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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:46 pm
Time: 10:46 pm
Results for security forces
6 results foundAuthor: Rosenau, William Title: Police Mentoring in Afghanistan: 2007–2009 Summary: The role of the police is an important but largely overlooked aspect of contemporary counterinsurgency and stability operations. Although academic and policy specialists have examined the role of police in post-conflict environments, the question of how police should be organized, trained, and equipped for counterinsurgency campaigns has received little systematic attention.1 Similarly, US military doctrine and the professional military literature, while not ignoring the subject entirely, do not consider it in any systematic way.2 This gap is particularly ironic, given the prominent role that soldiers and Marines have played in training indigenous police and other security forces in counterinsurgency campaigns from Vietnam to Afghanistan. If the broader topic of police and counterinsurgency is under-examined, the subject of mentoring—that is, advising and training—foreign police forces is even more neglected. American Marines, soldiers, and other military personnel preparing to deploy to Afghanistan for the police mentoring mission have few sources of information and analysis available to them. This monograph addresses that gap. Using a series of ten vignettes, this report examines in depth the experiences of individual American and British soldiers and Marines who served as mentors in Afghanistan during the 2007-2009 period. Details: Alexandria, VA: CNA Analysis & Solutions, 2010. 98p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 19, 2011 at: http://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/WEB%2012%2021%2010%20Police%20Mentoring%20online%20version.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Afghanistan URL: http://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/WEB%2012%2021%2010%20Police%20Mentoring%20online%20version.pdf Shelf Number: 122785 Keywords: MentoringPolice TrainingPolicing (Afghanistan)Security Forces |
Author: Amnesty International Title: Nigeria: Trapped in the Cycle of Violence Summary: Since 2009, acts of violence by the Islamist armed group known as Boko Haram have been carried out across northern and central Nigeria with increasing sophistication and deadliness. Nigeria’s security forces have perpetrated serious human rights violations in their response – including enforced disappearance, extrajudicial executions, house burning and unlawful detention. at the same time, the Nigerian government has failed to adequately prevent or investigate the attacks or to bring perpetrators to justice. This cycle of attacks and counter-attacks has been marked by unlawful violence on both sides, with devastating consequences for the human rights of the people trapped in the middle. They live in considerable fear and insecurity, unprotected from attacks by Boko Haram and facing human rights violations at the hands of the very state security forces mandated with their protection. This report presents research gathered by Amnesty International during visits to Nigeria between February and July 2012. it details human rights abuses and violations in northern and central Nigeria and includes testimonies from survivors and victims’ families. The report sets out key recommendations for the Nigerian government to ensure that human rights violations are not perpetrated by its security forces in the name of national security. it urges the government of Nigeria to fulfil its duty to take measures to prevent and protect civilians from attack and to investigate all such crimes, and to bring to justice those responsible. Details: London: Amnesty International, 2012. 88p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 5, 2012 at: http://allafrica.com/view/resource/main/main/id/00050475.html Year: 2012 Country: Nigeria URL: http://allafrica.com/view/resource/main/main/id/00050475.html Shelf Number: 126877 Keywords: Extrajudicial ExecutionsHuman RightsSecurity ForcesViolence ( Nigeria)Violent Crime |
Author: Gause, Ken E. Title: Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment: An Examination of the North Korean Police State Summary: Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment lifts the curtain on North Korea’s three main security agencies—the State Security Department, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Military Security Command. Established with Soviet assistance in the mid to late 1940s and modeled on the Soviet secret police apparatus, North Korea’s internal security agencies rely on constant surveillance, a network of informants in every neighborhood, and the threat of punishment in North Korea’s notorious prison camps to ensure the Kim regime’s total control. