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.: P21 Interviewee: Brian Dobrich Interviewer: Nicolas Lemay-Hebert Date of Interview: 21 July 2008 Location: Dili Timor-Leste Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties LEMAY-HEBERT: Good evening, and thank you very much for sharing some of your precious time with us today. My first questions will be about your personal background so would you tell me first about the jobs you held before you took this position and maybe briefly introduce yourself. DOBRICH: Okay, I'm Brian Dobrich; I'm a member of the Australian Federal Police which is the national police force of Australia. I've been a policeman for 32 years and most of my duties in the national police in Australia involve from, about half my career involve major frauds against the government and the other main task was drug importation, major drug importation to Australia. That's my main background. Also counter-terrorism to a certain degree but most of my duties involved narcotics. During my career I've had several overseas missions. My first mission was in 1981 with UNFICYP (United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus). That was a twelve month deployment. UNFICYP at that stage, and even now, is not a mentoring or training role, it is an unarmed mission observing and mainly involving humanitarian. It is a small police mission compared to many. At that stage I think there were only 35 UNPOL with several thousand military who were maintaining a peace role between the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots. That was a twelve month mission. I was a junior member and mainly involved in patrols, investigations in the Green Zone which was a zone between the Greek side and the Turkish side. My next mission overseas was back to Cyprus in 1997. That was a six-month deployment where I was the Superintendent of Operations of UNPOL (United Nations Police) operations. In that role, once again UNPOL was small compared to the military. There were still approximately 35 civilian police there. In that role it was mainly again concentrating as operation officer controlling all the humanitarian activities in relation to the green zone as well as ensuring humanitarian-I'm trying to think of the right terminology, welfare of, for example Greek Cypriots living on the Turkish side and Turkish Cypriots living on the Greek side. Also during those periods there were quite a few demonstrations in particular from the Greek Turkish side where very large, large organized demonstrations of civilians to try to cross the Green Zone. So I was coordinating all that investigation, preparing operations, to ensure that people did not go from one side to the other because the year before there had been an attempt and two civilians had been shot by the military. So it was quite a serious problem. No one was killed during my time which was good. My next mission actually was another UN mission and that was with UNTAET (United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor) in East Timor [Timor-Leste] and that was in 2001, again for a six-month deployment. I was posted here, it was a large Australian contingent of 100 men. I was deployed to Same in the Manufahi district where I was the UN Investigations Officer in charge of the PNTL (National Police of East Timor or Policia Nacional de Timor Leste) investigations area where all the duties were mainly in those days mentoring as well PNTL in investigation skills. Not just concentrating on how to do an investigation but all the necessary things that go with an investigation from commencing-sorry, receiving a complaint to administration of files, how to conduct the investigation, what you should do, all the way through to interviewing the witnesses, interviewing of suspects and preparation of court documents and having those court documents presented to the prosecutors officers. So that was my main duty in 2001. My next mission actually was a non-UN mission, it was an Australian-led mission in the Solomon Islands called RAMSI which stood for the Regional Assistance Mission of Solomon Islands. That was an intervention which commenced in July of 2003 where approximately 200 police and over a thousand military, Australian military and New Zealand were invited to the Solomon Islands because the country had fallen into lawlessness. The local police force had basically disintegrated. There were rampant killings that were going on. The government of the Solomon Islands requested Australia and New Zealand to intervene to bring law and order back into the country which was virtually done overnight. We had quite a few plane-loads of soldiers and police landed in the Solomon Islands on the 24th of July of 2003. Now that mission was for six months. My role in that mission, I was selected to commence, or to take control of the investigations area in the main investigations area in Honiara, the capital, to set up a RAMSI investigation team to investigate numerous murders, kidnappings and serious offenses. Other areas such as local investigation officers managed more minor offenses. That six month mission involved, from the very beginning, was in setting up an office, setting up the administration, setting up the reporting, setting up the teams to do the investigations. I conducted several investigations but my main role was as a supervisor for the investigations teams that came in. They mainly consisted of Australia and New Zealand investigators at that stage during RAMSI. Later on during the mission several other Pacific island nations provided staff to help. That was the setting up role. That mission continues to this day in bringing law and order and restructuring the police force of the Solomon Islands. My next mission was back there again in December of 2004 and that was a twelve-month deployment where I was in charge of general duties policing in Honiara district which is the main capital. In those roles initially was-there was actually an Australian policeman murdered while he was on patrol. I was involved in the preliminary investigation into that and then running the general duty type policing which covered community policing in Honiara district. In that role, eventually my main role became working with the local chief superintendent who was the district commander and a few of his inspectors who were in charge of particular areas within Honiara. That was a mentoring role where we were giving advice, giving advice on security issues. For