International Policing and the AFP
Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe
APSM Correspondent
Dec/Jan 2013 Cover Feature
Since its creation in 2004, the Australian Federal Police’s prestigious International Deployment Group, or IDG, has been at the forefront of Australia’s overseas policing initiatives assisting unstable states. The IDG’s National Manager, Assistant Commissioner Mandy Newton, spoke to Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe about the evolution of the group’s role, cooperation with the United Nations, operational service on overseas missions and the how the IDG is looking to the future.
Q: Why was the IDG created and how has its role evolved?
Mandy Newton: The Australian government was very progressive in realising early that creating law and order and stability in a country with civil unrest needs more than military intervention; the fundamentals of policing need to be secure for political stability and economic growth. Historically, Australian peacekeeping missions have instilled the benefits of police-led operations emphasising rule of law, rebuilding government institutions, and disarming insurgents.
Since its first mission to Cyprus in 1964, the AFP has participated in a number of peacekeeping and capacity development missions with the United Nations around the world. As such, the IDG was established in 2004 to manage these missions and mainly does capacity development and peacekeeping continuum roles. The AFP’s International Network focuses on serious and organised crime by coordinating with more than 30 countries and 100 liaison officers. The International Network works with other agencies on terrorism and national border protection, fraud and money laundering, drug smuggling and other organised crime.
The specialist skills of IDG members, such as forensic capabilities and bomb defusing skills are useful in locations such as the Solomon Islands where a lot of live ammunition still remains from World War II. Furthermore, the IDG also provides day-to-day community policing operations in Australia’s External Territories in Christmas, Cocos (Keeling) and Norfolk islands and in Jervis Bay. The IDG’s Specialist Response Group (SRG) delivers tactical and specialist policing capabilities in international stabilisation operations. The SRG also provides standing capability to respond to complex incidents, including domestic terrorism and tactical support.
The IDG and the AFP have built a strong presence in the international peacekeeping space with many successful missions in the Pacific region, such as the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste, and other countries, such as Afghanistan and Cyprus. Originally, most of the IDG work was peacekeeping but capacity building skills are more valued now. So rather than doing the policing ourselves, we teach locals how to police, give guidance and direction, and assist in determining their own capabilities in performing law and order duties. Societies with strong tribal relationships generally have traditional laws, not legislated laws. We help them incorporate their culture and traditions into a judicial process.
The standing capability of the AFP is unlike any other police jurisdiction in the world. The IDG has about 700 personnel providing operational and corporate support to all offshore and onshore missions. Funding for IDG missions mainly comes from Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) via the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). The IDG’s funding from AusAID is for capacity development, not offshore policing. We have had a liaison officer in Burma, sent our forensics staff to the Philippines after terrorist attacks, helped the Indonesian Police after the Bali bombings, and sent Disaster Victim Identification teams to Papua New Guinea. We are accountable for the funding given to us and the AFP are assessed against the outcomes achieved. Every mission that is ODA funded, including Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, or anywhere else, a project plan is documented articulating what we are going to deliver for the funding provided, and we are assessed on the difference we have made to policing, law and justice in that particular country.
Staff at the IDG’s headquarters in Majura, Canberra, coordinates joint operations with the ADF, AusAID, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). The two IDG Superintendents seconded to the Joint-Operations Command (JOC) Defence facility just outside Canberra, coordinate on interoperability between the ADF and the IDG on day-to-day or special operations, building strong relationships, resolving problems, and enabling joint training capabilities. In the last 10 years, joint exercises between police and military have vastly increased. In such multi-jurisdictional defenc exercises, like the one we recently had in Thailand, we educate military personnel on the relationship and roles between military and policing. That’s because unlike in the past where conflicts used to be between states, conflicts today are within a state and often require a police and military response.
Q: Given that the IDG often works within a UN mandate, how does it interface with the UN?
Mandy Newton: The evolution of police organisations in the last decade has been one of the challenges for the United Nations. While Australia has been progressive in creating a standing police capability and training deployable police officers, other countries haven’t developed this same capability. From a military perspective, when soldiers are not fighting a war, they would be in training and readily available for deployment with the United Nations. But most countries don’t have spare police capability because their personnel are always performing normal policing roles—to draw them out for domestic and overseas missions is quite difficult. It is not possible to recruit and adequately train personnel for special missions overnight. A considerable lead time is needed—the United Nations takes officers with at least five years of policing experience. We were very lucky that state and territory police jurisdictions supported us by seconding their staff to the AFP in the early days of the IDG. Many of these seconded members decided to stay with the AFP permanently.
Currently, the IDG has a full-time Superintendent at the United Nations in New York and acts as our liaison officer. At the IDG’s headquarters we also have our own purpose built training facility, which is one of the few UN accredited training facilities for police pre-deployment training in the world. Real-life mission scenarios are simulated at a replica Pacific village on site. We also have different types of Pacific island huts and other training facilities so members know what to expect in missions. We have an aircraft frame to train for disaster victim identification. Indeed, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was impressed when he saw the village in 2012.
Q: Where are IDG personnel currently deployed and in what capacity do they undertake their responsibilities?
