fairly strong opinion on this, is that from a donor point of view it is far more comfortable to have somebody in the country all the time because you can pick up the phone and he can be around. But I don't think that-in my personal view, that advantage does not outweigh the long-term advantage. But I do qualify that. I do understand that in post conflict you do have to have that immediacy and you do need to have that heavy impact and I have no argument about that moving into post conflict. That's where part of the reluctance is to let go and see.

	So we talked about IMAT earlier. It will be interesting, only because I don't know, but they have been full-time advisers from whenever it started, in probably 2000. I think it was 2000 when they first went out or thereabout. Now they will withdraw. It will be interesting to see, I mean, over the next three or four years, it will be interesting to see how internalized that has been for the military, that advice. It can, of course, you've got to migrate from one to another but it's about having that glide path out, that exit strategy. I think they're feeling, sometimes they feel a bit vulnerable in the police about-well, there's only one police adviser for the whole of Sierra Leone now compared to how many they've got in IMAT, a hundred or so. But it's just a different approach. But I think the police are stronger for having that approach. I think they were stronger in Lesotho. Certainly when I've seen them at international conferences I've been hugely proud. I'm very, very proud of what the police have achieved in both countries. 

	Somebody else could go in and say, it doesn't compare to this, that and the other. But from where they were and the commitment, I think great success really.       

SCHER:	Would you mind elaborating a little bit on what you consider to be the successes?

H-B:	Yes, I think the success has been a real understanding of modern policing issues. A normalization of policing into, away from suppression and state domination into looking after the rights of the individual. So for example in Sierra Leone there has been a family support unit created. It started before my time I hasten to add, well before my time. But that's a huge success story in terms of gender violence, and children and so on. An understanding of right down to the bottom levels of what patrolling is about, of what they should be doing. That sort of comprehension. A willingness to engage in the international community I think. Obviously national pride as well. South Africa has, or southern Africa has SARPCCO, the South African Regional Police Chiefs Cooperation Organization, there's another C in there somewhere, organization, something like that. But that's really good. I would love to get one started for ECWAS (Economic Community of West African States) I think they're going to do something in east Africa and perhaps do that for prisons as well. 

	So again, I think the success story has been that realization. The strategic plans have been a success. I know they're not implemented quite as one would want them. Sometimes it has to do with resources, but at least they have them. They think about what they're doing. It's less short-term and it is more long-term. Yes, I think those are the success stories and the fact that generally people are not tortured. There is peace and perception surveys go a long way towards finding out, particularly in the villages. Not done by the police I hasten to add. That's something we do as a program, monitor the success. The elections, again, the Sierra Leone police were high in people's estimation because of the way they handled it. They're not seen as bully boys. You hear the odd story, of course you do, everywhere you go. But you hear the odd stories in the United Kingdom.   

SCHER:	Would you attributed that specifically, this kind of, perhaps a reduction in the levels of brutality within the police force, would that be due to training programs? To an enhanced understanding of as you say kind of civilian policing?

H-B:	I think it's down to training programs. I think it's very much down to oversight. We opened on that pretty much. Hugely important, civilian oversight. The role of the Ministry is very important. There are strict laws in Sierra Leone and indeed in Lesotho about detention. We've now got an inspector of constabulary or inspector of police in Lesotho. With a team. He's got a team of two or three, working directly to the ministry which links back to what I was saying about oversight. I would like to do the same at some point, but I doubt if it will be in my lifetime at Sierra Leone. But I think I'd like that to be done out there. The international community in Sierra Leone of course has played a role. 

	As far as the prisons are concerned, the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) has been involved in that and we've worked in partnership with them very positively. As far as the police are concerned, they've got their own audit and inspection facility. We're providing technical assistance for their complaints department, that's important, because integrity of the police is very, very important,  particularly in terms of international-well, both in terms of international and domestic arrangements. So I think all of those things have helped tremendously.