example, during that time there were several large events, some being-there were the Commonwealth Games torch relay and the security for that. There were several large international soccer matches where foreign teams came to the country so I was to provide advice on security during those events to make sure that they went smoothly as well as just general day-to-day trying to advise them even on HR (human resources) issues. Not so much on finance. There were other people doing that, and how the district should use staff most efficiently. My next deployment was back to East Timor. I came with a group in the beginning of June 2006. This was a deployment, Australian-led deployment, at the invitation, that came in at the invitation of the government of Timor-Leste which was a majority Australian. There were also Malaysian and Portuguese civilian police deployed to bring law and order back to Dili. Dili at that stage in Timor-Leste had disintegrated following fighting between PNTL and F-FDTL (Timor-Leste Defense Forces or Falintil - For¨as de Defesa de Timor-Leste). The PNTL had several police officers shot by F-FDTL during a-were recorded where the UN tried to provide an escort for them from their headquarters to the UN compound and nine of them were shot dead by some F-FDTL officers during that march. So obviously the country disintegrated, all the PNTL in Dili basically left Dili, Dili had no police force. So the initial reason that that mission came in was to bring law and order back to the streets. The Australian Defense Force provided the physical presence with a lot of soldiers on the streets so that law and order could be resumed. My role during that deployment was specific. There were two incidents that the Timorese government wanted investigated quickly and that was the murder of the police officers and also the murder of the Minister of Interior's wife's sister and children. There were six of them burned to death in a house. Two teams were set up to investigate those two. A majority of the Australian police were involved in the general policing. Our two teams were involved in those two investigations. The UN became, obviously, involved early sometime during June 2006 and the government of Timor-Leste decided that they would give the investigation of these two incidents to a UN special commission. So we provided all that information and briefed some special UN investigators that came into the country solely to work on that as an independent, from an independent perspective. There were independent people brought in from other countries. So my role after that changed to being in charge of investigators who were investigating murders and serious crimes in Dili and Timor-Leste. There was no-I guess it was the forefront to the National Investigations Department (NID) which had disintegrated during the troubles. At the end of August, after three months, the United Nations mandate commenced and all the Australian police and Portuguese and New Zealand and Malaysians became incorporated within UNMIT (United Nations Integrated Mission in East Timor) when UNMIT commenced. My role then within UNMIT became the setting up of the NID office in PNTL headquarters. It started initially with a staff of five and when I finished in December of 2006 the staffing was up around 30 with several teams, including forensics, up and running. There was a National Investigation Unit which covered-that team would travel anywhere in Timor to investigate murders and serious crimes, to a separate team which basically stayed and did all the crimes in Dili which was-which had the most crimes, had the most murders. That office obviously continues to operate today which is, and very effectively. At that stage it was one of the most effective parts of the UN. I came back in July of 2007 as the contingent commander of the Australia Police contingent which is now fifty Australia police officers and initially was attached to the NID as the Chief of Investigations. But with the departure of the Director of SID (Strategic information Department), the UNPOL Commissioner requested that I take that role on because of the contacts-we deal a fair bit with the ISF (International Security Forces), the Australian and New Zealand military who are providing the security support for the country, and to keep that liaison to a high level so it is effective for both sides. Not just for UNMIT but for also the ISF. That's the role that I currently undertake at the moment. I've just completed a couple of weeks performing the duties of Deputy Commissioner of Operations within the mission. Today is my first day back in my old job. But before I was doing that job, so it was quite interesting. Do you want to ask some further questions now to clarify things? LEMAY-HEBERT: I'd like to know, if I may ask, how did you end up working overseas? DOBRICH: Well, when I was in my first mission I was young and single, it was a chance to go overseas, to get with the UN and see what the UN did and I really enjoyed it. After that I went home, got married, children. The opportunity came up for Cyprus back in '97, it was only six months so it was quite bearable for my wife and family. Again, very enjoyable in that sort of role. When UNTAET came up, being very close to Australia it was a very good advantage which meant I could travel back to visit my family on a regular basis on CTOs (Compensatory Time Off) and once again it was a challenge. I find that especially with the Solomon Islands and coming back to Timor Leste in 2006, I really enjoy the challenge, especially being the first one into a new mission because once you come in after it has been set up and everything a lot of the challenge is gone, the routines are in place, the systems are in place. You may not agree with them but you have to live with them whereas if you go in early into a mission you can actually have some sort of input with how it should operate and how it should operate more effectively. That's why I really enjoyed coming into the Solomon Islands when there was the first intervention and the same with Timor Leste 2006 with the intervention. Coming back again after seven months was a chance to work in Timor but it was also a career development opportunity where I was Strategic Commander which will possibly help a bit my future career but also the challenge of working again here and seeing how far it had gone ahead in that period that I've been away. LEMAY-HEBERT: Would you talk a little bit about the status of public