UN Intelligence
Possibilities and limitations
Presentation to Folke Bernadotte
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Claire Bamber, Peacekeeping Situation Centre, DPKO
Bond in a blue
beret?
Not exactly…
Total deployment in September 2008: 111,600
88,754 uniformed personnel and 20,690 civilians
From 119 countries
DPKO HQ support
Budget for 01 July 2008 – 30 June 2009: Near $USD 7.1 billion
1,000+ HQ staff supporting 100,000+ in the field
New Directive
 DPKO Directive on JOC
and JMAC was approved
by USG DPKO on 1 July
2006 upon the advice of
the DPKO Senior
Management Team.
 Issued to all DPKO-led
missions on 12 July 2006.
The JMAC Approach
Objectives of the JMAC approach are three-fold:
 Support integrated mission management.
 Support mission security.
 Support informed decision-making across all
components.

Not a decision-making body and does not replace
existing management or command structures at any
level.

It supports decision-making, operations
management and mission security.
CASE STUDY: MINUSTAH
The Capstone Doctrine:
“A PKO must continuously
analyse its operating
environment to detect and
forestall any wavering of
consent… and must have the
political and analytical skills…
to manage situations where
there is an absence or
breakdown of local consent.”
HUMAN INTELLIGENCE:
Information
provided by
locals helped
the UN in
making
arrests.
Working with the HNP
An opportunity and a challenge…
Imagery intelligence
Aerial imagery allowed
MINUSTAH to produce useful
maps, identify weapons
storage sites, hiding places
for victims of kidnapping, the
rebel leaders’ bases and to
map out dozens of potential
sniper positions.
Success… despite the lack of signals intelligence
“MINUSTAH’s JMAC
established the gold
standard for
intelligence support
for planning and
execution of
operations mounted
to defend and enforce
the mandate.”
United Institute of
Peace Report 2008
CASE STUDY: MONUC
MONUC’s
JMAC: about
military
operations…
and much
more.
Stabilisation Plan for Eastern DRC
– a JMAC plan
Transformed access to and by the local population.
UNOPS:
building roads
a kilometre at
a time.
UN agencies and
others benefitted
from the more
secure
environment.
No SIGINT but…
Local staff have access to humint
that international staff might
otherwise lack.
JMAC: The Challenges
• Lack of clarity of concept
• Lack of buy-in by Mission leadership
• Competition and duplication with
mission political affairs, civil affairs,
military operations and intelligence
and security
• Poor staff choices
• Inadequate mission direction
Questions & Comments?