ORIGINS AND GENERAL FEATURES.

The foundation of the Carabinieri Corps dates back to the 13th of July 1814, when King of Piemonte, Victor Emanuel the First signed the "Royal Licenses". The Corps was initially founded for national defence purposes and for the preservation of public security and order. The Carabinieri Corps, defined yet in 1922 as a "Military force in permanent duty of public security and law enforcement", has consolidated its double essence of "police force with a military status". The tasks and organisation of the Carabinieri Corps find a definition in laws recently promulgated by the Italian Parliament and in the Internal Carabinieri Corps Regulation that outlines the military character of the Institution, establishing its contribution to military operations as well as its military police activities, and indicates the function of a national police force with an all-encompassing jurisdiction. In carrying out its tasks the Carabinieri Corps, on one hand, is subordinated to the Ministry of Defence as for what concerns recruitment, organisation, discipline, administration, armaments and military tasks and, on the other hand, it functionally reports to the Ministry of the Interior, for situations related to public security and order and for technical support needs. For additional specific duties, some branches of the Carabinieri Corps are functionally subordinated to other Ministries which they work for (Public Health, Environment, Labour, Foreign Affairs, Cultural Activity and Arts).
Likewise, according to the Criminal Procedure Code, Carabinieri personnel must refer to the public prosecutor in performing their investigative functions.

organisation OF THE CORPS

The Carabinieri Corps is divided in six branches: central, training, territorial, mobile, military police, and special areas. The Carabinieri number about 113.000 men in total, with 2.700 Officers, 28.600 Warrant Officers or Marescialli, 15.800 Non Commissioned Officers (NCOs) or Brigadieri and 65.200 Carabinieri.
The Territorial and the special branches, supported by the mobile branch, are directly involved in crime prevention and fighting organised crime. The Territorial branch, is the bulk of the struggle against all sorts of criminal activities and represents about eighty percent (80 %) of the total strength. It's considered the "heart" of the Carabinieri Corps, with a peculiar and detailed distribution within the country realised in particular with four thousand, six hundred and sixty-three local Stations. They are led by Warrant Officers and represent the basic unit of the Corps, constituted at a municipal level or in the districts of the bigger cities. The Stations are the backbone of the Carabinieri's capability of controlling the territory, for the purpose of crime prevention and suppression. The Mobile branch, about five percent (5%) of the total strength, consists of thirteen (13) Battalions. These are Motorised Units, used mainly for public order and reinforcement to the territorial branch in public security duties. In particular, two battalions have been trained to conduct operations abroad, especially peace support operations, other than war operations and military police duties as well as to provide assistance to foreign police forces. They contribute to the composition of the Multinational Specialised Units.
Since its establishment the Carabinieri Corps belonged to the Italian Army. On 31st March 2000, as already mentioned, the Italian Parliament promulgated a new law that elevated the Carabinieri Corps to an Armed Force.

MSUs

The Corps' traditional commitment towards peace and humanitarian operations abroad, dates back to 1855 and has been significantly intensified over the past years.
Carabinieri contingents, operating directly for the UN, WEU, OSCE and within NATO or national and multilateral initiatives, supported the peace and the humanitarian aid world wide (Lebanon, Namibia, Cambodia, Somalia, Salvador, Guatemala, Palestine, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, East Timor). Over the past few years, however, in addition to the traditional employment as Military Police in the national military contingents and to the participation in the Civilian Police missions, a new kind of force has developed. Its origin is related to the Bosnia-Herzegovina crisis. In order to provide the complete implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement, after one year of international presence in BiH, the NATO Supreme Allied Command in Europe (SACEUR) felt the need to fill what was defined "the security gap", or the grey area between the military mission of SFOR (whose troops are armed only with deadly force and are not specifically trained nor equipped to face public security problems and to manage law and order) and the mission of unarmed UN Civilian Police or of local police which, very often, are not able to intervene or don't intend to be involved in public order operations for ethnical or political reasons. Recent experiences in Kosovo have shown that the reason of this grey area lies not only on the different competence of the forces, but also on the time gap between the deployment of the military Force and the achievement of a full operational capability by empowered Civilian Police.
So, this was a job for police forces, but what kind of police forces were better qualified to integrate themselves in a military environment? The answer was: Police Forces with a Military status. In fact they don't need to integrate with the military chain of command and control, they are already military, they use the same language and part of their training is in common with the military forces.
The NATO North Atlantic Council and the Supreme Head Quarters Allied Powers in Europe (SHAPE), therefore, focused their attention on the possible employment of police forces with military status (PFMS) and asked Italy to lead this project.
The MSU, mainly composed of Carabinieri who have specific professional background, has the capability of:

• gathering information as a fundamental prerequisite of all operations to face the problems with the most appropriate knowledge of the situation;
• providing a preventive approach to all security problems;
• performing crime investigations;
• ensuring law enforcement activities;
• planning a presence in the area of interest to deter the possible unrest and, as extrema ratio, crowd control and anti-riot intervention.

