29 May 2008

018 ~ Flesh To the Vision

SPECIAL RELEASE

Every 29th of May, after the Fifty-Seventh General Assembly of the UN passed resolution 57/129 in December 2002, the International Day of UN Peacekeepers is observed the world over. The humble 24-hour tribute is for the men and women under the UN Blue Beret or Blue Helmet.

It is for the unconditionally brave who could surely rise to any challenge in the mission area, and who would fall in the cause of peace.

To the Filipinos, it is not just a day for remembering the Philippine military contingent’s loss of Captain Emmanuel J Rabaya, in 1991, to a detonated fuel tank-contained bomb that killed several UN Guards running the humanitarian programme for northern Iraqis. Or of Staff Sergeant Antonio M Batomalaque, in 2005, to an assault by Haïtians who were averse to multinational presence in their country. Or of the Filipino soldiers who died of non-hostile causes in the UN peacekeeping and relief missions in Iraq, East Timor, Liberia, and the Sudan. Or of the hundred-odd other soldiers, including first casualty Private Alipio Secillano of the UN Command in Korea, who returned home –quite heartbreakingly– in flag-draped caskets.

It is not just a day for remembering the Philippine police contingent’s loss of Senior Police Officers 4 Winston D Zerrudo and Edilberto Evangelista who, in 1993, died while serving in Cambodia.

The occasion is also for paying homage to the rest from the Global Pulisya and the Global Kawal who were a bit luckier to miss their own tragedies by a mere hairbreadth. It is for the everyday UN Blue Beret and Blue Helmet whose living conditions in the mission area are not secure from land mines, stray bullets, assaults, vehicular accidents, malaria-bearing mosquitoes, or other forms of threat.

It is to remember the resolute soldiers of the Philippine Expeditionary Force to Korea’s 10th and 20th Battalion Combat Teams, who delivered what remained of the British, Greek, and South Korean divisions from leagues of pro-North Korea fighters. And the rest from the 19th, 14th, and 2nd Battalion Combat Teams, all of whom had their share of difficulties, exploits, and redemptive efforts.

The International Day of UN Peacekeepers is to remember the mythical Limbas Squadron flyboys, circa 1963, whose skillful maneuvers on their F-86E Sabre jets actually saved them from the perils of constrained logistics. They emerged intact after gloriously front-lining in neutralizing airborne secessionists in the Congo.

It is also to remember the highly determined police officers holding the line, over and above personal convenience (as the cliché goes), in the name of the UN Flag and the peace for which it is hoisted.

The words are not empty.

In 1993, the team of Filipino CivPol Ager P Ontog Jr went against a majority of multinational colleagues who wanted out of the area that was already saturated by hostile forces. It refused to defy a standing order from mission headquarters in Phnom Penh, choosing to stay put –to the relief of the Nigerian district superior– and defend the camp from the throngs of armed-to-the-hilt Cambodian rightists. The attitude was enough to restore unit confidence and l’ésprit de corps.

In 2006, Filipino UNPol Edgar L Layon single-handedly wrestled an amok who in a firing binge disrupted the otherwise peaceful surrender-march of rebellious elements of the Timor-Leste Police Service. Never mind taking a hit that shattered his digestive system, and which would cause his untimely repatriation from the UN special political mission. The senior police officer, commander of the PNP contingent in the young and yet-fragile nation, averted what could have been a bloodier bloodbath on the innocent road.

The list goes on beyond the 24-hour special tribute. In fact, more action happens as the world turns, so one May day may not be enough.

No abstract or concrete monument really is, for commending those that personify hope. And for celebrating the human spirit that is flesh to all UN efforts of ripping through grave situations, as mandated; of pacifying parties-at-conflict and alleviating the plight of the distressed; or, simply, of saving lives and property.

29 February 2008

017 ~ Small Steps Forward

A good twenty-four hours before Leap Year's Day 1992, the UN Security Council decided to create UNTAC, the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia. Among its many indirect accomplishments was conceiving the PNP Contingent, which –four Leap Years later– became a formidable presence in the international-peacekeeping scene.

The Global Pulisya’s first Leap Year’s Day in-field was actually in 2000; there were no overseas contributions in 1996.

That year, as the millennium turned, the outbound Filipino police officers were stationed either in UNTAET, the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, or in UNMIK, the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. They were all rebuilding secessionist lands from the destruction wrought by ethnic or political persecution and scorched-earth policy. Their tangible output would be local police institutions erected to contain future threats to peace and order.

That year in the Lesser Sundas, the Filipino police were laying the groundwork toward developing a territory that would soon gain independence.

They worked with foreign UN CivPol counterparts and kin from the Philippine military, clearing trails and building important roads for humanitarian aid, then fostering good community relations and engaging the population in livelihood projects. They rehabilitated badly damaged government outposts, schools, public centers, even homes. Many of them built their own depots so they could get on with their business of exercising legislative and executive authority.

