SENZA CENSURA N.18

NOVEMBER 2005

 

COUNTER-REVOLUTION AT OUR HOME
"EUROGENDFOR" (European Gendarmerie Force) and the "Excellence Center for Police Unities for the stabilization"

It seemed necessary to deepen the knowledge of these two projects of the worldwide counter-revolution that will permanently settle in Vicenza (Italy). In the same city there is also the Ederle barrack for the 173^ Airborne Brigade, operating in Afghanistan and previously for one year in Iraq (1).

The EUROGENDFOR or the "European Gendarmerie"
"Every international mission needs a contingent like this. Defense is no more the right answer to the terrorism, it is the organization of security".
Antonio Martino, Italian Minister of Defence, during the inauguration of the Eurogendfor force

"Eurogendfor will principally deal with the 'powerful' international police missions by 'executive directive', like the missions for the police substitution (where a local police lacks or doesn't work properly), missions of integrated police units (like the Msu of 'Carabinieri') and mission of police assistance (to enforce local police).
Their field of action could be the whole world.
Claudio Catalano, Director of the online magazine "politicaestera.org" and author of researches on the new Gendarmerie Force for the UE Institute for Security Studies

The "Chinotto" barrack became the Eurogendfor (EDG) headquarter, the European gendarmerie that will be instituted following the model of the national police forces with military management (five, in total) of UE countries, in which the italian "Carabinieri" force will have the central role. This force will have the "host" role, will provide a considerable amount of troops and will be a point of reference, particularly for what done in these years with the MSU (Multinational Specialized Force), during the Italian war missions.
Instructors of the Carabinieri force will teach the EGF future staff about some of the most important aspects of the training. The MSU regiment, recently renamed IPU (Integrated Police Unit) and putted in the European Military Force, has the contribution of seven States and the Carabinieri Force is its supporting structure.
EGD is composed, besides the "Arma dei Carabinieri", also by the French National Gendarmerie, the Dutch "Maréchaussé", the Portuguese National Guard and the Spanish "Guardia Civil".
In the last 20 years, more than 10.000 men of the Carabinieri force have been trained in the "Chinotto" barrack, attending the second year of the course for "not- commissioned officer" or the 3 month courses for "Sergeant" or various specialization courses for "Station Commander", "Detective", etc.
In the last 3 years the EDG school trained the selected staff for Peace-keeping missions, like a part of the Multinational Specialized Units in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq.
Catalano said: "the headquarter has been settled in Vicenza by common agreement of the involved states (and following the action plan provided by the Sea Island Summit of the last summer) because in the "Chinotto" barrack there are many structures like the new Centre of Excellence for the utilization of the police forces under military regulation for peacekeeping missions. Deanaz, the French first sergeant of National Gendarmerie has been appointed as Commanding Officer of the force. In the EDG is in use a multinational principle that guarantees the representatives of every Involved State. Political decisions are provided by an inter-departmental committee, called Cimin, that includes the representatives of the five States" (2).
The proposal to create a European Gendarmerie has been suggested by Alliot-Marie, French Minister of Defence, during the informative summit of the Ministers of Defence in Rome, October 8th 2003 under the Italian chairmanship of UE.
"In this summit we agreed on the necessity to enforce the particular capability that the police forces under military regulation (the gendarmeries) could express in the peace-keeping missions, following the very effective MSU model of the management of the crisis operations" (3).
The second step has been done the last 7th September in Noordwijk (Aja, Holland), after the Informal Council of the UE Defence Ministers, in view of the UE Military Capability Commitment Conference of November.
In that occasion five States (Italy, France, Spain, Holland, Portugal) submitted a declaration of intentions for the Eurogendfor creation with a "permanent unit" settled in Vicenza. Besides the five states, also other countries could join to the initiative, like Austria, Slovenia, Hungary that already shown their interest to it.
Just before the summit Henk Kamp, Dutch Minister of Defence, said that the force "will be ready the next year, but, in December, the head staff will be created in Vicenza: it won't be a barrack, but a headquarter leading the mobilization of troops in the involved countries. The division sergeant Pistolese (that worked for G8 summit in Genova and now Regional Carabinieri Commander of Liguria) will lead the headquarters. His collaborators are coming in town, like the Lieutenant Colonel Barbano" (4) who has the responsibility to organize the "permanent unit" in this first stage.
The High Ministerial Committee, gathering representatives of the ministers from the five involved states, during the meeting of January the 21st by the officer school in Rome, appointed Deanaz that will be assisted by an international staff leaded by an officer from Italian Carabinieri.
EDG will be an instrument for the foreign politics of UE, but it is also expected to operate in favour of UN, NATO, OECD and other international organizations.
When it operates on behalf of the UE, the strategic direction and the political control on it will be remitted to the UE political committee.
EDG will cover all the aspects of operations that are an answer to a crisis, from the beginning stage, throughout the "transition" stage, ending with the retreating of the troops to favour the passage of sovereignty to "civil authorities"; covering a wide range of missions like: public security activities, criminal intelligence and informative collection; monitoring and counselling in favour of local police during her ordinary activities, included criminal investigation.
3000 soldiers coming from the five involved countries are at EDG's disposal to carry out those duties; 8-900 men of that troop will form a battalion, able to reach a territory 30 days after the beginning of a crisis.
The leading structure will be the High Level Interdepartmental Committee that will guarantee the political-military coordination with EGF commander, the Headquarter in Vicenza of 29 officers (11 will be Italian): that number will be permanent, multinational, modular and extendable.
In a interview of may 2005, Catalano said: "It's too early to talk about missions but the most probable scenery could be sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, in case of a request by UN, the Democratic Republic of Congo, a hot spot where has already taken place "Artemide" operation, the first mission above European borders or the current "Ipu Kinshasa", in May 2003." And also: "Because of the present international situation is possible the use of Eugendfor in the Balkan area, Kosovo in particular. Especially in case of the vote, requiring the enforcements to the UN international police units and MSU units of NATO, but also in case of a possible turning from NATO Kfor mission to a UE, like it already happened in Bosnia Herzegovina in December 2004.

