“I think there is a consensus at this minute. Those of us who are on the side of analysis, the governments, the political parties, know that we have a no small problem on our borders in the north of Chile, in the big cities with organized crime and that we have a problem in the southern macro zone due to insurgency. , which sometimes has the face of terrorism or crime, depending on one’s point of view.”
This is the initial evaluation made by the expert in security, defense, modern wars and columnist of El Mostrador, Richard Kouyoumdjianabout the problematic situation of insecurity that the country is experiencing and that motivated President Gabriel Boric a few weeks ago to convene Cosena.
-How do you evaluate the result of the Cosena session, whose conclusions were recorded in the minutes and made public?
-I think that Cosena is a good meeting for the authorities, the highest authorities of the Republic, to meet to discuss the issue of national security or public security, whatever they want to call it. Now, the minutes are quite cryptic, one has to analyze what they actually wanted to say. This is not a record that is circulated by all the authorities who attended for their approval. This is basically the minutes that the Presidency draws up with the conclusions and the main points raised by each of the authorities, because it was also a fairly long meeting and I believe that it essentially includes two things. First, I believe that the position regarding the different Defense institutions is well represented. Second, while it is true that it was cited for critical infrastructure, I think they ended up covering much more than critical infrastructure. Cosena on that date was evidently going to be influenced by the issue of the Viña del Mar fires. And probably the general conclusion is that the country needs a security strategy. I hope that Cosena meets monthly or bi-monthly during this period, to monitor progress on the matter.
-Well, the Minister of the Interior (Carolina Tohá) was left with the obligation, the commitment to present concrete measures.
– Yes, and I think they are the same measures that she had anticipated. The truth is that I am not a very good friend of the Ministry of Public Security, I am not so sure if it is going to add value or not. What I most appreciate is that the legislation relating to the national Intelligence system be removed once and for all.
-What is intelligence and the role of intelligence?
– Intelligence is having information at the level of the authorities about what is happening in different places, because there is nothing worse than being alone acting reactively. Intelligence allows you to act preventively, to be able to anticipate the move.
– And what is happening with intelligence today in Chile?
– Intelligence in Chile is, I would say, quite diminished after the events in which Carabineros fabricated evidence for the Huracán case. All the intelligence powers of the Carabineros were reduced to a minimum, the PDI has something, the Armed Forces can only carry out counterintelligence, as some aspects of them affect them. And the ANI is an office that collects information, that produces analysis for the Government, but has limited capabilities to obtain information, whether by human, electronic or satellite means. Today we are in a highly technological world and we are talking about our limited intelligence capacity, because we have not allowed our intelligence system to operate with data. So how do we expect the actions of the police or the government to be effective if they do not have information. Now, this is a problem of the current government but it was also a problem of former President (Sebastián) Piñera. Former President Piñera to some extent was about to accelerate this, but we all know that our fragmented political system did not allow legislation of this type to come to fruition. And, unfortunately, we have to wait for the crisis to increase its temperature so that there is transversal political will to be able to pass this type of legislation.
-A law is pending that establishes a National Intelligence System at the level of what Chile needs.
-Robust and capable. And, there is also an issue that we sometimes forget, that of protecting our cyber infrastructure, our digital and electronic infrastructure from cyber attacks. So we have to have intelligence legislation according to the year 2024, since what we have at this minute is worthless. We cannot expect national security and public safety to work if we do not know where we are being hit and when we are going to be hit. In that sense, we have handed the initiative to those who lead these spaces, the criminals. The State’s capacity to react is limited because it does not have the information, and what remains is to react to criminal initiatives. You can’t anticipate her, you don’t know where she’s going, what commune she’s going to be in.
-Regarding the definitions of coordination between police and Armed Forces, how is this worked?
-When you have a constitutional state of exception, which is in charge of the head of Defense appointed by the President, normally the military authority of the area, it is he who coordinates the police and military efforts, because he is the one who has the authority to do so .And the problem is the absence of a supreme mandate or decree that establishes the powers. The first ones in the south were quite limited. Today it is broader, the head of Defense has more powers. Now, police and military necessarily have to act together, because the military in states of emergency – unless it is a flagrant crime – cannot detain people. When they want to go investigate where there may be insurgent weapons or insurgent organizations, they have to do it with the participation of police and the Public Ministry. A State of Exception does not annul the Chilean legal system, it creates exceptions in certain matters, but the judicial systems continue to function. The problem of fighting the insurgency with tools that are not necessarily anti-insurgency is quite complex and that is what happens to us in the southern macrozone.
-And in the north, what is the situation?
