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.: F10 Interviewee: Elizabeth McClintock Interviewer: Arthur Boutellis Date of Interview: 8 April 2008 Location: Burundi Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties BOUTELLIS: Today is the 8th of April 2008 and I am now with Mrs. Elizabeth McClintock who is lead facilitator with the Burundi Leadership Training Program, BLTP, with CM Partners. We're in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. First thank you for your time. Before we start the interview I'd like you to please confirm that you've given your consent. MCCLINTOCK: Yes, I have given my consent. BOUTELLIS: Thank you. I'd like to start the interview by learning a little bit more about your personal background and maybe the jobs you held before this position and particularly about the program you're involved in here in Burundi and how it relates to the police. MCCLINTOCK: Okay, my training is in negotiation, conflict management, communication skills training. I have my Master's Degree from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. After leaving Tufts I joined Conflict Management Group which was a spin off of Roger Fisher's work at the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard University. I worked at Conflict Management Group for almost ten years as a trainer, as a consultant, working predominantly in the public sector. It was through that work that I met Howard Wolpe. He was President Clinton's former Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region and the Arusha peace process. Howard recruited me to be the lead facilitator for a rather innovative leadership program that he was developing in his role as Director of the Africa Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. So Howard wanted very much to look at the possibility of better supporting leaders in post conflict states and by that trying to help them rebuild relationships, create more confidence amongst the leaders who would be responsible for taking a country forward in a post conflict period, particularly during periods of transition, helping them to acquire the skills and tools necessary to focus on agreeing on new rules of the game if you will. My role in this project has been to help with the development of the training program and to implement that training program. So with colleagues from IRENE (Institute for Research and Education on Negotiation in Europe) which is a negotiation institute at ESSEC Business School in Paris, I developed with Howard the core of the training program and since early 2003 where we first started with leaders of very mixed backgrounds, six of the seven former rebel groups, former government, army, gendarme, political parties, civil society including youth, women, religious leaders. The idea was to bring together approximately 100 of Burundi's key leaders at the time of the transition. So this is after the signature of the Arusha Accords but before the ceasefire with the CNDD-FDD (Conseil National pour la Defense de la Democratie-Forces pour la Defense de la Democratie). So the conflict had not essentially really ended actively on the ground. So the purpose was to get them together to restore confidence, build their skill set and help them to agree on some new rules of working together if you will in this post conflict context. One other innovative aspect of the program was that Howard and the team did not chose those people, Burundians themselves and the international community who had been working with Burundians chose those people. So our process was to interview as many people as possible and get them to suggest the 35 people they felt were key to Burundi's transition in the next two to five years. So of that we got a list of between 300 and 400 names and from that list approximately 100 overlapped significantly, many people getting significant numbers of votes. We did a series of workshops training 95 leaders including an initial retreat where we left Bujumbura some people participated, it was the first time they'd been back in Burundi for 30 years since leaving after the 1972 massacres. So it was a fairly significant event and I think quite timely. Howard's motivating factor was most definitely what he had witnessed at Arusha was some good will but very little ability, because of lack of skill set, to actually have the conversations necessary to think about once the agreement was signed, what did implementing the agreement actually look like. How would that actually happen? He had tried to sell this idea of doing training with the parties to the agreement prior to the signature of the accords but that didn't fly really with the mediation, the facilitation at the time which initially were the Tanzanians and then was handed off to (Nelson) Mandela after (Julius) Nyerere's death. So he succeeded however later in raising the funds and getting the agreement of the international community and of course the Burundians to do this work. So that's really what started it. I made a decision to join the program more or less full time because for me it offered an opportunity of doing training in negotiation and conflict management. It is very interesting and can be quite useful. This was really a first opportunity to be on the ground for a sustained period of time to see what the real impact might be with parties in a post conflict context. As you can imagine if the topic is police, meant that some of the people that we trained initially were from the military certainly. I'm trying to remember if we initially had anyone from the gendarmerie, probably not. But there was a lot of interest on the part of the military at the end of this initial series of workshops and the then army chief of staff who is now the Minister of Defense said that he would like to have us work specifically with the two sides: the CNDD-FDD who were in the process of finalizing the accords with the government, the cease fire accords, and the officers from the FAB. They came, the CNDD-FDD came from bush in Tanzania and the ex-FAB (Forces armŽes du Burundi) officers came from the frontlines here in Burundi and we met in Nairobi in November 2003 just prior to the cease fire agreement being signed. Then subsequent to that, with all the necessary aspects of the accord being put into practice, so the reform of the army, the creation literally of the new national police force, we got involved in training, both high command of the police and the high command of the army who were responsible for the