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Session Four - Plenary
Weapons collection and police-community co-operation: the linkages between regional, governmental and non-governmental roles in weapons reduction and in public awareness
Chairperson: Assistant Commissioner Batshu, Botswana Police
Senior Assistant Commissioner Frank Msutu, Head of Interpol subregional bureau for Southern Africa/SARPCCO Secretariat
Evolution and lessons of SARPCCO operations
SARPCCO has co-ordinated five joint operations in the region which have identified key problems officers had to deal with.
Lack of trust
The political distrust and uninformed suspicions inculcated into police officers and other government officials have assisted in and nurtured the growth of crossborder criminal activity in the region.
Parliaments, the media and others have asked questions about sovereignty and the rationale of bringing foreign forces to work in other countries. This affected the morale of host countries and visiting police officers, as their movements were closely watched and, in some cases, restricted.
Rumours were deliberately spread about the levels of corruption in other countries, sometimes due to ignorance of how the laws of certain countries operated. Every move of a police officer from another country was suspected as being corrupt, causing increased distrust. But this is not to say that corruption is not an issue. Some officers are corrupt and all countries have them. This must be fully addressed through training, although training alone cannot solve that problem.
Planning
Failing to plan is planning to fail. This has been evident in joint operations that have been poorly planned. Good vision is vital in producing an operational plan. Everybody who is involved in a key area must make a contribution to the plan.
Attitudes
The attitude of officers participating in a joint operation must be flexible. Some officers may enter into a joint operation with a certain amount of mental rigidity that may impede the operation. It must be accepted that police officers in this region come from different education systems, and cultural and social backgrounds. Legal systems are different in every country, the resource bases vary and financial resources are largely absent in certain countries. Yet, all officers are expected to work together with a common purpose. Superiority complexes must never be brought into joint operations.
Intelligence-gathering
All joint operations must be intelligence-driven. Planning sessions must take cognisance of this requirement at all times.
The region has an abundance of Interpol systems, including the ASF database, accessible to planners and operators in all countries. Criminal intelligence can be stored in these systems and can be accessible whenever required for documentation. Officers must be encouraged to use the systems to their operational benefits.
Lack of knowledge of other countries’ legal systems
This has been a problem especially where the repatriation of exhibits was necessary. Operatives must have a basic knowledge of the procedures that officials of another country should follow to get a stolen item released. Often, frustrated officials from other countries have rushed to condemn perceived corruption, while the legal systems have been the stumbling blocks.
Media relations
The media have an important role to play and must be on-site. Sometimes, they have lobbied the general public and legislators against joint regional operations, and even published information about the operations prematurely, thus warning criminals who could hide evidence and go into hiding. If the media are treated properly, they could release information a few days into the operation without jeopardising the operations. They could also encourage the public to accept the need for such operations.
Co-ordination with attorneys-general
At all times during the planning period, the attorneys-general and directors of public prosecution must be involved to give legal advice and even put special courts in place to deal with the influx of cases that might be generated by these operations. In some countries, they would have to be involved in issuing search and seizure warrants. If they are not involved from the beginning, they will be reluctant to assist in the event of a problem.
Benefits of operations
It must be understood at all times by all police officers involved in an operation that joint regional operations are for the benefit of all individual countries involved in the operation, as well as for the benefit of the SARPCCO region in general. No insinuation should be entertained that operatives should work to benefit their own country alone.
Conclusion
The common objective of policing in the SARPCCO region – that of combating crossborder crime – cuts through differences of tradition, culture, colour, language, religion, legal systems, social systems, financial ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ and political boundaries. In such a diversity of intervening factors, problems are bound to arise. Training should therefore seek solutions to some of the problems so that operations can be smoother in future.
Martinho Chachiua, Institute for Security Studies
The role of civil society in weapons collection: Mozambique
At the end of the war, different sources reported that Mozambique had between one and six million arms. Retrieving weapons from society therefore became one of the most critical components of post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts.
ONUMOZ
The first arms collection programme to emerge was part of the UN operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ). ONUMOZ collected about 200 000 arms. The operation has been described as a political success, but a failure as far as disarmament is concerned. One of the reasons for this was the narrow definition of who to disarm: this was confined to the armies of warring parties while weapons could be found throughout the whole of society. Excessively formal and state-centred working methods prevented UN peacekeepers from engaging local communities.