SCHER:	One of the things that we've touched on a few times and that we spoke a bit about during the break is this issue of corruption within the police. Particularly this issue of petty corruption, police officers setting up road blocks, collecting private tolls, which might not be headline-grabbing cases of corruption, but at the same time contribute to an overall, perhaps lack of respect for the police. Have you dealt with this at all and come up with any mechanisms or any guidelines to deal this type of behavior?

H-B:	Certainly, the first answer is yes, I've seen it everywhere. It is interesting how the terminology that is used affects relations. I can give you an example. If you have somebody who is not performing in the training school for example, an instructor. So you say "Okay, you're going to be posted out onto the street." He's delighted, because on the street people are "grateful." When you're in the training environment, you're not in the public-facing environment, nobody is grateful, you don't get any extra money. So it makes discipline an interesting dimension.

	The way it has to be handled is obviously through education and integrity. That's the long-term aim and starting people right at the beginning. Clearly people have to be paid. So in Sierra Leone, when I find-and I couldn't quote you the figures-but in principle a traffic warden employed by the city of Freetown, a civilian traffic warden, is paid as much as a police superintendent. It does make it a little difficult. So paying people properly. Again, within the context, the African context, but often there is a reluctance to pay. Some of that is because of ghost wages. In a number of countries we find that. Work has to take place around that. But you've got to train the standards and then you've got to vigorously enforce them. At the top it sets out, this is the way you're going to do business around here. If you start turning a blind eye it starts to go wrong. Small corruption goes to big corruption.

	I mean yes, the strings across the road, you see at the local level, or stopping the local taxi drivers and making them give money, you see that. And evidence of people all the way up the chain getting money. So if I'm a trooper on the ground, I will get money from the public, extort it, there's no other word for it, but my supervisor wants something, the station commander will want something. So they are actually raking in quite a lot of money. We had a very good example, and I was very proud that it came to the fore, done by the complaints division investigators in Sierra Leone on this very issue of people taking money on the street. They actually came out with who got what money over a month. Not by name but by position.

	So the fact that they were doing that I think is helpful. So that has to be rigorously enforced. I know, both the Commissioner  and the Inspector-General in both countries have been discussing-get very frustrated at the delays in court. So they pretty much sack people. In Lesotho that became a real problem because the courts are reinstating. That had not been resolved when I left. But yes, they're frustrated about the law processes. But there's the sort of mechanism you've got to put in place. You've got to put in some form of whistle blowing mechanisms and work of course with anticorruption. But again the anticorruption commissions need to have strategies in their own right. I've been having discussions in Sierra Leone, very recently, about the role of the police.

	Again, I can understand it but I think a mistake is the perception that anticorruption commissions have to stand totally alone. I do see it is helpful to have judges and prosecutors and decisions made by people independent of the normal system, I haven't got any argument with that. But no anticorruption commission can stand on its own in terms of evidence gathering and implementation. So a mechanism has to be found and Memoranda of Understanding need to be worked out between particularly the police and any people working anticorruption. The anticorruption and any state intelligence, so that is shared. That all has to be put in place. But the commission itself, and I say the commission because they're doing it on behalf of the government, need to have a real strategy of what they're going to do and how they're going to do it. So part of that has to be strengthening, target-hardening and strengthening mechanisms.

	Part of it has to be education, part of it has to be enforcement. But do you just go for the big people or do you go for the small people? I think you've actually got to hit them both together. Because if you only go-some people just go for the policy of the corrupt politicians and so on. One has to be very careful again, during regime change, that this isn't seen at payback time. I'm not suggesting for a moment that it is, but I'm just saying that's a consideration that one has to take into account with a new regime. But obviously the higher you are up the chain, the more impact you've got. Certainly it is the significance of the person and the amount of money they can get. But, that said, the police, for example, have got to deal with some of the lower level stuff, just so just it doesn't drown. Because if it is only the people at the top that get touched, then it's okay provided up to a certain level. But ultimately it has to be an educational enforcement program that says, "This is not the way that we're going to do it around here." And an understanding that it is not the way the country will develop. People have got to have that understanding of developing the country as a whole and a willingness and desire to do it rather than just, "What am I going to earn today and how much can I salt away." 