reform process and then training officers in both the police and the army subsequent to that. So the project has been going since March 2003 as I mentioned. It was initially funded by the World Bank, then some funding by USAID (United States Agency for International Development), a bit of funding by the European Commission. Most of the funding for our work with the police, the lion's share has been DFID (Department for International Development) so the British government. That funding just ended in March. In the meantime however, the BLTP ceased being a project of the Wilson Center and became an official NGO, it is a Burundian NGO now and has its own identity here in Burundi and is now seeking, and does other work seeking funding for other projects. Just so you know, we don't only do work with the security sector. In fact, our work has predominantly been with government and the public sector if you will. We've trained political parties, trained the government. Most recently brought together the four former heads of state, the heads of the political parties, heads of army, Minister of Interior, Director General of the police, etc., to look at sort of trying to unblock one of the most recent political impasses. There was slight improvement but I think there is yet work to be done. So that sort of is the background and where the project comes from. BOUTELLIS: You mentioned that the army chief of staff asked for specific training related to the reform of the army. MCCLINTOCK: Yes. BOUTELLIS: Is this also where the training for the newly created Police Nationale du Burundi came from and is this in addition to the originally 100 or so identified leaders? MCCLINTOCK: Yes it is an addition to the original 100 that we trained. By training I mean several, a series of workshops, follow up activities, etc, so not just a one off event, but a series of workshops and gatherings, activities over the course of 18 months. That was the original group. From that the Army Chief of staff at the time asked us to work with the soldiers who came from literally the battlefield. It was from that group where for example, Minister (Alain) Bunyoni participated in that group in November 2003 and Director General (Fabien) Ndayishimiye also participated in that group in November 2003. So when the current Minister of Defense, then Army Chief of Staff started focusing on the army, the police, or those charged with the creation and the reform of the security sector, but the creation of the national police decided that they too would like to benefit from this. So the army was a bit better organized honestly and there were more resources focused on that process, so that work got started immediately at the beginning of 2004. We started our work with the police high command in February of 2005. That year we trained approximately 70 officers, charged with more or less the reform process of the national police. Then a bit of a hiatus. We turned towards working more with political parties and again the army and the police came back to us and asked for further training. This last year in 2007 I trained approximately 70 more officers from the national police and I've now trained 37 trainers within the national police force. So we designed and implemented training of trainers. This corresponds to the Commissioner in charge of training within the national police which was newly created in December in 2007. It corresponds to some of his goals. So we're trying now to see if we can support the national police in integrating this training into their regular offering for adjunct brigadier and officers within the national police force. BOUTELLIS: We'll get back to the specifics of the different trainings with the Police Nationale du Burundi, but before that you mentioned earlier the first idea by Howard Wolpe came out of the fact that he identified a number of necessary skill sets. Can you tell us a little bit about what are maybe the main challenges that were identified at the time and how was the training designed to respond to maybe some specific needs of the leaders in general? MCCLINTOCK: How Howard Wolpe viewed his, not his participation but rather he observed, during the Arusha process, that it was very difficult for leaders to come together to have the necessary discussions about substantive issues and his premise, based on his work as long-time member of Congress, having worked in politics and also just in government in general for many years, he realized that one of the challenges folks would have would be not getting their signature on the Accord, but assuring that the Accord was actually implemented later. He felt strongly that the process of getting the Accord signed could serve as a first step in building the relationships necessary to ensure the implementation of the Accords might go a bit more smoothly. Again, as I mentioned earlier, unfortunately that was not possible, it was not possible. He offered the idea up and suggested that they do some training of the actual negotiators, but that idea was put aside for the moment. For many reasons. I think Nyerere and Mandela both felt that there just wasn't-I think it was actually under Nyerere that he proposed the original idea, but there just wasn't the time to do it and people felt that there weren't, ironically, the relationships necessary to get people together into the same room and do some of the skill building. So after the Accords were signed and after he joined the Wilson Center, he continued to develop the idea and talk about it with Burundians. In fact, all of the work that we've done through the Burundian Leadership Training Program has been asked for by Burundians themselves. So in terms of getting buy-in for the idea of the project, certainly he came to them and proposed an idea, but he didn't move forward without people's buy-in. That includes predominantly Burundians and of course the international community as well. So that has been a major advantage of this program. We don't just sort of come in and impose an idea. So the challenges that he noticed were, one, in a situation, post conflict context after you've had 13 years of civil war, people have no trust, literally, no trust. It's very difficult to ask a government of transition to function without even a modicum of trust. No real relationships amongst the key players. They had been outside of the country perhaps, polarized in camps because of-in a figurative sense, not literal. But in their different ideological camps because of clearly concrete