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, Kim Il-sung refused to follow the de-Stalinization campaigns that took place in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and instead continued to adhere to the Stalinist interpretation of law as an indispensable tool in the arsenal employed to implement state policy. While rejecting both the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as “left opportunism” and the post-Stalinist Soviet inclination towards a more collective style of leadership as “bourgeois revisionism,” Kim Il-sung put in place his own version of nationalcommunism, centered on his cult of personality. To enforce his rule, he employed methods of oppression rooted in four decades of Japanese occupation of Korea, and especially in the 500 years of the Chosun Dynasty, which preceded the 1905 annexation of Korea by Japan. Yeon-jwa-je—guilt by association—imprisonment in political prisoner camps of up to three generations of those suspected of wrongdoing, wrong-knowledge, wrong-association, or wrong-class-background, and Songbun, North Korea’s discriminatory social classification system, both originate in the Chosun Dynasty’s feudal practices. Ken Gause’s unprecedented report draws on extensive research to reveal the key role played by North Korea’s security agencies in the establishment and preservation of the Kim regime through two hereditary transmissions of power. From Pang Hak-se—also known as the “North Korean Beria”—to Kim Pyong-ha and U Dong-chuk, the reader learns about the dark eminences of North Korea’s repressive apparatus and their merciless purges of those perceived as “enemies of the revolution,” then “enemies within the revolution,” and finally of those eliminated as scapegoats for the systemic failures of the regime. As North Korea’s security agencies ruled over an all-pervasive system of coercion, control, surveillance, and punishment, within their own ranks, competition for favors from the ‘Great Leader’ and the ‘Dear Leader’ often resulted in conspiracy, intrigue, and the rise and fall of even the most powerful of officials. Despite strict surveillance, dissent has also existed in North Korea, especially within the ranks of the military. The report addresses two instances when, in the 1980s and 1990s, what could have become organized dissent was brutally eradicated by North Korea’s internal security agencies. Through overseeing the In-min-ban system— the Orwellian neighborhood watch— North Korea’s security agencies ensure that privacy doesn’t exist, and everyone is under strict scrutiny. Not only criticizing authority, but also unauthorized stays, adultery, absenteeism, or watching South Korean videos are punished with prejudice. The security agencies play a primary role in restricting the flow of information and ensuring strict ideological conformity through harsh surveillance and coercion. North Koreans must participate in self-criticism sessions or face punishment, even time in a political prison camp. State security agents conduct routine checks to ensure that radio sets remain perpetually tuned to the state frequency, and “109 squads” roam border towns at night, arresting smugglers and confiscating South Korean TV shows and dramas that have entered the country via portable media storage devices. Nevertheless, the report also notes that the advent of post-famine small-scale private economic activity, cell phones, DVDs, USBs, smuggled radios and increased access to foreign broadcasting and bribes are beginning to erode some of the information blockade and political controls. Those North Koreans who assume great risks to gain access to information from the outside world and to impart information show courage, whether their actions are an act of dissent or just the result of wanting to learn more about the world. What might ultimately bring change to North Korea is the increased inflow and outflow of information. The security agencies, however, continue to enforce North Korea’s information blackout, by increasing border surveillance and cracking down on marketplaces, unauthorized phone calls, and foreign broadcasting. Having ensured the survival of the Kim family’s dynastic regime for six decades, North Korea’s complex and ruthless internal security apparatus will no doubt continue to be a key element of Kim Jong-un’s political control. Greater awareness of how it operates is essential to understanding how the Kim regime remains in power. Details: Washington, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012. 288p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 14, 2013 at: http://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/HRNK_Ken-Gause_Web.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Korea, North URL: http://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/HRNK_Ken-Gause_Web.pdf Shelf Number: 127614 Keywords: Human Rights (North Korea)Security Forces |
