in
Lithuania. These forces are normally titled "gendarmerie", but gendarmeries may bear other titles, for instance the
Carabinieri and
Guardia di Finanza in
Italy, the
National Republican Guard in Portugal, the
Civil Guard in
Spain, the
Royal Marechaussee in the
Netherlands or
Internal Troops/
National Guard in
Ukraine and
Russia. As a result of their duties within the civilian population, gendarmeries are sometimes described as "
paramilitary" rather than "
military" forces (especially in the English-speaking world, where policing is rarely associated with military forces), although this description rarely corresponds to their official status and capabilities. Gendarmes are very rarely deployed in military situations, except in humanitarian deployments abroad. A gendarmerie may come under the authority of a ministry of defence (e.g.
Algeria,
Netherlands and
Poland), a ministry of the interior (e.g.
Argentina,
Romania,
Turkey and
Ukraine) or even both ministries at once (e.g.
Chile, France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain). Generally there is some coordination between ministries of defence and the interior over the use of gendarmes. A few forces which are no longer considered military retain the title "gendarmerie" for reasons of tradition. For instance, the French language title of the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police is
Gendarmerie royale du Canada (GRC) (i.e., Royal Gendarmerie of Canada) because this force traditionally had some military-style functions (although separate from the Canadian Army), had been awarded
battle honours and was formally accorded the status of a regiment of
dragoons in 1921 (now discontinued). The
Argentine National Gendarmerie is a military force in terms of training, identity and public perception, and was involved in combat in the
Falklands War; however, it is classified as a "security force", not an "armed force", to exercise jurisdiction over the civilian population under Argentine law. Since different countries may make different use of institutional terms such as "gendarmerie", there are cases in which the term may become confusing. For instance, in the French-speaking
Cantons of Switzerland, the "gendarmeries" are the uniformed civil police (see:
Gendarmerie (Switzerland)). In Chile, the word "gendarmerie" refers, for historic reasons, to the prison service (the "
Chilean Gendarmerie"), while the actual gendarmerie force is called the "Carabineros". In some cases, a police service's military links are ambiguous and it can be unclear whether a force should be defined as a gendarmerie (e.g. Mexico's
Federal Police, Brazil's
Military Police, or the former
Rhodesia's
British South Africa Police until 1980). Some historical military units, such as
South West Africa's
Koevoet, were only defined as police for political reasons. In
Russia, the modern
National Guard (successor of the
Internal Troops of Russia) are military units with quasi-police duties but historically, different bodies within
Imperial Russia's
Special Corps of Gendarmes performed a variety of functions as an armed rural constabulary, urban riot control units, frontier guards, intelligence agents and political police. Prior to the creation of the
Irish Free State in 1922, most policing was based on the
Royal Irish Constabulary an armed force which was housed in barracks. The RIC's drill was based on that of the British Army's light infantry, and its officers were routinely armed with revolvers and carbine rifles and had a counter-insurgency role. This was very much a gendarmerie, unlike the unarmed police constables of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and the RIC's counterpart police forces in Great Britain. The
Garda Síochána of the Irish Free State, which replaced the RIC, was an unarmed civil police force with no paramilitary role, similar to the British style of policing. In
China, after numerous reorganizations and transfers of control between the
PLA and the
MPS, the
People's Armed Police, a gendarmerie service, was created on 19 June 1982. The establishment of the PAP highlighted the efforts to increase the professionalization of the security apparatus, as well as the absorption of numerous PLA demobilized personnel, in the wake of growing unrest. In 2014, the Mexican
Federal Police, a heavily armed force which has many attributes of a gendarmerie, created a new seventh branch of service called the National Gendarmerie Division. The new force would initially number 5,000 personnel and was created with the assistance of the French gendarmerie. This was later dissolved in 2020 with the abolition of the Federal Police and its replacement with the National Guard. == Role and services ==