events on the ground. So that ethnic and regional polarization made it very difficult to imagine that people would be able to come together suddenly after the accords were signed and make a government function, because the government was a government of transition, which, by its very nature, meant that you were mixing people in who had not necessarily worked together before. He felt strongly that people needed to agree on rules of the game and nothing in any peace process, not simply the Arusha process but in most international peace processes, there isn't a lot of time spent on helping the protagonists understand what does that mean in these new institutions. What are the rules and how do you agree upon them. What-we talk about elections but elections are really one moment in a very long period of time in the creation or the reform of institutions that are supposed to serve the people. So he felt very strongly that there was an opportunity to help people build the relationships, agree on the rules of the game, restore some confidence. To do that-you know in war people scream at each other, they don't listen to one another. But when you get into democratic institutions like parliament or the assembly, people may take positions. They say they're defending the interests of their constituents, yet they still need to be able to discuss issues. There was no sense of any common interest, really, throughout the Arusha process and Howard wanted to bring that sense of your own interest actually can be found in part in satisfying the interests of the collective. So he came to me and to Conflict Management Group initially. Subsequently I became a managing partner in a small firm called CMPartners, which does similar training and consulting. The idea was, how do you integrate some of these skills and tools developed at the Harvard Negotiation Project in negotiation conflict management, strategic decision making, communication skills, leadership if you will, into a longer-term program that would, at the same time, try to rebuild relationships, establish some trust. They could then use those skills to establish the new rules of the game. That's precisely what we've been trying to do. I would say it remains hugely challenging five years on. Some days I wonder if we've made any progress at all, other days I'm more heartened when I speak to some of our participants, those with whom I've worked longer. But it is challenging. You don't change people's behavior in a day. In the West we have a tendency to think that democracy is kind of one way, and it isn't. There are many ways to achieve what we might want to call democratic ideals and assisting or kind of lending a hand to those who are reforming institutions within their own countries can be a very challenging process I think. BOUTELLIS: The BLTP is a cross sectoral project? MCCLINTOCK: Yes. BOUTELLIS: It targets different leaders in different institutions. How does it relate to maybe other programs that have been implemented here, other training programs that might be more targeted at specific institutions such as the military or the police? MCCLINTOCK: We do our very best. Particularly we've been more successful with police and the military. We've done a little bit of work with Parliament and are aware of, for example, other training programs for parliamentarians. There you might find like an NDI (National Democratic Institute) or an IRI (International Republican Institute) which gives very specific advice on how do you write a bill, procedures and operational things that need to happen in parliament. That's definitely not our expertise. So the same is true in the army or the police where we're not trying to necessarily help them develop their code of conduct or train people on crowd control, all those things that are necessary in a well-functioning police. Yet we do remain in very close contact and I think one thing that has happened more effectively here in Burundi than my understanding of other places, is that we do relatively regularly meet as resource persons from donor-funded programs to support say the reform of the police. So I am aware of who is the head of the Belgian Technical Cooperation, the former head of Belgian Technical Cooperation came, observed our training. I've observed the trainings that they've undertaken, the training of trainers that they've done. We found that our methodology and the pedagogy is very similar which is very nice, which means that if we're all training trainers, they're at least being trained with a similar pedagogy in mind, even though the content is not necessarily the same. That's normal. But our emphasis on how officers work with their participants, etc., at least is the same. Also know and try to coordinate with the Dutch and the French and also the same is true on the military side where we try at least to be informed, coordinate and then invite observers from different programs to our training programs as well so that there is some-. It's an informational thing, less than sort of a truly collaborative effort in the sense that we don't necessarily share the same content. So there is less of a need to be fully collaborative; however, there is a great need to be consultative and inform each other of what we're doing. We see ourselves very much as a small part of a much larger process of course, of reform in the security sector. For example, now, within the army, this training program, I just finished training 16 more officers, so there are 26 officers within the la Force de la DŽfense Nationale who are trained as trainers including the Director of Studies at the National Defense Academy. So he is now, in this latest group of officers who are going through their nine-month training, he will add on [our program] at the end this training, and they'll do the training themselves, I won't do it, which is the whole purpose. We're hoping that the same will be true in the police, but the Commissariat for Training has only just been established. So they're still trying to figure out exactly what their schedule is, how do they want to integrate things. We had a fairly successful, a successful training in February of trainers of the national police. So I'm hopeful that we'll be able to also move that forward. BOUTELLIS: I'd like now to talk more specifically about the police part of the training; however some questions might be more general and you're welcome to draw on all of the different experiences from trainings. First, can you describe more in