At first the MSU operational potentialities were not fully exploited, due to the difficulty to catch this innovative concept, but soon the issue of appropriate technical and tactical procedures (TTP), clarified to all military units the best way to take advantage of MSU police capabilities as, for example, the ability to integrate into the military structure and to perform general police activities to face civilians in civil disturbances and the enhanced flexibility in the use of Non Lethal Weapons.
SFOR Multinational Specialised Unit, under Italian guide, is composed of 364 Carabinieri, 25 Slovenians, 23 Rumens, and, within the Staff, 3 USA and 2 NL. Within the SFOR mission and according to the UN mandate, MSU has these specific tasks: to ensure public security; to assist Displaced Person and Refugees returns; to support the settlement of elected minority governments, together with the International organisations (OSCE and UNMIBH) and to contribute to crisis control in co-ordination with IPTF.
MSU, that operates at Theatre level, is organised as follows: staff personnel, a minimal logistical support unit, a Manoeuvre Unit which includes a paratroopers platoon and a Special Intervention team - a highly-trained SWAT unit able to handle particular emergency situations, such as hostages rescue and anti-terrorism, an Operational Module, at Battalion level, based on four companies, which includes trained and equipped personnel for territorial control, management of all public order matters and specialised personnel for information gathering and investigations.
The MSU Commander reports directly to the Force commander to whom performs public security and judicial advice. The specialised capabilities and the high tech tools available are multiplier factors, that allow the MSU to express an effective role in spite of its reduced ranks.
As the situation in Bosnia is improving, it is interesting to observe that while SFOR is reducing its personnel from 28.000 to 18.000, MSU is maintaining its same commitments and moreover would be strengthened by a non-Italian led battalion.
The high effectiveness and good success acknowledged in Bosnia, suggested the establishment of two more MSU's within the Balcanic context. In fact, in Albania, with NATO's involvement in the operation "Allied Harbour", the Carabinieri have employed a contingent of 181 members in MSU-AFOR, tasked to protect and monitor refugee camps, information gathering and to guarantee the Forces safe freedom of movement. This mission is now concluded. In Kosovo, with the signature of the "Military Technical Agreement" between NATO and Serbian Forces, the NAC authorised the deployment of the Kosovo FORCE and the Italian Government accepted to send, amongst the others, a 255 Carabinieri MSU, which has the following tasks: re-establish Order and Public Security by means of accurate area control, information gathering and selected intervention on hot-spots; permit and guarantee the Displaced Person and Refugees returns; criminal investigations and law enforcement. KFOR has given MSU a new primary operational task: the criminal intelligence and the counter terrorism activity. MSU, in fact, possesses considerable experience in fighting organised crime and terrorism and has the human resources and dedicated investigative tools to analyse subversive and criminal organisation structures and provides prevention/repression resources to be used as a KFOR asset.
KFOR operational procedures, furthermore, provide an explicit definition of the "BLUE BOX" concept: MNB's, in which Area of Responsibility MSU units are deployed for Civil Disorder Operations, are to identify and to establish a Tactical Area of responsibility, or "BLUE BOX", in which the MSU members will conduct their operations. All personnel or units inside the "BLUE BOX" are under TACON to the MSU during the entire period of operation.
MSU-KFOR is directly under the KFOR's Commander operational control and, just like SFOR MSU, is based on staff personnel, a very light logistic component, a Battalion level operational module on two companies, a paratroopers platoon and a GIS (Intervention Special Group) team. The two companies are specialised in information gathering, public order management, crowd control and criminal investigations. A minor Estonian unit of 10 members has been deployed within the MSU as from the 10th November 1999.

The NATO Doctrine has already formalised the concept of Specialised Unit in the Allied Joint Publication 0.1-(A) and in the AJP 3.4.1. "Peace Support Operations". MSU has thus proved to be a consolidated and valid structure. In particular it has shown to be able to be rapidly deployable and then, to be able to operate since the very beginning of the military Force deployment, during the sensitive phase of the public security authority transition between the military Force and the International Community Civil Authority and even later. In such a way it guarantees continuity in the operational experience and information shared knowledge. Furthermore, in particular cases where an agreement between the parts could guarantees a sufficient degree of security, Specialised Units can express their preventive role during a crisis even before the deployment of a military Force. Its capability of intervening adequately under different aspects and environments combined with its outstanding characteristics that underline a perfect harmonisation between specific military training and police duties, makes it a suitable Force not only within NATO operations but also for up-coming European Union missions.

The web site : www.carabinieri.it