CoESPU

"CoESPU will be the principal centre of an international net of centres specialized in the various functional areas, like the human rights, or the management of the prisons, or the civilian-military cooperation. It will serve as a point of reference for the development of the studies and the high training of the commanders (national and foreign ones) and for the basic training of the forces".
Angelo Pinti
In "Panorama difesa", march 2005

The G8 leaders participating to the 2002 Kananaskis Summit took the political commitment to "Providing technical and financial assistance so that, by 2010, African countries and regional and sub-regional organizations are able to engage more effectively to prevent and resolve violent conflict on the continent."
During the G8 Summit 2004 in Sea Island they adopted an action plan called "Expanding Global Capability for Peace Support Operations" aimed at improve support to PSO, in particular in Africa.
In the Action Plan G8 leaders have pledged to organize the training for about 75.000 peace-keeping troops worldwide till 2010 and has been considered the opportunity that about 10% of those troops are made by police forces like Gendarmerie\ Carabinieri (police forces with military statute), specialized in managing the transition from a post-crisis situation to a more stable situation, suitable to reconstruction."
By this point of view, G8 members supported Italian enterprise to establish an international training centre in Vicenza, called "Centre of Excellence for the Stability Police Units" (CoESPU), to train the staffs that, going back to their countries are able to develop and train carabiniere\gendarmerie-like forces ready to draw up under the aegis of international or regional organizations. During the next five years CoESPU has the objective to train 3000 Officers and non-commissioned officers that, back to their countries, by the principle of "training the instructor", will train other 4500 units till the end of 2010.
The instructed staff will be the core of peace-keeping gendarmerie forces in their countries.
As part of this project, CoESPU will act as a centre for the development of the doctrine and the common action planes to use these forces in the Pso.
According to the "G8 Action Plan" the centre will:

- create training programs, including "train the trainer" courses and pre-deployment training for specific missions
- develope further existing doctrine, specifically with regard to combat organized crime, high risk arrests, prison security, protection of sensitive target, election security, VIP security and border control
- provide interoperability training with the relevant military forces, the civilian institution and other police component involved in PSO
- provide for a site testing system to verify the achieved capabilities of the nations of trained personnel
- conduct assessment of lessons learned/after-action reviews to incorporate into future training; coordinate potential equipment requirements for deployments to international operations, in accordance with CoESPU training
- interact with international and regional organizations such as the UN, NATO, OSCE, the EU, the AU, ECOWAS; academic and research institutions (such as the UN Staff College, George Marshall Center, Sant'Anna Institute University, etc.); national and international military research institutions (UN DPKO; NATO Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Center, EU Police Unit; U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute and U.S. Army Center for Lessons Learned); the European Gendarmerie Force, whose headquarters is collocated in the CoESPU barracks.

On July 20th 2005, there was a meeting in Vicenza between representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and officials from the Carabinieri Corps, the Embassy of the United States in Italy and various international organisations (Nato, United Nations and OSCE) to examine the Coespu (Centre of Excellence of Stability Police Units) programme. Seven countries (Cameroon, Jordan, India, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Morocco and Senegal) participated to the initiative funded by Italy with the participation of the United States. Collaborations between Coespu and international organizations like Nato, EU, UN and OSCE are already being outlined in Vicenza in the context of the training activities set to begin this coming autumn (5).

(1) on April 2005, the 173^ Paratroop deployed in Afghanistan where they are staying till next spring to participate to "Enduring Freedom" operation and collaborate with NATO Rapid Deployable Corps (Nrdc-It) from Solbiate Olona that is deployed from August. The two thousand paratroopers of the 173^ relieved those of 25^ division, been there from one year. The 22^ support Group (Rear Detachment) operates in the Ederle Camp in Vicenza where the general David Zabecki stays.
(2) "Intervista a Claudio Catalano. E' operativa la polizia dell'UE. Farà missioni in tutto il mondo", di E.Borghi, in www.opinione.it.
(3) "A scuola dai Carabinieri", di A.Pinti, in "Panorama Difesa" n°228, Feb.2005.
(4) "A Vicenza I Carabinieri europei. La 'Chinotto' ospiterà da gennaio il quartiere generale della gendarmeria", D.Neri, "Giornale di Vicenza", 17/09/04.
(5) the fonts about CoESPU: www.carabinieri.it and www.esteri.it