Back to NVUSA Riot Watch

Policekeeping Is The Key
Apr. 12, 2003
Tim Symonds

email posted by permission

Dear Greg, there are two new analyses on policing, one particularly on Iraq, the other on policekeeping in failed states. I am trying to discover how to access them electronically. I think both could be very useful in assessing how to help Iraq achieve stability.

Here are the details:

'Policekeeping is the key: rebuilding the internal security architecture of postwar Iraq' by Graham Day and Christopher Freeman, (15 pages), published in International Affairs, March 2003.

The authors state: 'The international coalition will have to navigate the treacherous problems of Kurdish separatism and long dormant Sunni-Shia tension, while re-imagining an internal security architecture acceptable to both regional Islamic culture and liberal international standards.'

The authors quote Rachel Bronson of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) that 'the US military is not very well suited to the task of establishing security in precarious political environments.'

One response offered by the authors is that 'The rule of law in civilian areas could instead be provided by 'policekeeping' through a 'blue force' of primarily Arab gendarmerie'.

The other article has just been published, or is about to be published, by the United States Institute of Peace press, by one of the above authors, Graham Day, titled 'Policekeeping: a field guide to law and order operations in failed states'.

I am myself trying to discover how to access either or both on-line, though Canada's Pearson Peacekeeping Centre has sent me a fax copy of 'Peacekeeping is the key'.

Very best wishes.

Tim

tim.symonds@shevolution.com

Top

Back to NVUSA Riot Watch