detail the kind of training that was dispensed to police officers of all levels, particularly how they differ from previous leadership training that you were describing for the original hundred leaders. MCCLINTOCK: First of all, just a note on levels. We've targeted only officers within the police. We have not worked with Brigadiers or Agents and we probably will not given that that training would be offered in Kirundi. So that's one of the purposes of training trainers. Our next step is to try and figure out how to best support them and integrate this into some sort of training program that is of course amenable to the overall training program of the national police. BOUTELLIS: So the training of officers is done in French then. MCCLINTOCK: Yes. The content of the training is very much what I described to you. We look at developing an awareness of all participants, this includes the police of course, of their own attitude towards negotiation. When I talk about negotiation, and this takes a little bit of explaining in this particular context in Burundi, we speak about negotiation with a small "n" not a capital "N," because people tend to think of negotiations and immediately think of all things Arusha. Negotiations are when two parties come together to solve a national or international crisis, as opposed to thinking about negotiation as simply an opportunity to influence someone else, to get them to join your particular effort and that could be negotiating with your colleagues for the implementation of a particular project, negotiating with your superior for a new post, etc. So we try to distinguish there. It is really looking at the skills. First we start with their own awareness about their own attitudes towards collaboration, communication, negotiation. We do this through exercises and simulations. Initially the exercises and simulation have nothing to do with the contents of what you might think police training might be about. They're much more generic. The purpose of that is to get people to focus on the concept as opposed to the context. If you offer a simulation right at the beginning when you're first working with folks that has to do with the intervention of the police in a particular situation here in Bujumbura, they're going to argue with you about all the details you got wrong, about what actually happened, about why the police would or would not do certain things, etc. That's not our purpose. Our purpose is not to judge the veracity of a simulation; the purpose is to use the simulation as a vehicle for presenting certain concepts about communication, leadership, how to exercise leadership, under what circumstances, etc. So we very much start with much more generic exercises and simulations. The reason this particular set of skills has been offered to the police is that the police have asked us for those skills because they recognize in a post conflict context, when you are not actually recruiting at this stage members of the police force, you are taking ex-combatants and you're creating a new force from formerly belligerent parties. That's a very different prospect. Since a major piece of the Arusha process was the reform of the security sector and ensuring ethnic, regional and other balance within the sector, political appartenance and all this, it changes the nature of the need. So one need is simply how do I collaborate with this person who was formerly my enemy? That is really where the BLTP is best positioned to offer skill building and training. So we focus on what does it mean to be collaborative without being concessionary? What does it mean to understand the interests of your colleagues and how do you build a better police force based on your understanding of those interests? How do you as an officer behave so that your behavior has a positive impact on those men and women under your command? Frankly we spend a lot of time on understanding perceptions, where do your perceptions of this other person come from? How do you manage those partisan perceptions? How do you then communicate in a way that gets you what you need and what you want? Even in a hierarchical structure where giving orders is a perfectly acceptable and normal way of proceeding, communication still, I would say in the evaluation that we've done, both in our work with FDN (Forces de Defense Nationales) and our work with national police force, they cite communication skills as one of the most important things they've taken away. Active listening, of all things. How do you actually listen to your subordinate, to your fellow officer, to your superior in a way that gives you the information that you need to do your job more effectively, to be a more effective leader essentially. So we then move them through a process where the simulations become more complicated and closer to real life. They might end a training program where they've negotiated a hostage situation. It's not based here in Burundi and it may not even totally be a police situation, but the idea is that it gets them to think about using the skills and tools in a more real life situation. We also then through follow up workshops and other activities, share a couple of analytical tools with them, ways of thinking about solving problems in the immediate term, not necessarily major conflicts, but just a problem between two officers under your command, or two brigadiers under your command, or not even necessarily within the context of the police but in your quarter, out in the community in which you live and work. How do you better communicate with the population? If we're really talking about a police de proximitŽ (community policing) what does that mean? We talk a lot about how these skills and tools can then be applied to help them realize their-sort of bring to life the Code of Conduct that they've written for themselves. The dŽontologie de la Police, we understand what that means in theory, but what does it really mean in practice. So the BLTP's role is to help them better understand that there are some very specific skills and tools that can help them convey that to their own men and women and to the population at large. So the analytical tools are very simple, straightforward, and tend to help them solve immediate problems. So that's kind of how the program moves forward. As you can imagine, the skills and tools that we share with the police are the same ones that we share with the army, are the same ones that we share with the parliamentarians, are the same ones that we share