ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with the role of policing in state-building and explores why it was so neglected in the case of the Federation of South Arabia (FSA). It examines the question of what a Federation-wide police force could have offered to the new state both before and after the merging of the Federal National Guard (FNG) and the Federal Regular Army (FRA) in mid-1967, on the eve of South Yemen's rushed independence. Policing is often the Cinderella service when it comes to more recent post-conflict reconstruction efforts, security sector reform and even when upholding colonial power. The chapter looks at how best to conceptualize the security environment and the government role within this sphere. It discusses the role of police in state-building more generally, in order to develop some key principles which can then be compared to the particular case of the FSA.
