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NATO
Peacekeeping in Europe Requires More Than
NATO 'SWAT Team'
7 April 1999
By Daniel Plesch and Robert Bullock
One way to think about the disaster in the Balkans is
to compare it to the gang warfare that troubles so many of
our cities. In one of Europe's low rent neighborhoods,
long disputed and blighted by rival developers favoring their
own ethnic groups, violent evictions are underway. Yugoslavia
is the offender, and the people of Kosovo are the victims.
In order to clear out unwanted tenants, the landlord, Milosevic
has developed a pattern of terrorizing his tenants an apartment
at a time, killing those who resist.
Response from the police has been non-existent, but now a
heavily armed private security force is here, in the form
of a NATO SWAT team, which now encircles the crime scene.
However, the team is hindered by its fear of losing men, and
as a result, instead of storming the building waits outside
using snipers taking shots at the thugs inside, and trashing
the landlord's offices and other properties. Such an approach
has been woefully ineffective, as the sniping, has only resulted
in the tenants being driven out faster and more violently.
The SWAT team is also severely limited by its lack of trained
negotiators and is reduced to shouting threats about what
will happen if there is no surrender. The town council ignored
the opportunity to resolve a worsening situation earlier on,
as the community associations were marginalized, the youth
formed vigilante groups. Representatives such as Ibrahim
Rugova were even locked out of the talks at Dayton. Meanwhile,
the rest of the city looks on and shakes its head, losing
confidence in the security force by the day. The forthcoming
50th birthday party for the NATO/SWAT team seems in bad taste.
This comparison illustrates the dilemma that NATO finds itself
in today. The Alliance would like to be the police force of
Europe, to gain the legitimacy and public trust that a private
security firm simply does not possess. However, despite such
laudable intentions, NATO is woefully lacking in terms of
having the breadth of capability that would allow this imagined
role to become reality. No effective police force is made
up entirely of its SWAT team. The job of crime fighting
calls for a variety of units and responses, and these
combined produce a safer and more stable environment in which
the community can live and prosper, without fearing the thuggish
behavior of the few. Police walking the beat, summer basketball
programs, neighborhood watch schemes, community outreach,
zero-tolerance policing, efforts at community regeneration
and other crime prevention activities form the mosaic of functions
that secure our cities. The police force alone cannot do the
job, still less the SWAT team.
A more sophisticated approach to European security is
needed; currently, only the SWAT team is ever considered,
and as a result, mechanisms for lowering tensions and controlling
hostilities before they break out into armed conflict, such
as the OSCE, are disregarded by a jealous NATO that sees itself
as the only viable alternative in a dangerous neighborhood.
The OSCE has a budget of only $40 million per year, and being
able to call on nothing more than ad-hoc, non-specialized
verifiers during times of crisis, the community policing functions
of the OSCE that might have prevented the nightmare in Kosovo
never had a chance.
At the 50th Anniversary Summit at the end of April, it
is imperative that NATO address the weaknesses in its relationship
with the OSCE, and make a commitment to truly support and
enhance its capabilities. Without a clear focus on the
need for conflict prevention and early crisis management,
we will do little more than chase the Balkan crisis from province
to province with similar tragic results.
NATO has a SWAT team that it can be justifiably proud of.
However, it lacks any capability to act in a more measured
and preventative manner, and without such a capability, the
SWAT team is doomed to a future of misuse and failure. Ultimately,
preservation of the peace in Kosovo will not be the responsibility
of the NATO SWAT team. Only the town council has the legitimacy
and ability to take possession of the troubled apartment complex
and best serve the interests of the residents; only the United
Nations can perform this role, by making the province into
a UN protectorate. NATO must show the imagination and willpower
that will enable such an option to succeed, otherwise the
neighborhood will never know the security it so desperately
needs.
Dan Plesch and Robert Bullock are director and research assistant,
respectively, at the British American Security Information
Council.
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