CIAO DATE: 06/07

Connections

 

Fall 2006, Volume 5, Number 2

 

• Editors’ Foreword (PDF, 2 pages, 23 KB)
  Peter Foot and Sean S. Costigan

  When Franklin D Roosevelt delivered his famous “Four Freedoms” address in January 1941—calling for freedom of speech and worship, and freedom from want and fear— he could have had no idea that, sixty years later, effective border security might be both the guarantor of those freedoms and their greatest challenge. Terrorism, securitysector reform, counter-insurgency, demographics, ethnicity, commerce, migration and free movement of labor, environmental and energy management, disease, human trafficking and transnational crime: these are just some of the subjects that intersect with border security. How to manage them all is one of the most pervasive challenges of good government.

• Lessons Learned from the Establishment of Border Security Systems: General Information on Past, Present, and Future Activities (PDF, 44 pages, 241 KB)
  International Advisory Board for Border Security, DCAF

  Recent changes in the perception and understanding of security have made effective and efficient border security systems a basic requirement for all states. In many cases, improving a country’s frontier controls in this way necessitates extensive organizational and structural changes.

  In order to assist the Western Balkan (WB) governments in the creation of new border security systems, the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) has developed a program intended to address the strategic needs and issues involved in this process. The participating countries are: Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro, with activities aimed in particular at the respective ministries of the interior in each country, which are responsible for border security. DCAF appreciates that Croatia, who has already been invited to negotiation talks by the EU, is willing and able to assist its neighbors through the sharing of its own national experiences.

• Border Security: Key Agencies and Their Missions (PDF, 7 pages, 59 KB)
  Blas Nuñez-Neto

  After the massive reorganization of federal agencies within the United States government precipitated by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), there are now four main federal agencies charged with securing the United States’ borders: the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which patrols the border and conducts immigration, customs, and agricultural inspections at ports of entry; the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which investigates immigration and customs violations in the interior of the country; the United States Coast Guard, which provides maritime and port security; and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is responsible for securing the nation’s land, rail, and air transportation networks. This report is meant to serve as a primer on the key federal agencies charged with border security. As such, it will briefly describe each agency’s role in securing the borders of the United States.

• Immigration and Terrorism: Moving Beyond the 9/11 Staff Report on Terrorist Travel (PDF, 43 pages, 261 KB)
  Janice L. Kephart

  In August 2004, on the last day the 9/11 Commission was statutorily permitted to exist, a 240-page staff report describing the 9/11 Commission border team’s fifteen months of work in the area of immigration, visas, and border control was published on the web. Our report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, focused on answering the question of how the hijackers of September 11 managed to enter and stay in the United States. To do so, we looked closely at the immigration records of the individual hijackers, along with larger policy questions of how and why our border security agencies failed us. The goal of this essay is to build on that report in two areas:

  - To provide additional facts about the immigration tactics of indicted and convicted operatives of Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups from the 1990s through the end of 2004.

  - To enlarge the policy discussion regarding the relationship between national security and immigration control.

  This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the 9/11 Commission or its staff.

• The Long Shadow of History: Post-Soviet Border Disputes—The Case of Estonia, Latvia, and Russia (PDF, 12 pages, 87 KB)
  Claes Levinsson

  Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the question of the precise territorial delimitations of the Estonian and Latvian borders with the Russian Federation has been a source of discord between the states, and a permanent point of irritation. The question of these national boundaries became an important issue on the political agenda shortly after Estonia and Latvia regained their independence in 1991. The principal reason for this laid in the arbitrary transfers of territory and the “correction” of borders that was made by the Soviet government shortly after its reoccupation of the Baltic states. In 1991, both Estonia and Latvia pleaded their cases according to international law, and demanded that the borders from the interwar period should be restored. During the mid-1990s, both Estonia and Latvia gave up their initial claims, and the substance of an agreement was negotiated between the parties. However, the Russian Federation has ever since postponed the ratification of the agreement, claiming that it would not sign any treaty until other contested issues—such as the alleged discrimination against the large Russian-speaking minority in the Baltic states—are resolved in a satisfactory manner.

• An Assessment of Operation Safe Place (PDF, 10 pages, 70 KB)
  Paul Holtom

  In April 2002, the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI) Regional Centre for Combating Trans-border Crime established a sub-group within its Anti-Terrorism Task Force to “prevent, detect, trace, investigate, and suppress illicit trafficking in small arms and light weapons (SALW) by establishing direct, sustainable, and rapid channels of information exchange.” This sub-group consists of a network of police and customs officers from South Eastern Europe (SEE), who share intelligence on illicit SALW seizures. Saferworld, an independent NGO based in the U.K. that works to prevent armed violence around the world, has highlighted the work of the SECI Centre’s SALW Task Force as an example of good practice in regional cooperation for combating trafficking in SALW.

• Emerging Technologies in the Context of “Security” (PDF, 54 pages, 337 KB)

  On 12 December 2003, the European Council adopted a European security strategy, entitled “A Secure Europe in a Better World.” This document provides the framework for concerted European activity in the field of security and, more specifically, in activities to anticipate and cope more effectively and efficiently with new security threats such as terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failed states, regional conflicts, and organized crime....

• Border Security and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (PDF, 6 pages, 54 KB)
  Jason Blazakis

  The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to improve border security is a technique that has gained the attention of Congress. This report examines the strengths and limitations of deploying UAVs along the United States’ borders and related issues for Congress. This report is not intended to provide in-depth information regarding the technical or military capabilities of UAVs, but rather to discuss their application in maintaining border security.

• Generational Change: Implications for the Development of Future Military Leaders (PDF, 15 pages, 102 KB)
  Paul Whelan

  In the last decade, the raison d’être of the international military environment has experienced a transition in scope and perspective. These changes in military perspective have an impact on the way the military interacts with both the professional and nonprofessional world within which it operates. Employee aspirations and attributes are evolving too. Today’s employees exhibit values and aspirations different from their older generational counterparts. Both of these factors conspire to paint an altered and challenging landscape for the practice of leadership and management in the military in future years.