-In the north, you have the borders as such under the declaration of critical infrastructure and there the coordination is effectively between the military and the police but it is not in charge of a military officer, specifically military forces are designated to support the police. What we do on the northern routes is to bring to constitutional level what was in Decree 265, which former President Piñera signed along with Alberto Espina. But it is much more supportive of the police, those who detain illegal immigrants are normally the police in different places that are detected, mainly a military police effort. Many times coordination between police and military alone is not enough. On the northern border you have other State organizations, you have Customs, the Internal Revenue Service, the regional and communal authorities, which must participate in the coordination, because you get nothing if the State’s efforts do not act as a whole, with all its agencies participating in that effort.
-This is how a state of exception should work.
-Clear. Legally, the only instance where you can coordinate the authorities is in the exceptional states, as has also happened with the issue of fires in the Fifth Region. There is a boss on defense. The problem is that it is the head of Defense who must interact with Senapred and the entire fire, disaster and emergency prevention system, but as we have seen, designated ministers appeared whose designation was later changed. Minister (Camila) Vallejo is a delegate of the Government, but she is a delegate with the authority that the head of Defense has, so authorities begin to overlap, which is not good.
-What is missing at the regulatory level for this to work well?
-In a state of exception, such as the southern macro zone, things must be allowed to work and the head of defense can do the trick and the rest of the State agencies cooperate at the same level at which the military normally operates. and the police. Regarding the critical infrastructure that we have in the north, things have worked so far because there is good coordination between the police and the military and there is probably a lack of more support from other State agencies.
-And in a hypothetical state of exception to combat organized crime?
-The critical infrastructure model does not solve the problem of organized crime, it does not want to attack or destroy critical infrastructure, organized crime wants to develop its business and to do so eliminates all those who stand in its way, be they rivals or authorities government or police. If we have a public safety problem, let’s address it as a public safety problem, but if we try to cover it with critical infrastructure, we have problems there. Among the examples given by the authority in the Cosena session, the cases of France, Spain, England and Italy were cited as examples. In these countries, the Armed Forces have been called to protect critical infrastructure, such as in Great Britain for the Olympics, in France regarding certain critical facilities that were being attacked or targeted by Islamic terrorism, and the same thing happens. in Italy and the same in Spain, but this is not the case in Chile.
-What should happen to have better rules for the use of force?
– The rules for the use of force require clarity on how to operate in a certain situation. If they attack me I can react. Since we are talking about organized crime, insurgency or illegal immigration, clear instructions must be given to the soldier, to the lieutenants, to those on the street, telling them this is the way you have to operate. And there the use of force is much more important if we have to put military forces in urban spaces, how will they react? If they attack it is easy, you react, but what happens if I have to go out to look for criminals, what happens if I have to give some protection to the Carabineros when that function is carried out. Currently the rules for the use of force do not have the rank of law, they only have the rank of supreme decree, which Piñera signed after the outbreak. And the issue is complex, because the weapons used by the Armed Forces are lethal. I think we have to start from the base that the Armed Forces are not for these matters, therefore probably when the regulation of the use of force is going to be discussed a monstrosity will probably emerge, something strange and strange and I don’t know if it will be One hundred percent applicable, so you have to be very careful.
-What is your analysis of how the financing of the Armed Forces was after the Reserved Copper Law was replaced in the second government of Sebastián Piñera?
-I think we all knew that when the Reserved Copper Law was replaced by the Strategic Capacity Financing law that there was a risk that the Ministry of Finance or Parliament would not authorize the necessary funds for strategic capacity development and capacity. That was a risk and we were all a little scared in this year’s budget exercise not to leave 2024 funded from the beginning.
I want to put the emphasis on the capabilities of Defense spending. Having people permanently deployed in the southern macrozone, on the northern border, or eventually dedicated to security work within urban centers is very expensive and, with what money is it done? With the same budget assigned to the Armed Forces. And, furthermore, that budget has not grown, inflation eats them up. That is why I believe that the financing of the Armed Forces is an issue that must be analyzed, the participation in all these public security tasks, what budget they require.
-Is the issue of financing a problem of legislation – as it remained after the repeal of the Reserved Copper Law – or is it an issue of implementation?
-I think it is an implementation issue. The replacement of the copper law has a risk, but I see it as much more complex that the political authority does not assume the obligations it has regarding keeping defense policy and military policy updated and allowing the necessary spending to be effectively carried out. to maintain strategic capabilities, because if not, we will find ourselves as things were before. The development of strategic capabilities requires something that politicians do not like very much: planning.