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Reconnaissance and Planning

Most refugee operations require the military to activate a JTF, which rapidly deploys into a crisis area. JTF activation and deployment are usually concurrent with operational or contingency planning. This leaves little time for reconnaissance, and the intelligence staff frequently lacks the detailed knowledge of the situation required to support deliberate planning. In the case of Rwanda, the senior intelligence officer in USEUCOM noted: “By the time it had become clear that we were to deploy forces to central Africa, we were forced to run very hard to build the needed database" (Hayden: 19).

Imagery and signals intelligence collectors were designed to detect Cold War military forces. They are not well suited to many subtle intelligence requirements. For example, the after-action report for Operation PROVIDE COMFORT noted, "HUMINT [human source intelligence] collection used with tactical reconnaissance produced the key intelligence necessary for operations and security" (USEUCOM b: 12).

While human intelligence is ideally suited to collect on non-traditional intelligence requirements, the military's initial lack of access to the crisis area makes collection very difficult. The Defense Attache system offers a limited capability for overt collection, but any new human collection requires extensive amounts of time-to develop sources-that simply does not exist in a crisis scenario (Pelletiere: 11-12).

Force Protection and Intelligence Reporting

Unlike the UNHCR — where a capability to report intelligence information already exists in the crisis area—the U.S. military builds an intelligence architecture to support a new refugee operation. Thus, intelligence reporting from the crisis area tends to begin later and be less incisive than similar reporting by the UNHCR. Analytical reporting is typically called an intelligence summary (INTSUM) or an intelligence report (INTREP), but the formats of these reports vary widely in practice.

Because of the natural inclination for military intelligence personnel to focus on enemy "threats," INTSUMS and INTREPS are dominated by force protection—rather than situational awareness-reporting. In an environment where there is an ongoing or latent conflict, this is certainly appropriate, but these reports do not provide the JTF commander the intelligence

necessary to assess the effectiveness of his relief operations (Wilson). In Rwanda, the JTF commander partially remedied this shortcoming by visiting UN organizations and NGOs (USEUCOM a: 5).

In most recent refugee operations, U.S. military commanders have used Civil Military Operations Centers (CMOC) to facilitate information exchange and unity of effort with UN organizations and NGOs. The CMOC holds tremendous potential to provide this situational awareness — or intelligence — to the JTF through a free and frank exchange of “information" with non-military organizations (Wallace: 36-41; U.S. DoD g: IV4 to IV-7).

SUMMARY

As complex humanitarian emergencies proliferate around the world, the global refugee population will probably continue to increase. Simultaneously, traditional countries of asylum, like the U.S., will continue to tighten their immigration policies, interpreting the status of refugees more narrowly. These trends will make strategic warning of refugee flows more important, and they will require intelligence to plan and conduct refugee operations.

Both the UNHCR and the U.S. military collect, analyze, and disseminate intelligence, but the UNHCR has not bureaucratized intelligence to the extent the U.S. military has. In some ways, the comparison of intelligence in the UNHCR and the U.S. military is artificial because neither organization operates in a vacuum and because each organization has different objectives. Nevertheless, the U.S. military and the UNHCR each have a need for strategic warning of refugee emergencies and a need for intelligence to plan and conduct operations.

In the case of strategic warning, the UNHCR is clearly more effective. The UNHCR lacks the capacity to act unilaterally to prevent refugee flows, but it does use early warning to prepare its emergency response personnel and field offices for impending crises. Thus, while there can never be a warning "success" in the sense that U.S. government agencies define the term, early warning allows the UNHCR to respond rapidly to a crisis. Conversely, the U.S. military is often surprised by refugee crises, creating JTFS to conduct refugee operations in a purely reactive manner.

In planning and conducting refugee operations, the effectiveness of intelligence in the U.S. military and the UNHCR is mixed. Because of its

earlier warning and access to the crisis area, the UNHCR typically is more effective at planning refugee assistance. However, the UNHCR lacks the capability to conduct military style "force protection" intelligence during a refugee operation, sometimes even relying on militaries to fill this void.

INTELLIGENCE LESSONS FOR FUTURE
REFUGEE OPERATIONS

While the UNHCR is not perfect in conducting intelligence activities, the U.S. military can draw some important lessons from the UNHCR's wealth of experience. These include:

1) The best sources of information on an emerging refugee crisis will be the NGOs and other organizations with a presence on the ground. From an economic perspective, these sources are also much more effective than using expensive technical collection assets to obtain information that is already publicly available. Honest and open communication is the key to tapping this resource. Immediately after receiving warning of a refugee emergency, JTF intelligence personnel should conduct liaison with NGOS either using commercial telecommunications equipment or through on-line services. Once the relief force enters the crisis area, the Civil Military Operations Center may prove an excellent place for this liaison to continue

to occur.

2) Information is abundant, but analysis (the conversion of relevant information into intelligence) is the problem. Determining the accuracy and biases of major NGOs involved in reporting information on refugees is essential.

3) Force protection will remain an issue, particularly in unstable security environments, but an infatuation with "threats" should not inhibit the intelligence staff's capability to monitor other aspects of the situation. These include political, economic, demographic, and societal factors which affect the overall success of the refugee operation.

4) Clandestine human intelligence is unlikely to be useful because there will be insufficient time to make it operational and because it undermines the humanitarian nature of the operation.

5) Unclassified intelligence products are imperative. In a complex humanitarian emergency, the U.S. military must coordinate with an

extensive array of international actors who will need access to U.S. intelligence. Sensitive information should be handled with discretion instead of classification.

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6) Military leaders must understand the culture and objectives of other organizations involved in the relief effort. Many NGOs are as suspicious of the UNHCR - and each other as they are of militaries. It is unrealistic to expect the UNHCR, or any other single organization, to be able to thoroughly coordinate all efforts of the entire range of actors in a refugee operation.

EVOLUTION OF THE UN DEPARTMENT OF

PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS

Robert J. Allen
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
July 1994

When peacekeeping missions go awry, the world peers scornfully at the UN and wonders why it does not work better. A look inside the Peacekeeping Department-understaffed, starved for funds, beset by blizzards of changing instructions from the Security Council-raises a different question: how the system works at all (Brooks: A1).

INTRODUCTION

The United Nations system that has evolved over the last 30 years to manage peace operations is handicapped by bureaucracy and chronic understaffing. With the end of the Cold War and the explosion of the number of UN peace operations since 1988, this system has shown significant strain as it copes with the rigors of increasingly complex and dangerous new "peacekeeping" missions. The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) has undergone a series of reorganizations in an attempt to rectify the shortcomings and limitations the UN inherited from its Cold War peacekeeping management system. Most observers agree, however, the structural changes implemented by the UN and focused on the DPKO are insufficient to deal with long-standing deficiencies in planning, command and control, and logistics of peacekeeping operations. A division of responsibilities and diffusion of power among the competitive bureaucracies within the UN Secretariat remains, threatening the viability of future peace operations.

Fielding a Peacekeeping Operation

A review of organizational roles and responsibilities in fielding a traditional peacekeeping operation is helpful to appreciate some of the shortcomings

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