Gray, Laurie --- "Postcard from Vietnam" [2000] AUFPPlatypus 29; (2000) 69 Platypus: Journal of the Australian Federal Police, Article 7

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Postcard from Vietnam

By Federal Agent Laurie Gray

Federal Agent Laurie Gray with Senator Amanda Vanstone at the opening of the AFP's Hanoi office in April this year.

Pictured with the course members at the opening ceremony of the second in-country English language training program for the Police of Vietnam were: (front row 3rd from left) Ms Nguyen Xuan Binh, AFP Investigative Assistant Hanoi, 6th form left; KE Mr Michael Mann, Australian Ambassador to Vietnam; Deputy Director-General of Police Tran Van Thao, and senior liaison officer Laurie Gray,

The official opening of the AFP's Hanoi office earlier this year was the culmination of several years of negotiations that have added another post in the AFP's coverage of a region of great importance to Australian law enforcement.

First established within the Australian Embassy in Hanoi during mid-1998, the official opening of the office took place in April 1999 with a ceremony presided over by Australia's Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Amanda Vanstone.

Also attending the ceremony were Commissioner Mick Palmer and group of senior Vietnamese officials including Vietnamese Justice Minister, Dr Nguyen Dinh Loc, and Police Director-General, Truong Huu Quoc.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a one-party communist state extending along a 1650km stretch bordering the South China Sea, from the southern border of China to the southern tip of the Indonchinese peninsula. Occupying an area of 331,114 km2, Vietnam shares borders with China in the north, Laos in the north-west, and Cambodia in the south-west. About 16 per cent of Vietnam's land mass is under cultivation, with the remaining areas either mountainous or forested. Vietnam has substantial territorial claims in the South China Sea (which it refers to as the Eastern Sea) and occupies a number of reefs and islands. Eighty per cent of Vietnam's population of 78 million (1998 official estimate) is ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh). Significant ethnic minorities include the Tai and Hmong in the north and north-west, the Hmong and Cham in the central region, and the Chinese and Khmer in the south.

Hanoi, the capital, has a population of around 4 million people. Hanoi is located approximately 1000km from Bangkok, and around 1200km from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon), Vietnam's largest city containing approximately 7 million people. Vietnam is largely a tropical country, with the coastal areas being especially humid. The country is dominated by the Red River delta in the north and the Mekong delta in the south, which are divided by a poorer central region. The northern and central border regions are mountainous; areas that were under intensive opium poppy cultivation prior to 1996.

Australia established diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1973. Its bilateral relationship with Vietnam is politically, strategically and economically important. During the 1980s, when Vietnam was internationally isolated, Australia provided aid to Vietnam through multilateral organisations such as the United Nations Development Program. Australia also became one of the first countries to restore its bilateral aid program to Vietnam following the withdrawal of the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia and the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in October 1991. Indeed, Australia remains one of the largest aid donors to Vietnam, with a commitment of $236 million over the four-year period 1998–2002.

The November 1994 opening of a Consulate-General in Ho Chi Minh City established an official Australian presence in Vietnam's southern and principal economic hub. This development was perceived as a significant strengthening of Australian diplomatic representation, and the Australian presence has significantly expanded over the past six years.

Following approval by the Vietnamese Government, the AFP's Vietnam office was established in July 1998 and is situated within the Australian Embassy in Hanoi, located in the north of the country. A senior liaison officer, a locally engaged investigative assistant and a driver/office assistant currently staff the office. Also, in the near future it is anticipated that the services of an expatriate assistant will be secured.

Historically, during September 1991 Australia became the first western law enforcement agency in contemporary times to establish a dialogue with Vietnamese interlocutors on law enforcement and other associated strategically focused themes. Since that time, a broad range of issues has occupied AFP attention within Vietnam. AFP Hanoi's current focus includes:

• the trafficking of heroin from the Golden Triangle to Australia, using Vietnam as a transit country;

• cannabis trafficking from Cambodia, through Vietnam, to Australia multi-dimensional money laundering activities;

• organised people trafficking, particularly Middle Eastern and Southwest Asian nationals, through Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City to Australia;

• the emergence of methamphetamine trafficking through Vietnam and its potential implications for Australia;

• transnational economic crime;

• the potential emergence of South-West Asian heroin trafficking; and

• routes through Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City to Australia.

The primary agencies with which the AFP Hanoi Office interacts are:

• the General Department of the Police of Vietnam, an organisation residing within the Ministry of Public Security;

• the General Department of Customs, the equivalent of a ministerial level body that is directly answerable to government; and

• the Border Army, which resides within the Ministry of Defence.

The roles of the various Vietnamese law enforcement agencies can vary quite significantly, especially when compared to the Australian experience, although the responsibilities of Vietnam Customs roughly parallel the Australian Customs Service mandate. However, the operations of the Border Army do not equate to any particular organisation in Australia, and its responsibilities are primarily based upon national security interests, although there are drug suppression and coast guard activities associated with these functions. In general, the Border Army, as the name implies, is deployed to the more remote areas of the country.

AFP's primary in-country partner is the Police of Vietnam. As the only policing organisation in Vietnam, this organisation bears responsibility for law enforcement at both the national and provincial levels. However, as part of the Ministry of Public Security, the Police of Vietnam also forms part of the security forces, whose primary mandate is “the preservation of social order and security, and the defence of socialism” as part of the armed forces of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

The Ministry of Public Security is actually a composite entity whose active responsibilities are delivered through five general departments: Police, Public Security, Personnel and Education, Logistics, and Science and Technology. While the Police of Vietnam also contains the majority of these support functions within its structure, functions that are law enforcement oriented, the foci of the other general departments are based upon internal and external security issues. In this regard, the General Department of Public Security is responsible for the delivery of a range of functions, including the provision of intelligence support and immigration administration. Undoubtedly, the post's ability to access these departmental functions has become integral to the effective delivery of services to our clients.