Mandy Newton: The AFP only deploys people in countries where the Australian government wants us to perform policing capacity development. The decision for the AFP to deploy people to a country comes through the Australian government. We have 15 staff in the UN Mission in Cyprus and 10 in South Sudan. As of 15 December we completed our UN contribution of 50 members in Timor Leste. Furthermore, apart from being part of UN missions, Australia has bilateral and multilateral arrangements with other counties. The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) is the biggest such mission—about 119 AFP staff who are deployed with members from New Zealand and Pacific Islands police forces, and work alongside the Royal Solomon Island Police Force. In Timor Leste, 34 IDG staff are rebuilding a police training college; in Papua New Guinea, 17 staff are involved in bilateral activities. Through the Pacific Police Development Program, we deploy staff for bilateral programs in Pacific islands like the Cook Islands and Tonga. We provide the Police Commissioner’s role in Nauru and have another staff member there. A couple of our staff are deployed to Samoa to provide bilateral assistance.
We also provide training in investigations, transnational crime, and forensic capabilities such as evidence collection and disaster victim identification. For example, the Solomon Islands has 990 islands that need to be patrolled. We provide boats, training and safety mechanisms; quite often, we assist with their fuel arrangements too because without a boat or fuel, they would not be able to reach where they are needed. Police officers there walk up to three days to reach remote locations to find witnesses and bring them to the court. We have used our helicopters in the Solomon Islands to help police contact witnesses and in childbirth emergencies. We do not provide this extent of support every day but it helps build confidence in the community for Australia and the AFP. We also help build communication systems. For example, in Papua New Guinea, we helped develop a full radio communication system prior to their recent election. That allowed the Commanders in all the districts and highlands to communicate with one another, even in remote areas. In logistics, we help build police stations and purchase vehicles and boats. For example, this year, we trained more than 5,000 staff in 14 missions. We sponsor senior investigators to come to Australia to study serious crime and corruption in the Pacific.
When the AFP goes into a country for the first time, we sit down with their government and police force and figure out their capacity and limitations, and the resources needed to develop their own capabilities and infrastructure. This is undertaken with the local police to ensure we do not an Australian system in a country that requires its own unique systems. Then we prepare a program of activities spread over a few months or years. Generally, we assist to rebuild their training facilities or build interim facilities; help develop or review recruit training curriculum; and assist in funding and overseeing the recruitment process. Most of the IDG’s activities focus on training and leadership capability, and recruit training. Many of these countries don’t have adequate police vehicles, police houses or police stations. We help with general logistics through a fairly large program of building police stations and houses, and providing vehicle, communication and radio systems to enable local police to operate as a normal jurisdiction. Recently, in Timor Leste, we rebuilt their training facility; we also assisted with the recruit training, curriculum, and university certification for their Superintendents, Inspectors and Sergeants.
The AFP also trains local police in dispatching jobs so they can respond appropriately to incidents. We mentor them in basic police work such as patrolling, investigating crimes, doing paperwork, organising briefs of evidence, and managing watch-houses. We also provide judicial support to the Attorney-General’s department to update local laws because quite often people cannot be prosecuted for offences as those offences don’t exist in their law. In addition, the IDG assists local officials in understanding and combating transnational crime and strengthening border security. AFP transnational crime units build capacity in the Pacific, assist in fighting organised crime in many Asian countries, and share information across the world, particularly in the Pacific. In August, Police Commissioners from the Pacific attended a conference in the Solomon Islands discussing transnational crime and sharing information in the region. In the past few years in Asia, the growing transnational crime program has been giving local police the tools to manage crime by identifying criminals and where they are targeting their activity.
As part of our bilateral agreement with Afghanistan, the IDG has 28 staff in Tarin Kowt, Kandahar and Kabul. In Tarin Kowt, we have established a recruiting and police training facility; with our assistance, local police are now self-sufficient in managing their own patrol and basic training programs. The AFP, in conjunction with other police from around the world, are assisting the Afghan National Police (ANP) to develop as their national police jurisdiction. In Kabul an AFP Commander provides the senior police role at the National Police Coordination Board. This board comprises police agencies across the world helping develop the ANP.
Q: How do you see the IDGs future evolving in the near-term?
Mandy Newton: The future of the IDG depends on events in the Pacific region and the Australian government’s priorities in its assistance. It’s difficult to predict civil unrest, but early intervention is always better and does not require the same level of long-term resource allocation. It’s important to note that Australia cannot go into countries of its own accord. We need to be invited to provide support and assistance. The Australian government’s aid budget will increase in the next four years to around $8 billion. The AFP receives about four per cent of the budget at this time.
The IDG is at the forefront of researching how to build capacity and identify skills sets, and has been developing a doctrine on how to best deliver policing, law and order, and justice in troubled nations. Fundamentally, our doctrine is to create stability after the high risk of munitions and military fighting is over. The IDG charter is about saving lives, maintaining law and order, and building strong relationships with the community. As such, the IDG’s Police Development Project is developing sets of questions against the capabilities that a country might require so we ask the right questions about their requirements. What should their police station look like? How should community policing be undertaken? What are the gaps in their laws? We also don’t want to determine their requirements without their strong input and guidance. So far, we have received positive feedback from police officers in countries we’ve been operating in about our interaction, the successful elements of the mission, and areas that need work. The United Nations too is interested in using our doctrine in international policing. Over the next few years, we will continue developing our doctrine on delivering capacity development to guide our staff while deployed in a foreign country.
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Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe is a security analyst and a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute at the University of Canberra.