Above everything, they labored to put the law into place, drafting and enforcing rules to safeguard progressing living conditions: traffic regulations, proper repatriation of the internally displaced, conflict-resolution for factional fighting and ages-old village-versus-village wars. Early into the mission, the PNP Contingent was singularly commended by UNTAET for promoting the “Timorization” of the East Timor Police Service.

Meanwhile, in the Balkans, the Filipino police were driving through slush and windchill to respond to emergency calls. It was the PNP Contingent’s first winter in the field but they investigated homicides and murders, drug trafficking and automobile smuggling, and other crimes, without letup.

Their share in the administration of justice was solving past mysteries –literally unearthing a gruesome history of barbarism as evidenced by mass graves– which led to the setup of a forensics unit. Doing so established the mission’s confidence in Filipino expertise.

The next Leap Year, immediately following the widespread violence that injured a multitude of civilians and international peacekeepers, UNMIK requested the PNP to dispatch an exclusive team of criminal investigators on top of the regular contingent contribution. Afterward, eight out of nearly two dozen multinationals in the special task force "Operation Thor" were drawn from the Global Pulisya.

Above everything, the Filipino police embarked on erasing the dangerous divide between Kosovar Albanians and Kosovar Serbs to shape the multiethnic Kosovo Police Service.

The small steps taken in those days became what the world now sees as great leaps to a safer, more secure, more sober planet.

There will still be inevitable slips, naturally, especially that the young nation of Timor-Leste has not weaned off outsider-nurturing and that the newly independent Kosovo* is into a critical period. But it helps that stakeholders, including the Filipino people represented by the PNP Contingent, do not renege on the promise to continue with their magnanimity.


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* The Philippines is among the countries that do not oppose the declaration but would prefer a settlement that is acceptable to all parties concerned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 2008_Kosovo_declaration_of_independence
http://www.pr-inside.com/ philippines-prefers-negotiated-settlement-to-r443795.htm


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NO FUTILE EXERCISE. The PNP Contingent, more than a token force in the restoration of global security, currently serves in seven mission areas across four continents.
[Slide photos and seal by courtesy, Police Deputy Director-General Emmanuel R Carta and Police Superintendent Daniel B Fabia III; and Mr Hakan Ugurlu, Timor Police Service Public Relations Office.]

14 February 2008

016 ~ A World of Hearts

Swift and effectual action is the core of Filipino police endeavors. On the local front, it is the PNP Directorate for Operations that throbs as the nerve center for the beat worker’s activity. Its main concern is the fight versus criminality, insurgency, and terrorism.

Based on the well-entrenched, round-the-clock incident-monitoring and accomplishment-reporting system, it pumps policy on internal security, law enforcement, public safety, and special police operations. It is the umbrella of the Aviation Security Group, Civil Security Group, Maritime Group, Traffic Management Group, and the elite strike unit Special Action Force.

Currently, the directorial staff has dozens of commissioned and non-commissioned officers, several of whom are international-peacekeeping veterans of the missions in Cambodia, Kosovo, the Sudan, and Timor-Leste. These personnel conduct themselves with the bearing and disposition of a UN Blue Beret, enthusiastic to learn or relearn the ropes at national headquarters, of which procedures are noticeably different from those at mission-area offices.

The latest additions make up a brisk and blithe bunch, the willingness to be reimmersed in the local scene not fading from their faces. They join in the tedious policy-forming process with perseverance, especially that they come from a “paperless” culture, brevity being the soul of their global-policing transactions.

Without complaint, they pit themselves in the daily grind, morning till afternoon, of being deputies and aides and workhorses in an institution that is traditionally the hat where the buck stops, the repository of civil society’s flak. They brace up for street-level augmentation when the situation boards signal heightened- or full-alert status.

Humbly and unpretentiously, these police officers are ready to revise memorandum drafts that their superiors think could be better composed, to discuss standing regulations among their peers, and to seek help from juniors whenever needed. Thank Heavens, they do not project an image of having one over the “grounded-to-Motherland” others, and that they are nowhere abrasive and as irritating as pebbles in anyone’s shoe.

If asked, majority of them might not deny their aspiration to soon return to the more convenient multinational peace-support operational theatre. But thank Heavens still, none of them acts with hideous impatience and gross disregard for what they hold in their hands at the moment: matters of great national consequence.

Thank Heavens most of all, they don’t seem to be doing all the good that they are observed to be doing –for nothing but bland compliance and self-serving recognition.

It’s probably because they recognize and honor the duty that they owe their country, the duty to carry out duties at home, before aching to go back to some land yonder.