The Police of Vietnam contains approximately 1.2 million officers nationwide (although accurate statistics in this regard are not readily available), who are functionally distributed across a range of departments'. These departments include community policing, criminal investigations, drug investigations, economic crime investigations, prison administration, traffic, civil disturbance control, VIP protection, firefighting, administration, logistics, personnel, in addition to the maintenance of systems regulating the registration of vehicles, house registration (registered occupants) and the national identity card system. Unlike the AFP, the Police of Vietnam is an uniformed organisation. All personnel, including those deployed to designated ‘plainclothes' duties, must wear uniform unless their functions dictate otherwise on any particular occasion. Hence, there is a high degree of emphasis on visibility and its ancillary deterrent effect.

As the AFP liaison office is primarily focused upon drug issues, interaction is largely concentrated upon the Counter Narcotics Department (CND) within the Police of Vietnam. This organisation is the principal, national drug enforcement body. However, policy and other ancillary matters are the responsibility of the office of the Vietnam National Drug Control Committee (VNDCC). This organisation is responsible to a vice-ministerial inter-agency committee representing the varied and often disparate interests in drug enforcement, suppression, treatment, rehabilitation and education in this country.

Vietnam is strategically located in close proximity to the Golden Triangle. This area has remained a major opium and heroin producing for some considerable time, although recent trends have identified the region's diversification into amphetamine-type substance (ATS) production. Vietnam also lies adjacent to some of the major cannabis producing countries in the region. Hence, due to its extensive land and sea borders, which are extremely porous, the cross-border trafficking of drugs and precursor chemicals remains problematic.

According to UNDCP, together with reports emanating from other sectors within the international law enforcement community represented here, Vietnam continues to develop as a significant transit country for illicit drugs. Opium and heroin from the Golden Triangle transit Laos and Vietnam on their way to industrialised countries, while heroin, ATS and cannabis enter Vietnam from Cambodia. Additionally, increasing quantities of ATS, manufactured in Burma, Thailand and China, have also been entering Vietnam along its frontiers with Laos and China.

Cannabis cultivation and abuse are not significant problems for Vietnam. The competition for arable land, even in the Mekong Delta where approximately 1,000 hectares of cannabis cultivation is evident, precludes large-scale cultivation of the crop, primarily due to the relatively uneconomic nature of this form of agriculture. Historically, cannabis has been domestically consumed as a culinary condiment and has been predominantly restricted to cooking, although a relatively small illicit market appears to be developing. Unfortunately, the use of Vietnam as a transhipment country for Laotian and Cambodian cannabis is becoming more prevalent. Indeed, Laos is developing a more important, strategic function in most aspects of the South-East Asian drug problem and its continuing role has dramatic implications for Vietnam.

Unfortunately, its geographic location also promotes Laos as a natural trafficking route for heroin and other drugs exiting the Golden Triangle to international markets.

Increasingly, the AFP liaison office has also become involved in anti-people smuggling activities in conjunction with the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) office in Ho Chi Minh City. The incidence of people trafficking, involving Middle Eastern and South-West Asian nationals, through Vietnam appears to be on the rise.

Our close interaction with Vietnamese law enforcement authorities has already produced tangible benefits for AFP and its domestic law enforcement partners, particularly in the operational sphere.

To further this benefit, the AFP's Hanoi office has been examining ways in which the capabilities and management of the Vietnamese law enforcement agencies can be enhanced, with a view to augmenting their investigational and intelligence capacities, including information management, through the effective use of IT support mechanisms.

As a high priority country for the delivery of assistance pursuant to AFP's Law Enforcement Cooperation Program (LECP), Vietnam has been a major recipient of LECP assistance since program inception. LECP was developed in accordance with the Australian Government's National Illicit Drug Strategy (NIDS) and has been used as a vehicle for the global provisioning of drug enforcement and other drug-related assistance programs. In Vietnam, this assistance has taken the form of training, education and equipment; strategies that have materially assisted in eroding some pre-existing obstacles, and while also creating a climate and capacity conducive to the fulfillment of AFP's operational objectives.

Some of the interventions introduced into the Vietnamese theatre include:

• the initiation of in-country English-language training programs through an expatriate service provider in Hanoi;

• the initiation of an Australian-based English-language training program through a service provider in Canberra;

• the purchase and installation of a National Drug Intelligence Database (NDID) facility within the Counter Narcotics Department of the Police of Vietnam;

• sponsored attendance of key Vietnamese police officers to Australia for study tours and bilateral discussions;

• the attendance of Vietnamese police officers on Management of Serious Crime, National Strategic Intelligence and Regional Intelligence courses, together with continuing sponsored attendance at Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering fora; and

• the provision of immediate equipment needs, including mobile communications, computers, and narco-test kits to the Narcotics Enforcement Sub-Division of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) throughout the country.

Planned LECP interventions include:

• expansion of the National Drug Intelligence Database (NDID) to embrace all Counter Narcotics Department (CND) units geographically spread throughout Vietnam;

• posting of two VNPOL officers to AFP and State Police services, with a view to establishing a hot-line facility;

• a national intelligence-oriented program; and

• primary scenes of crime response training–to integrate with contemporary DNA and fingerprint technology recently purchased from Australia by the Police of Vietnam; and

• financial investigations training.

It is evident that as the relationship with Vietnamese law enforcement agencies further matures, opportunities for closer engagement and cooperation will undoubtedly emerge. Naturally, the initiation of exchange programs and other forms of operational attachments will materially assist in this process, while seeking to broaden the international perspective of many Vietnamese agencies and also eroding any remaining cultural barriers.