with heads of state. The differences begin to come toward the end of each workshop or each activity where we move from theoretical or simulated environments to more real-life problem solving. Then we do not pretend to comment on whether or not within the police, you have to have police experts to sort of say, these are more feasible solutions to problems. But the Burundians themselves honestly are able to-a lot of good sense and expertise exists. What we try to provide is a better process for getting at those decisions more effectively, more efficiently. BOUTELLIS: So who carries out the training? You mentioned that there were originally 70 officers trained starting in 2005. MCCLINTOCK: Yes. BOUTELLIS: Then another 70, but there is also training of trainers happening. MCCLINTOCK: Yes. BOUTELLIS: So who is doing the training for the BLTP? How did the transition happen from training officers to choosing to train trainers who are themselves officers? MCCLINTOCK: I do all the training. I think I've done all the training except for one workshop in five years. I am accompanied by a co-trainer. That's one of the reasons I'm here though is to provide this resource to the program. Initially my co-trainer was always from IRENE in France. As you can imagine there is always an issue of language. I'm American. Fortunately my French has improved. The training all takes place in French. We realized very early on that if you wanted to have some sustainability in a program like this you would have to ultimately train Burundians to become trainers so it could also be offered in Kirundi. I've not talked about it, but there's a program that was funded by OTI (Office of Transition Initiatives) in which I also figured as the lead facilitator where we trained 20 Burundians who then went out and worked for 18 months in the provinces of Bururi and Gitega and they trained 7000 local leaders. So based on that experience I trained trainers and we developed a whole guide de formation that was then translated into Kirundi. So after having trained the initial group of officers in the police high command and the same-in parallel this also happened at the army-they said, we'd like to be able to share these skills and tools with officers but we'd like to integrate them into our own training structure and program. So that's when the idea of training trainers came about. So while I remained the lead facilitator because there is a fairly significant investment, you can train trainers but then you have to follow them. You have to be able to give them opportunities to train, give them constant feedback, etc. That's where we are now, trying to provide opportunities for those trained trainers to work and then give them feedback and then improve upon their own skill sets as trainers. It's a challenge. I'm one person. Now in this office, the Executive Director with whom I hope you'll speak later, is trained as a trainer, and he is now one of our principal trainers. So he is my co-trainer. He is a very competent person and we've trained, I would say of the 35-plus police officers that we've trained, there will be a few, as in any case, who are really, really good and who will continue to carry this forward. The same is true in the army. BOUTELLIS: Can you describe how different were the programs in length and in nature from the original training of officers to now, what you described, the more recent initiative to train 30 trainers. How long were the respective trainings and how different? MCCLINTOCK: Well you can imagine. The first training the people get, their first exposure to all these skills and exercises, it is generally a six day retreat followed by one or two follow up workshops of two to three days each. So in 2005 we would have done two six-day retreats and I don't remember now, between two and four follow up workshops with the group of 70 trained officers. The same thing happened this last year. We did two six-day retreats which were followed each by one follow up workshop. At the request of the Director General Bunyoni at the time who is now the Minister of Public Security, we identified two groups of officers who would be trained as trainers. They had to have already participated in the training because this was now going to be an opportunity for them of course to get up in front of the room and themselves prepare and present different aspects of the program. So that's a much longer, that's a nine to ten day investment, it's very intense. Then that is followed by follow up activities, depending on the availability of the trainers, depending on the availability of people available to train. That's a much more intense process, training trainers. The first is interesting and I think people get something out of it, but if you've ever participated in a management training course as part of a job that you might have had, some things stick and some things don't. We're very well aware of that which is why we built in the follow up activities. I recognize too that we could have probably built in many more follow up activities, it's a question of resources always and availability. What they've done though, something that is very positive in the way that the police and the military are structured is that they have these causaurie morale with brigadier and agents, so an officer might have under his command say 20 to 30 people, I don't know exactly, it depends what unit we're talking about. They will do regular meetings where the whole idea is to get the people to talk about their problems, to talk about what's happening within the unit, what's happening, how do they share. That has been where I think our training has been very useful in terms of maintaining morale, in improving relationships amongst, especially if you think about it, the level of the adjunct. These are former soldiers, all ex-combatants and they've been asked to completely change their attitude vis-ˆ-vis the population, vis-ˆ-vis-if you're out on the street and you see a police officer carrying-not an officer but an agent carrying an AK-47. You ask yourself is this where community policing should be? That's a big mountain to climb for the national police force. There are still a lot of steps in the reform process that need to be undertaken. If you speak to some of the police officers, they're not prepared to give up their guns because peace has not entirely come to the country. So the police feel out-gunned and out-numbered often by other forces, whether they're just bandits, armed robbers or