order and crime in the country when you arrived, maybe in 2006 under your first deployment here after the 2006 events and the current situation, what it is right now. Maybe you can also draw comparisons with the UNTAET mission. DOBRICH: When I was here with UNTAET mission as I said I was mainly in Same, so the information that was distributed or that you had access to was not very good being in the districts, the communications. So from a district point of view the crime was relatively small, it was mainly involving crimes in 2001 were mainly domestic issues which happen in any country anywhere in the world. In fact, compared to most countries I would consider the crime in that district low, compared to I would say an equivalent size area and population in a developed country. It was actually quite low in the districts. I was aware because I used to come to Dili occasionally to go to court or bring prisoners here that there was, the main problems in Dili were gangs. Gangs were actually fighting each other and fighting police on a regular basis. It was quite astounding because although there were some gangs in Manufahi district, I think there was only one occasion where they actually stood against each other prepared to fight and we managed to diffuse it. But in Dili it was a regular occasion and it was regular that they were attacking the UNPOL at that time. That was actually continued on even when I left it was happening in Dili. I think it was a very difficult time. The gangs were trying to make their mark on Dili at the expense of UNPOL at that stage. When I compare it to when I came back in 2006, as I understood it Dili was before I came was relatively okay, the UNPOL had scowed right back, it was a very small mission. But once the events of April and May happened and the police virtually all disappeared from Dili, it was an opportunity for gangs-and that was the biggest problem then, gangs to try and reinforce, make their mark again in Dili because they're very territorial. Obviously they were trying to-they were fighting each other to gain territory. Also as we know they're probably involved in extortion and those sorts of things within an area that they control and therefore the bigger their area, the bigger they can make money. Bear in mind the country has hardly any employment, so it was a chance for these gangs to get money from businesses. When I got here in 2006, it was, the predominant problem was gangs, gang-related murders which were happening on a regular basis, more so in Dili but to some degree they were happening in the districts. Although the districts had not disintegrated, the PNTL, as it had in Dili, most of them were working effectively but they had very poor resources. If they had better resources they probably would have been able to work better at that stage but that was an institutional problem. There were some gang-related murders in other districts, in particular Baucau and Ermera. The rest of the country wasn't too bad. There were domestic murders which happen in any country. During that first six months there was a marked improvement within the gang violence, mainly due to the strengthening of the FPUs (Formed Police Unit) that were coming into the country, being able to control the crowds, control these groups whenever they wanted to fight each other or wanted to confront the police. There was an improvement-it was noticeable-it hadn't disappeared but it had reduced. When I came back to this mission in July of 2007, it was a very volatile time because there had just been the elections and the government, the President had been elected and he was to nominate a new government. When the new government was formed, I think it was announced in August of 2007, there was a lot of violence, mainly politically initiated but of course denied by the political parties. Again, it was a chance for gangs to be involved. There were a lot of gangs fighting each other. Again, there were some more murders. It was a very hard time on the UNPOL and in particular FPUs in the country. Again, fortunately the districts weren't going too bad, it was mainly concentrated in Dili. There was, over that period towards the end of 2007 there was a decline in this gang-related violence. Up until-comparing for example 2006 to now, there has been a huge improvement in crime in the country, especially in relation to gangs. There's been a lot of work that has been done by community policing also to organize mediations between them. I guess there is an agreed peace between them at the moment. There have been one or two recent incidents, smaller ones which hopefully by early intervention by the PNTL and UNPOL can diffuse them before they get bigger. A lot of the gangs were pay-back type crimes. Somebody would attack somebody, therefore there would be a revenge attack back and it would go back and forward and it would escalate over time. Well, if you are preventing the escalation in the beginning it stops the snowballing effect. From a general crime perspective I think a lot of countries would envy the crime rate here. It is actually, per population, I would consider very low. The murders, compared to population is, I guess, acceptable in statistics standards in that most of the murders now that are reported or suspicious deaths can be attributed to domestic issues rather than assault cases or robberies or gangs. Husband has an affair, wife stabs him, that sort of things. The other crime, there have been some minor things. For example at the moment there have been increase in opportunists, bag snatching crimes which before didn't happen in this country. I've never heard of it until early this year. It started this year with some offenders, mainly targeting single, European women in the evening and grabbing their bags and escaping on their motorbikes. But otherwise, a lot of the crimes here can be related to neighbor disputes, fencing disputes, stalk, going into neighbors' yards and causing problems which are rural issues that really the police haven't got much control over, you can't stop that. LEMAY-HEBERT: I would like to know, do you think the decline of gang-related violence in Dili mainly is also due to the work of the task force inside Dili and I would like to have your point of view. DOBRICH: I think the task force has got a role in it. That is also, at a perhaps sort of personal level I don't agree with some of the methods used by the task force. I guess the nature of the Timorese is they were quite a