published “UN Capstone Doctrine,” it became much of the basis for the 2010 UN-CIMIC
policy, still in effect today.
The other main effort was in training and education of key operational and tactical leaders
(civilian and police as well as primarily military) in the development and delivery of an
UNMIL CIMIC course that taught civil-military mission coordination and transition manage-
ment along the lines of the concepts laid out in the Force CIMIC Directive. In addition to the
course provided quarterly at the Integrated Mission Training Center in Monrovia, the J9
CIMIC team provided adaptive instruction at tactical locations through mobile training teams.
I also provided many planned and impromptu sessions with key component leadership on
this more strategic understanding of CIMIC as well as changed the way the mission
reported CIMIC activities to emphasize transition management over “winning hearts and
minds.”
Among the essential tenets of the new concept was that the two core tasks of UNMIL (and
eventually UN) CIMIC were civil-military interaction and transition management. Another
critical conceptual component was “civilianizing” and “localizing” the effort, for example, by
shifting the use of military assets away from direct assistance to the population and more to
enabling efforts led by UN agencies, NGOs, and other civilian “external actors” as well as
build the capacity of Government of Liberia entities to perform civil administration functions
in essential public services – among them security, governance, the rule of law, and
economic infrastructure and social development for especially youths vulnerable to spoiler
exploitation.
While it did not always go smoothly and took some time to take effect, this fundamental
shift to the civil-military management culture at UNMIL paid dividends and contributed the
mission's eventual success as a model for other UN complex peace operations.
Recommendation.
1. UN DPKO should update its 2010 UN-CIMIC Policy to incorporate many developments
and new realities (discussed in Reference 2) and the lessons of other UN missions,
especially those featuring stabilization and protection of civilians.
2. U.S. forces conducting Security Force Assistance, Building Partnership Capacity, State
Partnership, Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI), U.S. Military Observer Group or
other security cooperation missions involving partner military forces from UN troop contrib-
uting countries should become conversant with UN operational frameworks, especially with
regard to civil-military coordination, rather than reference U.S. doctrine. This will have the
additional benefit of improving U.S. situational understanding of, and when necessary,
interoperability with those forces in shared regional spaces and tangential mission sets.
3. Continue to increase the placement of U.S. military personnel in key operational staff
positions in UN field missions through the US Military Observer Group (USMOG) program.
This lesson also serves as a case study of how a small signature of well-placed and well-
qualified U.S. military expertise can help raise the operational level of play, as discussed
in my articles: "U.S. Military Observers and Comprehensive Engagement," Small Wars
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