if you're talking about the FNL (Forces Nationales de LibŽration) who have not yet come in and been demobilized. BOUTELLIS: The last rebel groups. MCCLINTOCK: Yes. BOUTELLIS: As I understand, the training was actually asked by the police so I assume it was integrated into what they call their harmonization training? Formation d' harmonization. MCCLINTOCK: It was, in the army it was not so successfully structured into the police. In the army they did, for the officers our training became part of the harmonization. In the police, well, we trained fewer officers to begin with but we haven't had quite as much success in getting it quite as well integrated as we would like. Ultimately yes, that is the goal because the vast majority of policemen still have not received all the training that they need, even the basic training that they're to receive, and this is supposed to be part of that process. But no, that integration process has not yet really come together as one would hope. BOUTELLIS: So this training on the police side of thing started with officers. So did all the training happen in the institute in Bujumbura and how did you make sure that the skills were transferred to the provinces as well? MCCLINTOCK: Actually no, the training all happened outside of Bujumbura. Frankly, in the choice, the initial choice of who gets to participate, that's also a very political decision. The whole process of reform is quite politicized in Burundi. So while I think some of the choices of who would be trained are very good ones, others are not. We don't have a lot of say. We give the criteria that we would hope would be followed in the choice of officers who are going to be trained but then it is-there's also a lot of-the reason it is politicized is because the process is not an easy one, the process of reform. It is a political process. So when you're trying to achieve ethnic, regional balance, you're trying to make sure that promotions are well distributed, that means things like training whether it is considered a certain perk, not just the BLTP training, any type of training, any sort of per diem you might receive as a result of that, the opportunity to enhance your own skill set is all going to go towards building your career and making it, making you more attractive in this process. So all those things considered, it is more challenging to imagine exactly then how that gets transferred to others. Our initial objective was not necessarily to have everyone go off and train others. Our initial objective particularly with the initial group of high command was to improve their own relationships so that they could better manage the reform process. That I think we had some success with. In other words, they worked more effectively with each other. The whole reason was we took them outside of Bujumbura for six days and they spent the night and ate together. I think a lot of what happened happened afterwards at the canteen having a beer or during lunch time or at dinner as opposed to necessarily what is happening inside the classroom. One of our purposes is to bring people together for a sustained period of time. Honestly some of them didn't even know each other's first names. So you have that opportunity to bring them together. So the initial purpose was not to have them come off and train others. It was in light of that experience that people began to see that this might be a useful tool in terms of getting lower-ranking officers and then policemen to participate in a program where it improved their relationships with whom they worked. BOUTELLIS: So you said the BLTP suggested criteria for selection of the people who would participate. You mentioned a number of things like ethnic balance-. MCCLINTOCK: That wasn't our criteria, that was their criteria. BOUTELLIS: Based on the Arusha agreement. MCCLINTOCK: Yes, of course. That's what I meant when I said the process was politicized. It is, because they have their own criteria to which they need to be responding. BOUTELLIS: So what were some of the criteria-. MCCLINTOCK: Our criteria were much more in terms of who is going to really remain in the corps for a sustained period of time rather than move on or be demobilized. At the beginning that was very tough because it wasn't clear, even for high-ranking officers who was going to remain and who was going to be demobilized. At the beginning of course, who would play a key role in the reform process. Again, our criteria are suggested. This is the choice of the Burundian government to participate in this program and it's their choice of who should come. We absolutely accept that and we felt that we had the opportunity to influence that decision through the suggestion of criteria. Also thinking about who were in key posts that they might eventually have an impact through their own behavior on other officers. So you're talking maybe in a training context. That was much easier in the army than in the police because, as I mentioned, they only just created the fourth commissariat in December and it is directed towards training. We did one of the first-in 2006-one of the first trainers I trained was Salvatore Nahimana head of the Police Institute. So he has the skills and tools and he has tried to implement them within the institute. But it's hard without a lot of resources and that wasn't necessarily the direction that our program had. The original idea was not necessarily to integrate directly into the academy. So therefore you have-the Institute for Police-so it is just a question of resources too, how much time and energy and money do you have to support all these new ideas that come out. Someone like Salvatore was a good choice because he remained in a training role, in terms of criteria, ideally the head of the Institute would be a good choice if you want to sustain a training activity. BOUTELLIS: You mentioned there were follow ups, especially for the trainers that have been trained. What is the retention rate for instance a year, two years down the road? You mentioned the issue of people maybe being demobilized or moving on in their career. MCCLINTOCK: I would say it's very similar to any training program. If you were to do a statistical analysis, they say 30% actually leave the room with some significant retention level where they go out and practice it. Say one year down the line you're probably down to 10% honestly. So out of a group of 30 you might have three people who are actually applying it. I think we try to overcome that through the