The police
The second programme for arms collection was developed by the police in April 1995. The plan had two components:
- The first was to reinforce policing by deploying permanent police units to patrol the main roads and re-establishing district police commands. Following this, Mozambican police were reported to have broken up thirty armed gangs and uncovered 69 arms caches in three months. Between January and July 1995, the police seized more than 6 000 arms and 24 000 rounds of ammunition. There was no structured policy to engage local communities, but the police recognised that the modest success was largely due to popular collaboration. Either individuals abandoned unwanted weapons, or citizens denounced illegal owners.
- The second component was the creation of a special unit to destroy arms caches. This unit became the counterpart of the South African firearms unit and, due to a shared belief that arms caches in Mozambique were fuelling crime and instability, they joined forces in Operations Rachel.
A unique feature of Operations Rachel has been the commitment of the police to work with communities. The police relied on them for information and much effort was put towards enhancing community-police relationships. This included briefings before, during and after a cache was destroyed, rewards for informants and no prosecution of people found in possession of weapons. Political and economic factors prevented communities from handing in weapons. By offering amnesty and rewarding informants, Operations Rachel worked with local communities to address these issues. Private companies in South Africa even provided food to be given to informants as rewards.
The Mozambican Christian Council (MCC) Gun Recovery Project
This has been the most important structured civil society initiative in Mozambique. It was conceived in 1992 and commenced in 1995.
The most critical component of the project was civic education. The media were widely used for this purpose. The MCC expected that individuals would hand in their weapons in exchange for agricultural implements, sewing machines, bicycles, construction and other material on request. Collected weapons were to be destroyed and their physical constituents transformed into productive tools such as hospital scissors, small tables, mugs, ploughs and cutlery.
By August 1998, around 1 743 weapons had been collected. The relative success of the programme has been questioned as being potentially counterproductive by increasing the demand for arms and boosting the illicit market. But this is doubtful . Firstly, a lack of resources did not allow it to pay competitive prices, and secondly, the conscious decision not to pay cash for weapons being handed in but to reward through the provision of productive implements argue against this.
Conclusion
In post-conflict societies, the role of civil society in arms collection is clear. Weapons are held by people for different reasons and motives. In retrieving them, one needs to understand the motives behind possession and work with individuals to show that their motives can be addressed by other means. It is also necessary to understand that the motives and reasons for holding weapons are not at all static. A person can start off by acquiring a weapon for political and/or security reasons, but later maintain it for socio-economic imperatives. Arms trafficking in Southern Africa has clearly shown this trend. Operations Rachel and the MCC were able to understand the changing motives behind possessing arms caches and tackled them by combining amnesty with gun buy-back components.
The hard lesson to learn from the Mozambican experience is that programmes like the MCC or Rachel will only impact on easy targets: community-held caches. Greater resources are needed to retrieve weapons before they enter the illicit market. Once they are there, a different strategy is needed. The police will then have a greater responsibility and the community’s role will have to be restricted to that of a source of information in a broader context of community-police relationships.
Dr Daniel Ntoni-Nzinga, Quaker International Affairs Programme in Southern Africa
The role of civil society in reversing a culture of violence
From the perspective of being an Angolan, the fundamental cause of the culture of violence itself is the mindset that believes that ‘the one who commands, gives orders, and the one who does not command only obeys’.
Those who command are the ones who have the means to command – this does not only refer to the political means. Guns are an expression of the ability to command, and that is the case in reality.
One simple example illustrates this. In 1976, when the war in Angola which had erupted the previous year cooled down, my cousins who were in the defeated army returned to my village with many weapons. My uncle, their father, found out and called a meeting of the whole village to discuss this. The decision was made to take the guns away, which we did the next day. But my cousins were clever and kept some of the weapons, saying they needed them for hunting.
When I tried to reason with one of them, he pointed out that it is very important that I have my gun, because it is this gun that has sustained me. It is because of this gun that everybody will look at me as a respectable person, and without it, I cease to be the person I used to be and no-one can expect me to lose my identity so quickly.