long time under Indonesia which is a very authoritarian method of policing. A lot of the younger people grew up during that regime and understood that that was the only way that things get solved. You create some violence and they come and they not necessarily are violent back, but very aggressive approach back to disperse, for example, the crowd. I think it's partially that, but that also can be a catalyst to causing problems between them because some groups might want to take revenge for, perhaps if one of the gang members was assaulted or treated very roughly by the task force. But it is effective-I'll give you an example. This goes back to August 2006. The Australians had a group of tactical policeman here equivalent to a FPU and the GNR (National Republic Guard) were here as a type of FPU. In Australia we don't have rock fights, we don't have situations that are typical in Timor with two groups throwing large rocks at each other, it just doesn't happen. So police aren't trained for that type of situation whereas GNR have a lot more for example soccer violence and those large group violence. So they're trained for those issues. When they were here the two groups would work together. If the Australian police, initially when the Australian police turned up the groups wouldn't stop fighting because they knew the police would not go and, for example, use force against them. The police would try negotiation which was impossible because they were just being attacked by rocks and whatever. When the GNR would come in with their batons exposed and straight away the locals would, I guess, remind them of the times, the Indonesian times, where if you tried to do that sort of thing you were broken up by the use of force to disperse the crowd that was causing the problems. When the Australians initially came they wouldn't do that. Once the Australians started using those similar tactics the locals understood and they would disperse then after that. So that is more of a cultural thing I guess. LEMAY-HEBERT: Next I have some questions about what your daily routine looks like. In order to give your successor some sense of what to expect. What does an average day look like for you? DOBRICH: An average day would be starting anywhere between 7, quarter-past 7 in the morning. I actually start early because I can get through-I receive lots of e-mails. I did a count a couple of days ago. I'd either send or read, received, approximately 190 e-mails in one day. So e-mails consume a bit of your time. Although a lot of them are not relevant, you still have to make sure that they're not relevant so you have to read them. If I get in early I can try to get through quite a few e-mails before other staff come and-because no one else is in the office and the phone is not ringing, you can actually do four times as much work as when there are colleagues around who wish to ask you something or the phone is ringing. Then a lot of those ones, the first part of the day, the main ones that I concentrate in my role is the incident reports, what is happening there. What is there that perhaps from an SID point of view we need to know about. Then I can ask my team members-sorry, in my role also I've got immigration, immigration comes under Strategic Information Department. If there are things in there that need to go to some of my team members for further clarification or to-not necessarily investigate but to find out more information about a certain, something that has happened in the last 24 hours. Also we get regular taskings from the Commissioner's office or the Deputy Commissioner of Operations about information that has been received through UNMIT or through the UNPOL Commissioner, so they want information clarified or checked, or verified. Once again, I deploy my guys out to go and try and find that out. Also we do all the threat assessments in the country. So all visiting dignitaries or events that are happening in the country, they're doing threat assessments. Or politicians within this country have threat assessments regularly reviewed as well because of the large UNPOL commitment to them. The Commissioner's office is always wanting to try and reduce, if possible, the commitment. So that means regular assessment of the threat against politicians and/or VIPs to try and reduce the UNPOL so that we can use those resources in another area. Obviously there is the day-to-day administration, people wanting to come and see me about CTOs and leave and all that sort of thing. Also the SID is the main liaison office, it does a lot of liaising with the ISF. Also through the Deputy Commissioner's office has a permanent liaison officer. But a lot of things that don't need, I guess more operational, regular damp it down to I guess ground level assistance with the ISF is done on a work level rather than liaison which actually works with ISF on certain things. Making sure they all happen. What else? Of course as Contingent Commander I have responsibilities to my contingent and so there are always cases of making sure that, for example, we have medal parades for example coming up soon. You make sure that all the planning is done for that, that's a responsibility. Also in the Contingent Commander's role you get contacted by previous members of the Australian contingent who hadn't received their entitlements from the UN, so it is straightening up those sorts of things which take time. If, for example you have members that have had to be repatriated for medical or for any particular reason, make sure that all the processes are correctly followed through the UN to make sure their check-out is done correctly. Also as part of the Contingent Commander's role you have for example we have a rotation in seven weeks. There's a lot of planning there in planning the departure of my current members and being advised about who the new people are coming in so that we can do a smooth transition. So the Contingent Commander's duties, when you have fifty members is quite time consuming. Other things are regular briefing of the Commissioner and preparation of statistics for the country which at the moment is only fair, the recording system, only because there is no proper or appropriate crime management or central area that records crimes in this country. So statistics can be skewed a bit because of the reporting in the country. Really, for example, you've got to make sure that the districts reporting on incidents comes through as well because we are regularly, for all