It’s probably because they recognize and honor the duty to demonstrate to their own people, in their own little directorial-staff-desk-action way, the same compassion they have shown to the citizens of another nation.

It’s probably because they are no ingrates and they embrace the fact that they are morally bound to love their country first and foremost.

It’s any one of these, or all of the above.

30 January 2008

015 ~ Service, Honor, Justice

Seventeen years ago this month, Republic Act 6975 –“An Act Establishing the Philippine National Police Under A Re-Organized Department of the Interior and Local Government, and For Other Purposes”– was formally, pomp-and-ceremoniously put into force.

It melded the Philippine Constabulary and the Integrated National Police into what the 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines prescribed as, “national in scope and civilian in character…”

The product, through more than one-and-a-half decades of innovating and improving policing approaches, already constitutes one of the world’s leading contributors to international peace and regional stability.

Apparently, the international-in-scope status was not part of the vision held by the Eighth Philippine Congress that passed the PNP Bill. At the time, the Philippines (her armed forces, in particular) was zeroed in on internal security rather than on global peace support.

No regrets there.

When the nation decided to return to the global neighborhood, the local peace and order environment had impressively ameliorated and was back to a more manageable level. And when she returned to help propagate the peace on benighted foreign shores, she packaged in the PNP Contingent as a bonus, to integrate with the highly essential civilian police component of overseas peacekeeping missions.

In these endeavors, the PNP Contingent has been fairly consistent in meaning the words inscribed on its institution’s seal: SERVICE. HONOR. JUSTICE.

Beyond national boundaries, it serves with its trademark enthusiasm even in the midst of scratch from where they set up shop. They survey patches of idle land, fence the premises in, build and modestly furnish makeshift offices, fortify and beautify the grounds, and blaze trails leading to the base so there is ease in providing assistance to the citizenry.

Among the PNP Contingent's everyday affairs is to respond to emergencies and untoward incidents, including arbitration in petty squabbles among neighbors or volatile confrontations between armed factions, until the time that it is ordered to properly turn administration over to local stakeholders.

The short-term goal is restoring the rule of law shattered by ideologies gone mad, usually through an electoral process that, on several occasions, the Filipino police help orchestrate. The end is always the revival of the peace sapped during a tumultuous period of history, when governance had come to its weakest point.

More than anything, the PNP Contingent judiciously consolidates the local police forces, equipping these with core values and skills. It had done so in Cambodia, Haïti, Timor-Leste, Kosovo, Iraq, Liberia, Afghanistan, and Côte d’Ivoire. It had done so in the Sudan’s south, now it’s doing it in the west. Then there’s the work in Nepal.

The kind and amount of service delivered is the PNP Contingent’s way of bringing honor to its country, and justice to its people’s sacrifice in the name of good-neighborliness and humanitarianism.


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NO LIMITS. The PNP Contingent, more than a token force in the restoration of global security, currently serves in seven mission areas across four continents.
[Slide photos and seal by courtesy, Police Superintendents Honorio R Agnila and Roberto P Alanas; and the PNP Public Information Office.]

15 January 2008

014 ~ Speaking In Tongues

Three out of the fourteen UN-deployed missions served by the PNP Contingent were launched as francophone campaigns: MINUHA (more recognized as UNMIH), la Mission des Nations Unies en Haïti; MINUSTAH, la Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti; and ONUCI, l’Opération des Nations Unies en Côte d’Ivoire. Oh la la! Les policiers philippins parlent-ils français?

No, the Filipino police do not speak French. Some do have a working knowledge, after diligently practise-conversing with instructors during their self-initiated thirty-hour leçons élémentaires, while most others are better off articulating their thoughts with las palabras en Español, from which a chockfull of Filipino expressions are formed.

Yet –et voilà!– in those predominantly French-speaking missions, the Filipino police still managed to perform as tasked: collocate with charges from la police locale, catch 'em zenglendos ou chimères, assist the Justice of the Peace in serving les mandats to arrest suspects, train droves of agents de sécurité électorale, and ensure the fair and free conduct du vote présidentiel, parlementaire, et ainsi de suite.

It was not easy at first.

Several years ago, Filipino peacekeepers who’d just arrived in the Haïtian countryside thought they were getting their first crack at street-level crime investigation, just like they did back home. Ambulant vendors were promoting their goods aloud, and if these locals only knew that shabu meant methamphetamine hydrochloride (or the illicitly smoked “ice” or “crystal meth”) in the Filipino vernacular, they would not have shouted, “Charbonne!” These peddlers should have tried pushing charcoal elsewhere instead, to avoid curious attention.

It would make a difference if the PNP Contingent urged national headquarters to revive the after-hours French language classes. This, if the Philippine police organization is really bent on substantially expanding its good-neighborliness efforts.