Having a gun is not just a matter of protection. It is also a matter of pride and respect. This is an integral part of the mindset that ‘the one who commands, gives orders’. If you do not want to be at the receiving end of orders, you have to have something that will show you are somebody.
This means that the reliance on arms becomes entrenched over time. To tackle this culture of violence, the long-term disarmament of people’s minds is a necessity. Civil society also needs to be empowered to disown criminality. When people become silent in the face of abuses, they encourage the culture of violence to flourish and will thus become part of the problem themselves.
In addressing the culture of violence, four focal points are proposed in terms of the role civil society should play.
Address the ideological basis of the culture of violence
The ideological basis has to be addressed, otherwise guns may be collected today and new ones will appear on the streets tomorrow. The minds of the people have to be disarmed. Demobilisation and disarmament were part of the Lusaka Protocol in 1994, but while individual soldiers were demobilised, the system that put the guns in place was left intact. Some of the soldiers joined the new police force, but many of those who were not selected soon turned back to the thinking that they can still do something with the gun. They had not been mentally disarmed.
Promote dialogue and involve communities in weapons collection
A real dialogue with civil society needs to be a central part of any demobilisation process. They should be active partners in the struggle against the culture of violence. One clear role is in providing information about arms caches. Yet, if communities are not involved and engaged in peace agreements, their potential will be left untapped. The promotion of a dialogue at all levels will assist in building mutual trust.
Cultivate a sense of responsibility
Angola has had so many failed peace agreements and one reason for this is that civil society has never been involved in the process. Things will not change unless the people are involved – not just NGOs, but all the groups and communities that form the nation. They also have to take responsibility for peace, and one way of helping the community in this is to engage in a campaign of sensitisation so that everyone understands what is happening and what the issues are that have to be addressed.
Involve communities in monitoring
To be effective, any disarmament or peacebuilding programme needs monitoring, but not necessarily by committees and commissions. Communities should be encouraged to take responsibility for the security in their area and to monitor any agreements that have been made.
Discussion
Continued support for Operations Rachel
The joint weapons collection Rachel operations between Mozambique and South Africa were widely considered to be a very successful model. It was discussed how these operations could be built upon and enhanced.
There were pleas for external assistance to enable the continuation of the Mozambique-South Africa co-operation. Previous operations focused on southern Mozambique and were largely funded by South Africa (with support from Belgium). It was said that South Africa’s concern was stimulated by the fact that arms flows were fuelling crime in KwaZulu-Natal. Many undiscovered weapons caches apparently remain in northern Mozambique and there are reports that arms from there are seeping out into bordering countries such as Malawi. It was felt that donor assistance for operations to destroy these caches was vital as South Africa may not be in a position to finance them where there is not as such a strong national interest at stake.
Extending the Operations Rachel model
Many participants felt that the Rachel model could be extended to other countries. It was pointed out that there are problems with illicit arms flows between many neighbouring countries in the region and that donor assistance could encourage joint weapons collection operations.
Enhancing the role of communities in weapons collection
There was a discussion about how Rachel-type operations could be refined to involve local communities more effectively. It was pointed out that the Rachel operations are becoming expensive because individuals are demanding more money for handing in their weapons when they realise how the system works. The possibility of rewarding communities, rather than individuals was suggested. Participants proposed the UNDP project in Gramsh, Albania as a possible model where infrastructure is being developed for the community – such as roads and a telephone system – in return for handing in weapons.
Regional co-operation
The importance of regional co-operation in weapons collection and policing programmes was stressed. Without a co-ordinated approach, there is a danger that successful national or bilateral operations could just drive criminals elsewhere in the region.
Policing
The importance of regenerating trust within communities was stressed as a prerequisite for effectively involving them in weapons collection programmes. The proliferation of small arms often breeds fear which can destroy trust within communities. The police, by providing genuine security for communities, have a potentially important role to play in rebuilding trust. Police reform and improving police-community relations were proposed as key areas for external assistance which could help to increase the effectiveness of weapons collection programmes.
Community education
Education and raising awareness were repeatedly stressed as fundamental to the success of weapons collection programmes. Various examples of possible activities were put forward like support for community radio stations, the integration of peacebuilding and small arms issues into school curricula and poster campaigns. It was also suggested that more research was needed into the design, scope and success of existing initiatives to raise awareness of the issues of arms and violence.
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