the areas want to know stats for this country and comparison stats with previous weeks, previous months, previous year. So although we don't have a proper analyst, which is lacking at the moment, we do have to undertake that duty. Now in the SID we've got obviously the mentoring role which has been very important in the last-since I've been here. It is very important and at the moment I think out of the 25 PNTL 23 have now been fully certified, one more is just about to be certified and one is away overseas at the moment. So a lot of time is to make sure that certification process is going correctly. We do work with the PNTL equivalent of SID, that is called the SIP (Sector Investment Programme). So we're working regularly making sure that our guys are working with the PNTL if possible making inquiries or during the gathering of the information. Our greatest problem is that most of us are tall, white or dark-skinned and the locals are shorter, dark-skinned, so we absolutely stand out as being UNPOL. Doesn't matter if we were wearing civilian clothes or whatever. So we do have to rely on the PNTL gathering information for us for the simple fact that a lot of the people don't particularly want to talk to the foreigners or are worried about what the ramifications are if they're seen speaking to a foreigner. So we do rely on the PNTL to gather the information for us. It's just impossible for some UNPOL to go and make these inquiries, sensitive ones for example. LEMAY-HEBERT: That's very interesting. Could you describe a little bit what the SID is doing and how you gather information? You mentioned how you're working closely with the PNTL in this regard, but could you describe a little bit more what the SID, what the main tasks are? DOBRICH: Well the main tasks are, as I said, the UN doesn't do intelligence, that's why we're called the Strategic Information Department. We don't actually do intelligence. So that role is left more for the PNTL because intelligence is not something that the UN does. Obviously it has information about something coming up; I guess it's a fine line between intelligence and information. But we have to be careful that we're not seen to be doing an intelligence role because the UN doesn't do that. The best thing we try and do is work with the-the PNTL have, to a certain degree have some autonomy. They have a Director whom I regularly work with. But he also receives directions from the PNTL Commander-designate, to find out about things. Obviously there are things there that they don't want the UN to know about and we can't force that out of them. A lot of times he will, a lot of policemen have experience, they have been doing that role for quite a while so they know what to do. They know how to gather information. We do try to advise them on methods or places they can go to find information, how they should go about it, how they should approach people. Another program we've sort of instigated at the moment which we're trying to get them to adopt is an informant expense account which is a way to reimburse civilians if they incurred expense to help the police in gathering information. So we've got that fund set up at the moment which fortunately the UN is funding at the moment, but it has to be done very quickly to ensure that there are no UN financial regulations are breached but we can pay for informant expenses. There is a system in place to make sure that there is no abuse of the system. So if anybody wants to query why payment was made, although we can't-we can show that we are paying the payments correctly. We're trying to get that across to the PNTL that in gathering information sometimes you have to spend money. A lot of people say "I'm quite happy to find this out for you, or I can ring you up when I know that a suspect or somebody is somewhere, but I'm going to need credit on my phone." So there's got to be a capacity for the PNTL to be able to give the person a phone card so that they can at least ring the police and say, "he's here now" and the police can respond. So this is something that is part of the process I guess that we're trying to get into. We don't have an analyst that we can give them advice on how to analyze the information from a strictly analyst point of view although they do have some PNTL that have had that training. There is further training coming up, expertise training which I think will take place in Singapore and Malaysia which they will be sent to under bilateral programs to learn how to do that sort of thing. Unfortunately the UN doesn't have the, in providing staff to that particular area which is more of a specialist area. Some of the people who are coming in have intelligence backgrounds, it's a different environment, a totally different environment to the one that they've got back home and how they operate back home, from the facilities you have back home where you can, for example, access a lot of information on the computer; here there is nothing. There is no central database we can access to help with the jobs. That's obviously something that is going to be happening over a period of time, hopefully the next year, which the PNTL really need. For example on the immigration side, we fortunately have two specialist immigration police and the rest of the UNPOL out of there are basically doing mentoring roles on basic things but the specific we can only rely on two men for immigration mentoring. I'm hoping to get one or two more in the next two weeks actually in that area who have specific immigration policing skills to enhance that area a bit more and get it going. They've still got a few guys that may go on mentoring. LEMAY-HEBERT: How successful your initiatives have been from your point of view? DOBRICH: I guess I can put it this way, it is getting better. For example, from initially when I started there, there was absenteeism, that is pretty well improved a great deal. A lot of that is attributed to the Director. There was a replacement, a new Director came in and I guess, through him we sort of reinforced that these guys need to come to work every day. That was a common problem across the whole of the PNTL with absences from duty. During the-obviously things that helped to a certain degree was some of the autonomy they got during the February, as a result of the February 11th incident where the Joint Command was set up. I would give them-we actually lost control of most of our offices so were actually doing a lot of the work that they were doing