Keeping the peace: stories of Australian peacekeepers - Police and other civilians

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For a population already traumatised by war, dealing with armed soldiers may be quite intimidating. Civilian police, on the other hand, are experienced at dealing with the public face to face.

Australian police have served with a United Nations operation on Cyprus since 1964, after the island was wracked by conflict between its Greek and Turkish populations. Since the Turkish invasion of 1974, and the resulting partition of the island, the police role has been to maintain law and order in the buffer zone between the two sides. They also work with the local police, and assist members of both communities to live with a new and artificial boundary. Three Australian police have died in Cyprus.

In recent years, Australian police have served in other areas, most notably Cambodia, Mozambique, Haiti, Bougainville and East Timor. Working every day with the local people, they will often be closer to the community than military peacekeepers.
Other civilians also have a part to play; for example, the Australian Electoral Commission has contributed to several operations. Every peacekeeping operation includes civilian staff, some drawn from the United Nations bureaucracy, others hired locally.

Superintendents Bill Kirk and Barry Carpenter

In 1989 Bill Kirk and Barry Carpenter of the Australian Federal Police were among five civilian police working at Site 2, a giant Cambodian refugee camp just inside Thailand. Site 2 was a lawless seven square kilometres, with 200,000 inhabitants, divided into seven zones controlled by different factions.
Kirk, in consultation with the inhabitants, set out to write a unified law code, while Carpenter set up a legal system to allow courts to operate. They also supervised building of police stations, courts and a prison, and the training of police. Kirk went on to command Australian police in Cambodia. Carpenter stayed on until the last refugees had gone home, before leaving for Somalia.