It must be noted that almost a third of the current UN peacekeeping operations around the world are set in French-speaking host areas, former colonies that could not hold down independence and territorial integrity. These missions thereby prefer UNPol who can communicate en la langue.

This year, as the Sixty-First General Assembly of the UN proclaimed through document A/61/L56, is the International Year of Languages. The idea was to raise the world’s consciousness on genuine multilingualism as a means “to promote unity in diversity and international understanding”.

The entire UN system recognizes six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. English and French are the UN Secretariat’s two working languages.

One does not have to be a certified polyglot to efficiently carry out duties, that’s a gaping fact. But learning and appreciating other languages make the shot at “world peace” less cumbersome –more fun, actually.

If the Khmer Rouge could only be interviewed at this time, they might tell us how well they communicated their thoughts on the Paris Agreement with the Filipino UN CivPol –in Tagalog, the Philippine lingua franca.

Anecdotes of that sort appear in GLOBAL PULISYA. Additionally, the book’s PART TWO: THE HEART ends all its nine sub-chapters in mini-epilogues, set against the background image of the sun rising on the PNP Contingent’s mission area. The text is spiced with phrases in the local language* and/or basilect, such as: Arrun suo sdey, Oth mien panyaha, Lespwa pou Ayiti, Bom dia de novo, Mire mengjesi, Dobro jutro, Hope done come, Sob bakhair, Sabah il kheir, and l’Espoir pour la pays. [Please refer to the Work-in-Progress Edition shots in the main site.]

The small effort is to celebrate the languages, to further the regard for cultural diversity, and to melt the barriers usually hardened by ignorance and inflexibilities, this year and perpetually.


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* For the crash-courses in Albanian, Arabic, Creole, Dari, Khmer, Portuguese, Serbian, and Tetum, the authors thank gracious tutors, including the 2005-06 Board of Directors, PNP Peacekeeping Force to Cambodia Association, Incorporated; Mr Roger Darlington of the United Kingdom; Monsieur “Menzanmi” Ernst, Mesdemoiselles Anne St-Fable et Gabrielle de Clarence of Haïti, Senhora Luciana of Brazil, and Captain Shuaib I Chaudry of Pakistan.


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PASS THE WORD. Members of the PNP Contingent employ interpreters or language assistants to perform their tasks on police administration, operation, investigation, and community relations.
[Photo by courtesy, Police Senior Superintendent Lester O Camba and Police Inspector Godofredo C Ergo.]

01 January 2008

013 ~ New Year, New Adventure

The Global Pulisya bangs away at the forthcoming deployment of its first contingent-team to that enormous Hybrid mission in the Sudan’s western frontier.

A few weeks from now, about four dozen Filipino police officers will fly into another crisis in the Sudan. They will be among the 3,772-strong UN Police component of UNAMID, the UN-African Union Mission in Darfur, mandated by UN Security Council resolution 1769 to "support early and effective implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement", reached on 5 May 2006.

The Filipino police are to assist in shaping a sustainable peacescape on the blood-bathed swath of the Sahara.

After undergoing what is expected to be a week-long induction process, they will pick their choice for lodgings at the UNAMID campus: a tiny or a tinier tent space, well-appointed or otherwise; half- or full-board accommodations, or none at all.

After the orientation, they will be charged by mission police headquarters to assist in ending impunity, promoting the rule of law, and rebuilding the lives shamelessly broken by the self-serving. Amid the blistering heat, and minimal use of arms, they will do advisory and executory work to set up the local police structure.

As ever, the operative word is hope.

Hope that no mosquito betrays the potency of the prophylactic pills. Hope that no form of harm will be inflicted on anybody around. Hope that the belligerent forces do not get in the way of plans to propagate the peace.

Hope that there will be justice for the senseless slaughter of innocent civilians, two hundred thousand in all…and probably counting. Hope that there will be safe roads through which humanitarian convoys can reach the six million ill and starving. Hope that the refugee camps can be delivered from the attacking militiamen. Hope that the top-ranking leaders of Sudanese politics will fully cooperate with international benefactors in finally cementing order on the brush.

Then there is hope that within the Year 2008 expansion of the PNP Contingent’s good-neighborliness operations, there comes a better grasp of how liberating it is to share with the world the blessings from a police organization with a stark-determined attitude.


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CRISP AND CLEAR. These are but very few of the countless moments in the PNP Contingent’s long, illustrious history of contributing to international peace and regional security.
[Slide photos by courtesy, Retired Police Chief Superintendent Jose O Dalumpines; Police Superintendents Celso L Bael, Daniel B Fabia III, Roberto B Fajardo, and Robert F Rodriguez; Police Chief Inspector Albert G Magno; Police Senior Inspector Sancho O Celedio; SPO4 Renato D Magbalon Jr; Police Officer 3 Arnel M Go; and the PNP Public Information Office.]