themselves because they were all off on a joint command. But a lot of them got a lot of-which is hard, which takes longer normally. Got a lot of, I guess thrown into the deep end from a Timorese point of view and came out of it pretty well through the learning curve. You know what I mean? They might have made some mistakes, we didn't know about because we weren't involved with the Joint Command but they would have learned during that Joint Command. The other things, we helped them with these-obviously trying to-some computer skills but because they don't have any computers of their own, they've only got one I think in the whole office you can't do much. It's a standalone, they don't have a system so that we can try and do some, for example, Information Reports. They do do them but they've got to rely on one guy who has access to one computer to write them up which just ties them up, especially since they do it in Tetum first. So we've got language assistants that translate it over for us. Also the language assistants translate any directions they have from their Commissioner, Commissioner-designate. They're trying, I guess, they realize they're going to be taking over soon as well and they're trying to do things more autonomously at the moment which we don't want to discourage but we just want to know about. Confidence is something that is not, I don't know how to put it. You can't just walk in and expect them to trust you straight away, it's a build up of trust between the PNTL and the UNPOL. Some UNPOL I would consider probably not suitable and others, the successful ones, the ones that are able to get rapport with the local PNTL quickly develop rather than being a master, if you want to say that, as a colleague. And the ones that work as colleagues and help them and explain. The Timorese do require sometimes something to be explained to them numerous times before they finally realize that that is the most appropriate way to do it. That's probably an education thing, most of them aren't very well educated. The confidence part is, I found that the guys who are able to-not necessarily even communicate, because it is not necessarily language, because we deal with it through a language assistant. The UNPOL that sort of work best are ones that want to work with the PNTL rather than direct them. LEMAY-HEBERT: Have you faced any problem related to political pressure being applied on the PNTL from political parties or from the local government? Any problems related to political interference? DOBRICH: Probably not from political parties. I think in the, when I was in NID or in the SID, I don't necessarily, no I can't really say that I had seen it. Obviously they take, if the government wants a certain course of action taken they direct their Commissioner who will direct them that they want something done. But not really something that is going to be really adverse. LEMAY-HEBERT: You mentioned a lot of obstacles, absenteeism, lack of proper skills and education. DOBRICH: Yes. LEMAY-HEBERT: Is there any advice you could offer others about how to overcome these obstacles? DOBRICH: My advice to others, especially in relationship to example-not necessarily this mission because I've seen it in the Solomon Islands as well. You can't sort of reinvent the wheel. You can't change things really quickly, it's a very slow process and it is a process that the local people obviously see you as a foreigner who has come in and telling them what to do. The worst thing you can do is tell them what to do. The best way to do it is, for a new person coming in is, take a very slow time, don't rush it. Get to know the people, get to know their names, get to know a little bit about them. Work with them rather than direct them even though we are still in the executive role. We've got to show that even from an early piece that a lot of them have been in the police force for a while and are competent. We're not seen to be coming, or the UN shouldn't be seen to be coming in to take over even though we are, we were initially. The approach should be how best to work with them. They also know how to get things particular to this environment that don't apply compared to our own environments. So there's no use trying to impose something from your home environment when there's a better way that can be done here that they do. They might be wasting-that's why you really need that good rapport with them so that they gain your trust, you gain their trust. They will then explain things to you and you may be able to then even with the way they do things to enhance those using some of what you use back in your experience from your home country. I see the rapport part as being really critical because if you don't have that rapport they won't listen. I've seen it in some areas where if there is, I don't want to say dictatorial -like a dictator- but somebody who will just demand this and demand that, the local police will just switch off. They don't care, they'd rather just switch off rather than be treated that way. LEMAY-HEBERT: I have a personal question to ask you, you can decide to answer it or not, but do you think the root causes of the 2006 events have been solved right now? For example do you think the PNTL is now ready to resume the policing activities or do you think the same problems remain in East Timor in that regard? DOBRICH: I think that the Joint Command did a great deal to heal some of the wounds in that the F-FDTL and the PNTL worked together on a lot of operations. They certainly worked well but I see a couple of obstacles that could cause problems in the future and that is there seems to be from an F-FDTL point of view, I guess from the hierarchy a certain distrust of the ability of the PNTL. I think during the Joint Command because they were given the lead in it, they see themselves, they were the national police at the time that solved the problem. But also they were given a free reign to do that. The split could come-there could be further problems because, and this is only just being brought to our attention now, during the Joint Command there were allowances paid to the police and the F-FDTL as like a bonus because they were working on it. It was promised to regions where they worked on it but those regions haven't been paid. Where the ones in Dili-all the F-FDTL got their money, some of the PNTL got their money, but a lot of them, the ones in the PNTL in districts didn't get their money. They were promised it but it was never