	There is big evidence of corruption, things being bilked, money salted away. Both Sierra Leone and Lesotho have diasporas. I mean, obviously the Sierra Leone diaspora is quite a significant one in terms of being in America and the UK and so on. Lesotho is less so. But at one time there were more Bisuto or Lesotho people living outside Lesotho than there were in it. So there are links and issues around that. But it is about real leadership and statesmanship, both within the organizations and within government itself and government has to take that stand on it. Organizations, for example, in Lesotho have done very well developing their revenue collection, with international help and have benefited. I haven't seen the evidence of that in Sierra Leone. I've recently seen evidence of all the restaurants saying, everybody has to pay tax on a meal or whatever. But whether that "tax" is ever collected or gets to where it wants to be-but again, attention within the international community. 

	There are people who think that we shouldn't be paying local taxes and there are protocols I know with the United Nations and so on. I think that's very unfortunate. I think it sends out exactly the wrong message. I think we should be paying taxes over there. We should be doing our bit. They always argue that the money if you like goes into my wages, never hits Sierra Leone, or Lesotho or anywhere else. I mean, they don't directly benefit. Neither do they often have too much of a say of what I am and who I am. I think again, the programs need to be owned by the relevant countries and they ought to have a say on the people who are working for them. That seems to be developing in some areas and certainly is developing in Sierra Leone. But no, we need to do our bit and be seen to do our bit and to be putting it back in for the sake of the country. Again, setting that environment. This is the way we're going to do business around here. 

SCHER:	I'm keeping an eye on the time so I'd like to ask just one question to wrap up. It's unfortunate, I'd like to ask you many more. But if you were-we've covered a lot of ground today and a lot of areas of police reform and things that are important to consider when reforming the police, but if you were writing a handbook and you had to pick your chapters and titles of what the key areas you consider to be in reforming the police and perhaps what order they should come in. I know that's quite a big question, but just off the top of your head what would you say were the key areas?

H-B:	Probably the most important is the leadership and the top team. I think it is vitally important that that work happens there straight away. Simultaneously you can then start putting in normal training at a lower level. But the top team is the priority. You've then got to look at the infrastructure and the culture. Take a view on what can be done culturally in a timeframe and what needs to happen in terms of the infrastructure to enable at least a minimal amount of policing to happen. 

	Government support, right at the outset and independent, and I use that word carefully, but civilian oversight and accountability I think is very important. Where things have gone badly wrong, obviously truth and reconciliation I think is important. Sometimes being ruthless if you have to be ruthless to make the decisions, to make things happen. I've known, in some places, and said to my colleagues, unless this happens in regards to an individual going, then we're  wasting our money. Now I can't force people to go or whatever, and I wouldn't want that authority, but sometimes people are such a block. Without that commitment from government, so government commitment I think is very important. So I think those would be my priorities.

	Less so I have to say on resources but you've got to provide them with something, but just enough. The Lesotho Mounted Police are a mounted police service, most of them hate riding horses because they'd rather have helicopters and mounted bikes and so on, but actually horses work quite well in a mountain kingdom. So the appropriateness of resources. Going for computer programs is not necessarily an answer when you haven't got electricity, you haven't got computers. So keeping the expectations realistic and not coming with any preconceived ideas that what we do in the West is best because a lot of things they do, we talked a little bit about non-state systems. Some of those are actually really quite effective and just work with those. So work with what you've got as well.  

SCHER:	Thank you very much again for your time and your hospitality this afternoon.
Innovations for Successful Societies					Series: Policing		
Oral History Program							Interview number: A10
______________________________________________________________________




1


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