follow up workshops so that we try to raise that level. It would be hard for me, I couldn't tell you statistically exactly how many people. But for the trained trainers, we trained 9 in December and 23 in February, December of 2007 and February of 2008, so that process has just now gotten started in light of the new Commissariat. So honestly I have more experience with the army and I've had more opportunities to bring them together and also to provide them with training opportunities. It's only through providing them with training opportunities that they're going to retain it, particularly as trainers. That's a tough one because we're not a top priority for the military. That's understandable, I wouldn't even expect to be. So trying to do this one slice of training in an otherwise enormous program where you're trying to demobilize, you're trying to follow the World Bank's-you know in both these institutions follow the World Bank's directives if you want your debt relieved and bring the number of forces down to what is considered an acceptable number. Then also train up those who, some who can't read and write. So adapting all of your training programs -the BLTP honestly is pretty far down the line in priorities in terms of trying to figure out how to integrate it into their own programming. BOUTELLIS: So you say there are some integrated officers that do not know how to read and write? MCCLINTOCK: Not officers, I'm talking about agents. BOUTELLIS: So all these things considered, how well do you think the program is meeting the objectives set. There, maybe on the police side it's too early, but maybe from the experience with the military, the leaders. MCCLINTOCK: One of the objectives, as I mentioned before, with the police as well, was to assist those who were responsible for the reform process to work together more effectively. There I do think we did succeed. That's much more limited objective in time and in space and also the number of people that we were trying to target. If you talk about 70 officers in the initial group, they were predominantly the officers responsible for the reform process. So I think we did have some success. I think the reform process went relatively smoothly. On the army side, you can talk to the officers themselves, but I think we had enormous success in assisting the reform process in its efficiency and effectiveness. They were already there and they had good people from ex- CNDD-FDD, ex-PMPA (Partis et Mouvements Politiques ArmŽs), ex-FAB. They also had the resources. Unlike the police unfortunately. The police have had to scrounge a little bit more. They don't have the same amount of resources available to them that the army does. They don't have the same infrastructure to build upon that the army has had. So they have a much more difficult row to hoe in fact. I think it is much more challenging for the national police in many ways. But I would say big success there [in the army]. In terms of sustainability and integrating the training into structures, we've had much less success there. I'm not discouraged as yet however, however we would need again more funding to make sure that it really happens effectively. This year for the first time we had really good progress on the FDN side as I told you, so now it really looks like it will be integrated into the National Defense Academy. There have been a couple of people who have been treated as trainers who have now worked with-I have now worked with them for two years, who are responsible for training and specialized training in the army at the Etat Major. So that's what you really want. Unfortunately, Emmanuel has been invited several times and just not been able to attend, not by his own volition but just by circumstances so the Commissar of training for the police hasn't yet-he's heard a lot about it. He has come here [to the office]. He wants to promote it, but again, it's harder when he's got many things on his plate. I think, wow, this is an important program. It's not one of their top priorities. So I would say mixed results. Better with more limited objectives on the- like very specifically a period of time and how to get the reform process moving and a very sensitive time in Burundi's history. If you think of 2005 before the elections, that was not an easy period. Same is true for the army. So there I think yes. Mixed results in terms of trying to get it integrated into an overall program. BOUTELLIS: What are some of the ways you do evaluate your programs and the impact of them? MCCLINTOCK: Two major ways we've done it. Of course we do an evaluation at the end of every workshop. That's more: is this appropriate, is it appropriately adapted to you as an individual participant. Then we take that and try to use the comments after every workshop and improve future workshops, structure, ordering of exercises, changing, adapting exercises, etc. So that's one way. The second way has been with both-actually we've done three major evaluations. One was an evaluation of the work we did that was funded by the World Bank. Second was one we did at our own instigation of the work with the army and the same with the police. There we did, for example, the one with the police has just been finalized, but that took place essentially over three months, September, October, November of last year. There was a survey that was distributed and collected, questions formulated around leadership, retention. The survey was distributed to trained and untrained officers and then a whole set of interviews with a smaller cohort but with some very specific questions to see has there been retention. The group was chosen, of course, not simply from those trained in 2007 but also those trained in 2005. So we would have some comparison over time in terms of has there been impact and if so what in their view and by trained as well as untrained officers. So you can compare. A trained person will always say, because they're talking to you. I didn't conduct it, we had an independent person come and do the evaluation, but they'll say, they want to satisfy you, they want you to feel happy about things. [break] BOUTELLIS: Second part of the interview with Elizabeth McClintock. We're talking about the evaluation tools you use. MCCLINTOCK: I think if you ask somebody who has been trained do they feel their leadership skills have changed, of course they'll assess themselves generally quite positively. So for us it was important to have this other cohort of untrained officers sort of