Author: Sayigh, Yezid Title: Dilemmas of Reform: Policing in Arab Transitions Summary: Struggles over the security sector have been central to the politics of every Arab state that has undergone transition in the wake of armed conflict or political upheaval since the early 1990s. And wherever pre-transition elite coalitions have been neither forged anew nor replaced, security sectors no longer clearly serve a dominant political, social, and economic order. In these contexts, generic Western models of security sector reform cannot adequately resolve the dilemmas revealed by Arab states in transition and can do no more than alter these sectors superficially. Systemic change is needed, but the political and institutional brittleness of Arab states in transition presents a significant obstacle. Dilemmas of Policing in Arab States in Transition - Constitutional frameworks in these states are degraded and politics are polarized, which prevents the effective governance of security sectors. -State capacity is in decline, undermining the ability of policing to help uphold the social order and moral economy. - These governments' renewed emphasis on counterterrorism has intensified long-standing patterns of violent behavior and impunity in the security sector, reinforcing the sector's resistance to reform while prompting the public to acquiesce to the restoration of authoritarian practices. - Declining state resources, increasingly informal economies, and deepening illegality have raised the costs of reforming and professionalizing security sectors. These trends have also incentivized security sectors' implication in corruption and collusion with criminal networks and armed actors, stiffening the sectors' resistance to reform. - Growing numbers of citizens have turned to alternative forms of community policing and mechanisms based on customary law, but these systems are eroding, often giving way to hybrid, militia-based structures. Challenging Future - Security sector reform cannot take place unless political elites and leading institutional actors see a shared interest in it. In the absence of this, security sectors have fractured along sectarian, ethnic, and partisan lines, or have asserted their complete autonomy in pursuit of their own agendas. - Generic transparency rules and oversight frameworks recommended in conventional reform approaches cannot tackle corruption or illegal economic activity in the security sector. Arab states in transition are especially unwilling to undertake necessary but risky reforms or to impose accountability. - The rehabilitation and reform of security sectors requires a nonpartisan approach and depends on reaching a reasonable consensus on the components of the social order and the principles of an acceptable moral economy. Without this, the technical assistance and training routinely offered in conventional reform programs will be of little value. Details: Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Beirut, Lebanon: Carnegie Middle East Center, 2016. 50p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 17, 2017 at: http://carnegieendowment.org/files/CEIP_CMEC61_Sayigh_Final.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Asia URL: http://carnegieendowment.org/files/CEIP_CMEC61_Sayigh_Final.pdf Shelf Number: 145050 Keywords: Informal EconomyLaw EnforcementPolice ReformPolicingSecurity ForcesTerrorism |
Author: Human Rights Watch Title: "Special Mission": Recruitment of M23 Rebels to Suppress Protests in the Democratic Republic of Congo Languages Summary: Security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo killed at least 62 people and arrested hundreds of others during protests across the country between December 19 and 22, 2016, after President Joseph Kabila refused to step down at the end of his constitutionally mandated two-term limit. In the lead-up to the December protests, and as pressure on Kabila escalated, senior Congolese security force officers had mobilized at least 200 and likely many more former M23 rebel fighters from neighboring Uganda and Rwanda to protect Kabila and help quash the anti-Kabila protests. M23 fighters were integrated into Congolese army, police, and Republican Guard units and given explicit orders to use lethal force, including at "point-blank range" if necessary. With more protests planned in the coming weeks - nearly one year past the end of Kabila's constitutional mandate - the findings in this report raise concerns about further violence and repression. "Special Mission": Recruitment of M23 Rebels to Suppress Protests in the Democratic Republic of Congo is based on over 120 interviews, including with victims and witnesses of abuses, 9 Congolese security force officers, and 21 M23 combatants, commanders, and political leaders. Research was conducted in Kinshasa, Goma, and Lubumbashi in Congo, and in Rwanda and Uganda from December 2016 to November 2017. Human Rights Watch calls on President Kabila and other senior officials to end all unlawful and excessive use of force and other forms of repression against protesters, activists, and the political opposition, and to cease all recruitment of M23 fighters to participate in such repression. Congo's international partners should increase the pressure on Kabila to step down as required by the constitution and support a peaceful transition and credible elections. Details: New York: HRW, 2017. 81p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 17, 2018 at: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/drc1217_web2_0.pdf Year: 2017 Country: Congo, Democratic Republic URL: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/drc1217_web2_0.pdf Shelf Number: 148848 Keywords: Deadly ForceHuman Rights AbusesProtests and DemonstrationsSecurity Forces |