paid. In some cases it may be up to, I heard up to $300 a person which is a lot of money for a Timorese person. Therefore you then have the distrust from the PNTL point of view: "The F-FDTL got theirs, why didn't we get ours?". So they're being treated differently. The F-FDTL seems to have, as I said, distrust of the PNTL but the PNTL, what they don't realize is is that the PNTL is still a very young police force. This is what a lot of people don't-they have to be careful of. It's not even ten years old yet and it started with nothing. Most police forces in the world have been around for 50, 100, 200 years. They've developed expertise, they've developed their administration, they've developed how to get around logistical problems. This country didn't have that. They weren't their own police force up until really, I'm not sure, 2000 I guess is when they started forming the PNTL. So it's really only eight years old. They've had these major issues with 2006, it was only six years old at that stage where military, the military is a different environment than the police force. The military is very order-based. Police should be encouraged to be. The military, as in any military in the world is very rank-structured, very order-structured where a police force should have discretion on things. They're two entirely different organizations but the military here I think sees itself as the only way to control this country is with very strong-armed tactics. It's definitely better, it's definitely better, but the government will be involved. That's the biggest problem here, the will of the government must be strong, must be seen to be strong on controlling both agencies. LEMAY-HEBERT: To come back to the work of your unit. What do you consider the biggest success of your unit? Maybe you have a personal story regarding that. Maybe also if you could give us a personal story of an unsuccessful program or project that you tried to implement maybe in the first days on the job. DOBRICH: I guess from a unit perspective the most successful thing has been the recertification of all but one or two members, one is overseas. The immigration side is almost over and that was quite a big job. From a unit point of view, that's as a team, that was very successful. There are a lot of departments and a lot of districts that are still way down. So we really concentrate and try and get as many as we could recertified so that they could take over. From a personal point of view I guess there's only one specific thing. I think the understanding, I guess the message we got across to the PNTL, especially that we should be working more together with them and also, I guess it has changed to a certain degree since I've been here in that there has been a lot bigger role toward pushing for PNTL to take the lead on things rather than UNPOL being the lead, showing the PNTL what to do. It's more them doing it and us assisting. So those roles, that's changed over the last seven months that I've been here, seven or eight months. That transition over has been very good. There are no problems-they've actually got a lot better logistics now, especially transport-wise which makes the job a lot easier. It makes them happier because before they had no transport, no motorbikes, no cars. They do have some transport now so that actually, instead of sitting around the office and waiting for something to happen, they're getting out and doing something. The setting up of the informant fund is something that they've never had before and hopefully the PNTL will take on their own, take up and do themselves and realize that the strict accountability of it is very important so that it is not abused. There's not one specific incident or the other. The dealing with the after February 11th with-that was actually quite good I guess in that because a lot of the PNTL from my office were involved with the Joint Command. They were really active in doing their job. They actually put their teeth into something which is obviously really serious for the country. Because they were doing a good job obviously they were getting feedback how good they were doing with getting information about where the potential threats were. That was good, that was quite satisfying. LEMAY-HEBERT: I think you had a special relationship with your predecessor but I would like to ask you have you been able to meet with him and did he actually leave you any records or advice that you found especially helpful for your work? DOBRICH: When I took over? Actually I had no briefing, no handover briefing which was very difficult. LEMAY-HEBERT: That's why I said a special relationship. DOBRICH: I was very disappointed because during the period when he should have been doing the handover he was closely involved with other non-I don't like to criticize but that's really important. I was coming to an area that I hadn't operated in before and I had to go in and ask other members of the team that were already there how he'd do this, how he'd do that, where can I find this, where can I find that. What's the reporting mechanism. What are the meeting schedules that you have to go to, what are your responsibilities? Nothing. There were no handover notes. So I'll make sure-I'm certainly not going to-take that from me, my successor in that role. The other thing was that TLIC at that time was also elected at the same time. So the when I go will be somebody that knows the role and they can then handle that and assist with the new person coming in. There were problems with the recording. I'll talk about that separately. The systems, it was okay. The record system that we had, but because there was no handover it took a while to find out where I could find things especially when all of a sudden you start there and you have to go make your report for what happened in the last year. It makes it a bit difficult. LEMAY-HEBERT: I also wanted to ask you about language. Do you speak any of the main languages used here either Bahasa, Tetum or Portuguese? DOBRICH: No Portuguese, no Tetum, a little bit of Bahasa from our school days, you learn it at school but obviously hadn't used, practiced it for a while, so a little bit of Bahasa. But the thing is now that a lot of the young people, a lot of the-I guess the people aged in their 20s know Bahasa but people under, in their teens, backwards, really don't know very much Bahasa. Bahasa is sort of more the early 20's onwards to your 50's all speak Bahasa because of the period of 25 years under