making a comment on their trained colleagues, but also on their own perception of their own leadership capacity. Then you can calibrate a bit the responses to the questions and get a more realistic sense if there has been much of an impact. So that's how we evaluated the work. BOUTELLIS: Were there any major lessons drawn from this? MCCLINTOCK: As I mentioned right at the beginning, interestingly, I think the biggest lessons or the skills that are retained-there's one tool which is something called the four quadrant tool which people-as I mentioned it's very simple to use but it's a very effective analysis of a problem. You just simply-it's not the same as a SWAT analysis but it is as easy to use. You just sort of identify the problem, identify the causes, prioritize and then identify general solutions and come up with an action plan in a bit more detail. That's one of the tools that was identified as being very useful and used frequently. I think it is because of its ease in use. It doesn't take a long time [to master]. The other frankly big impact was in communication skills as I mentioned earlier. The active listening and the ability to take the time to listen, even to your subordinates and the role that effective communication has in frankly getting your orders followed effectively, improving the functioning of your team, morale, etc. That came out very strongly. The communication skills aspect of the training was rated most highly I would say. With the army on follow one question was the impact on the reform process. That was also very, yes this had an extremely positive impact on the reform and integration process of the army. In the police, that came out less strongly. I think it is also due to timing. When we did it for the army we worked with them just after the ceasefire agreement through 2004 and then in 2006 after the election. So that was a bit more sensitive in terms of timing. Now, training another cohort of officers in 2007 and training trainers in 2007 for the police, I think the urgency is not quite-. People are much more comfortable with how Burundi is, how the reform process is going. It may not be working as effectively as we would like, but a lot of those very difficult steps had already been taken. So we don't hear the same sort of feedback in terms of hard-hitting impact on the reform process. I think that is related to who we worked with, at what moment, and when we did the evaluation, etc. BOUTELLIS: One last question. In training it is often said that training, especially when done by the international community is quite expensive. Do you have any cost-saving suggestions from your experience? MCCLINTOCK: It can be expensive. I think one cost-saving measure that we took, that it has been much more cost-effective that I live here and I'm here full time. It's much easier to respond-my costs here are lower than they might be otherwise, honestly, than all the per diem and the costs of the plane flights and all that. In fact, we added a couple of activities under the DFID grants after I made the decision to move here. That was not in the original proposal. So we were able to take that money and put it towards-. BOUTELLIS: Versus bringing in consultants. MCCLINTOCK: Coming and going, which I had been doing before. Then of course training of Burundians. Of course it takes a while. It's a long-term investment. I think it would be an interesting question to ask of Fabien [Nsengimana, Executive Director of the BLTP] who is now one of our really excellent trainers. But it has taken time. Some of that is related to many of his other responsibilities. He would have become more effective much more quickly had training been the only thing that he does, but he runs this organization, so it is not, it is one of many responsibilities that he has. But I think training Burundians is the way to go. At the beginning we couldn't have used Burundians. We had two Burundians, Fabian and Eugne Nindorera who were our consultants to the team, who had very impeccable reputations as far as Burundians were concerned, but Burundians in the room didn't want Burundians in front of them doing the training. It was still too sensitive at the time we started the project. Now, that's not true anymore. Now Burundians absolutely can do the training and it's a question of making sure that they've got the resources to do it. But in 2003 that really wasn't possible. BOUTELLIS: Last question. You mentioned that for instance the experience of workshops in the provinces with people bonding outside of the training room was positive, are there any other experiments or innovations that you know of or you've been directly involved with that you think merit more attention? MCCLINTOCK: I think there are too many-one of the things that we had which I thought was important. I didn't mention this before, but when we did the initial group of officers in 2005, CIVPOL (International Civilian Police) was involved. I think one thing that we didn't do well enough there was we didn't have enough coordination with CIVPOL. BOUTELLIS: The UN police. MCCLINTOCK: Yes. We could have had a better coordination with them which would have, I think reinforced their own activities as well as our own, because there were some things that we did that were similar, things that were totally different, but they were offering, just as the Belgians and the French and the Dutch are more police-specific training. Yet one of the roles of the UN police is to also enhance the peace process and the prospects for peace. We ultimately were very satisfied with the relationship that we had with Diallo and with the UN police and we could have done a better job on that. I think collaboration you hear about all the time and people talk about it all the time but it is critical. It is critical to the success of the program. I had two UN police observers at the training of trainers of the police in December. I think that was very helpful, but then we don't have follow-on to that. That's unfortunately too episodic and not regular. It is kind of a one-off thing for that kind of collaboration and that has to change. Otherwise I think the resources aren't well spent. BOUTELLIS: Any last comments? MCCLINTOCK: I don't think so. BOUTELLIS: Liz McClintock, thank you very much. Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Policing Oral History Program Interview number: F10 ______________________________________________________________________ 3 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