Author: Felbab-Brown, Vanda Title: AMLO's Security Policy: Creative Ideas, Tough Reality Summary: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY -- - Improving public safety, especially reducing Mexico's soaring murder rate, is the toughest challenge of Mexico's new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as AMLO). - In November 2018, AMLO unveiled his National Peace and Security Plan 2018-2024, describing it as predominantly focused on the roots of insecurity, as opposed to confronting drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). The plan combines anti-corruption measures; economic policies; enhanced human rights protections; ethics reforms; public health, including treatment for drug use and exploration of drug legalization; transitional justice and amnesty for some criminals; and broader peace-building, to include traditional anti-crime measures such as prison reform and security sector reform, plus a new law enforcement force, the National Guard. - Various elements of his announced new security strategy-such as the formation of the National Guard - remain questionable and unclear and are unlikely to reduce violence quickly. - AMLO's proffered security strategy will likely create friction with the United States. Jointly countering fentanyl smuggling, however, could provide one venue of U.S.- Mexico cooperation. Corruption and Mexico's justice system - Combatting corruption is a foundational element of AMLO's security policy, and his administration has adopted a wide set of anti-corruption measures, including highly controversial and questionable ones. - However, AMLO has yet to appoint a dedicated anti-corruption prosecutor, make appointments to the National Anti-Corruption System, and support the 2016 National Anti-Corruption System reform. - AMLO has not broken with politically powerful and immensely corrupt unions, proposing instead to reverse reforms and lay off 70 percent of non-unionized federal workers. - It remains unclear whether AMLO will empower Mexico's civil society-crucial for reducing corruption-or continually define it as his antagonist. - AMLO's administration has not yet focused sufficiently on implementing the judicial reform by properly implementing the new prosecutorial system. - The administration has emphasized minimizing salary differences between public ministries, federal judges, prosecutors, and police officials. The weakness of prosecutors and their lack of cooperation with law enforcement and judges have been key stumbling blocks, keeping prosecution rates abysmally low. However, minimizing salary differences is inadequate. - Deleteriously, AMLO has refused to allow the independent selection of an autonomous attorney general. Focus on brutal crimes instead of drug trafficking groups and rejection of high-value targeting - The AMLO administration suspended focus on DTOs, drug trafficking, and high-value targeting of DTO leaders. Instead, it prioritizes "brutal crimes." But that strategy ignores the fact that key perpetrators of homicides, extortion, and robberies are DTOs. - Large law enforcement deployments to Tijuana and efforts to combat fuel theft have been interpreted by DTOs as direct confrontation. Instead, AMLO should prioritize targeting the most violent criminal groups, while deterring new outbreaks of violence. - The target should be the middle operational layer of a criminal group, seeking to disable the vast majority of the middle layer in one sweep, in order to reduce the group's regeneration capacity. - The Mexican government remains challenged in implementing such a policy by the continual lack of strategic and tactical intelligence in an ever more fragmented, mult-ipolar, and opaque criminal market, and by the continual corruption of Mexico's law enforcement apparatus. The National Guard -- - AMLO has not stopped using the Mexican military for domestic law enforcement. However, he has created a new structure combining military forces with Federal Police forces-The National Guard. - To be completed in three years, the National Guard is to be 150,000-strong. Sent initially to 17 areas with high homicide rates, the first contingent of 50,000 is to start functioning by April 2019. The head of the National Guard is a civilian, but much of the leadership is military.... Details: Washington, DC: Foreign Policy at Brookings Institute, 2019. 50p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 27, 2019 at: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/FP_20190325_mexico_anti-crime.pdf Year: 2019 Country: Mexico URL: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/FP_20190325_mexico_anti-crime.pdf Shelf Number: 155191 Keywords: Criminal Justice PolicyCriminal Justice SystemDrug TraffickingHomicidesNational SecurityPolitical CorruptionPublic SafetySecurity ForcesViolent Crimes |