Indonesia. Then the old people will speak a bit of mainly Tetum and Portuguese. It would be beneficial to know more Tetum than Portuguese obviously from a, because you may be dealing in our roles with the local people who most of them don't know Portuguese. I think it is being taught at school which will probably help, help in the future. Obviously it's the legal language and its meetings are conducted in Portuguese, but we have language assistants which is the big advantage so we use the language assistants. LEMAY-HEBERT: How many of your most important top staff members speak any of these languages? DOBRICH: On the SID side we've got none, we do have on the immigration side we've got three that speak Portuguese. None of the other nations in the office have that background. LEMAY-HEBERT: I don't want to take too much of your time so I just have two last questions. The first one would be about the UN internal management. If you could create a wish list, what two or three changes would you like to see in the UN internal management or policy in general in order to be more effective or efficient in your work? DOBRICH: You certainly need a-the reporting is amazing. Some things require a report to have six or seven people read it and sign it to approve it which slows down things. There needs to be, I guess, a flatter structure, reporting structure anyway, internal reporting structure with the UN. If the PNTL try and adopt the UN-it creates, why create all these levels if somebody is going to read something, you can just sign it and then you take it to somebody else who reads it and signs it who needs to go to somebody else who reads it. It's just ridiculous. That's my big bugbear with the UN. It's very-too many levels, especially when they may have a problem where there are financial things involved to make sure that finances are being correctly spent or whatever. But where they were not that strict, I mean there could have been examples where they needed to do that to maker sure the money was being spent correctly which is understandable. But when it is in an area where it is not a financial area, why the need for such a hierarchical structure? It could be a lot flatter. The UN is very inflexible on a lot of things. I'll give you an example. One of my guys got really sick, so sick he was laid up in the hospital here and put on a stretcher and put on a plane and taken to Darwin for treatment, so sick, he was delirious. He was in hospital for two or three days in Darwin, they gave him some medication, he came good but he couldn't come back for several days because there was no UN plane. The UN put him on a Air North flight because there was no UN flight to come back to mission. He puts in a claim because he had to stay in a motel in Darwin. The UN finance come back was well we can't pay it because he hasn't a Movement of Personnel (MOP) form. He didn't sign one before he left. Well how can he when he's so sick. The doctor obviously said he's got to go but now there's no provision, they were so inflexible. It took ages to argue the cause and it's impossible but the UN, you know what I mean, it's strictly to the law. Because he didn't sign an MOP they weren't going to reimburse him his expenses. They weren't going to pay him his mission allowance because he hadn't an MOP. This is just a small example. This happened again with another nation's colleague as well. Some things they do very well, some things they do very poorly. There's another example where there was, I have the police contingent commander is one of my members at the moment who had to accompany one of his members - he was so sick back to Nepal. The UN did the right thing, paid the air fares, sent him over there, went to Nepal, escort him, came straight back. When he asked for his expense because he had to spend, I don't know one night or something somewhere, some expenses, the guy who was sick didn't fill out an MOP. Well how the hell did he get overseas. Obviously the doctor did something. But there's no MOP. Anyway, I find that the UN admin is very suspicious of anything the UNPOL do and maybe because they've had bad experience with UNPOL in a previous mission. I'm not saying all UNPOL are angels but because of something that has happened before you can't judge. Virtually all the UNPOL here, even though this is a police mission, are treated as second class compared to the core UNMIT hierarchy. There are obvious things like you can't park...we're a police mission. We have great difficulty getting in. Restrictions on the way members are treated, especially for example, some things, whenever they've got a claim to pay they're treated as second class. So that's my bugbear. But the main part is getting rid of this - it's flattening the structure. LEMAY-HEBERT: In what respect is this mission different from others in which you have served? DOBRICH: It's different in that, compared to Cyprus, Cyprus was not a mentoring role. The police forces of the Turkish or the Greeks were very professional. If there was an investigation within this no-man's land or the green zone, if it was Turkish, the people involved them, we'd have the Turkish police and we'd go with them and they'd be very professional, so we didn't have to do anything, it was more like a humanitarian role. In Solomon Islands it's a regional, not a UN mission so it actually had a different, had that flatter structure that I was talking about. I would have to go, in charge of a team, to one person to get approval for something, I wouldn't have to go through six or seven people to get approval to get something. So that sort of made things quicker and easy to operate. From the work point of view on the ground, it was very similar Solomon Islands to here, working with the local police, training them, on-the-job training, lectures to them, all that sort of thing. Methods of operation, how they can work better and all that sort of thing was similar to what we're doing here. I guess just that management side of it is a little bit different. I can't compare this mission to UNTAET because UNTAET I was in a district and I really didn't have the headquarters perspective and Dili perspective from how things operate. LEMAY-HEBERT: Thank you very much for your time. DOBRICH: Sure. Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Policing Oral History Program Interview number: P-21 ______________________________________________________________________ 15 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