Author: Dr Robert R Rail
ISBN No: 9 781 4398 279
Review date: 06/05/2024
No of pages: 0
Publisher: CRC Press
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
From the June 2011 print issue of Professional Security magazine; an American has put together a ‘lessons learned’ book on policing of war zones.
Being a patrol officer in a war zone, writes Dr Robert Rail, is not like anything you could ever imagine. “The only thing you could count on is when you were supposed to start your patrol and where you thought you were going to be patrolling. Past those ideas, the options were wide open to every heart-rending, ludicrous, dreadful and forbidding thing that could possibly happen.” Dr Rail has gathered stories besides his own; from Europeans and beyond, including a Briton, Bob Locke, who describes a riotous day in Pristina in Kosovo in 2004. As his chapter makes plain, trying to do your job – find and handle the unrest at the risk of your own safety – is one thing; finding basic equipment, food and water for you and your officers is another. All raw human life is here – the United Nations International Police Task Force people trying to do good things, bad driving and hot climates, maybe land mines on the road, harsh conditions for suffering civilians, ethnic hatred and civil war, the Srebrenica massacre of thousands in a UN ‘safe area’. If you are thinking of working in somewhere like Bosnia or Iraq, this book from those who have been there will explain the dangers of a life-changing experience – and the consolations, of comradeship on a peace-keeping mission. Or, if you ever have business in a hostile or difficult country, this wise and real book can be your guide. If you only have five minutes to give to this book, read the ten pages of chapter two, ‘Adapting to the war zone environment’.
