Participating in this campaign were Geheime Feldpolizei units 708, 721, and 730; their mission included pacification of areas behind the front, protecting military installations as well as transportation routes.[10] Additional activities consisted of pursuing the enemy into remote locations, carrying out arrests and reprisals, and executing partisans–such actions were directly related to Operation Barbarossa and the infamous Commissar Order and as time went on increasing numbers of Security Divisions like the Geheime Feldpolizei contributed to more comprehensive "cleansing operations."[11] Another task of the GFP was to help establish a new political administration in occupied Russia which implied a political purge of Russian candidates and the "extermination" of an entire societal layer.[12] Due in part to the expediencies of German war policy, the GFP operated outside the constraints of legal norms, as dealing with Bolsheviks and Commissars was not brought before military courts but was handled instead by the troops with OKW approval.[13] As a Nazi security warfare group, the GFP collaborated with the SD to execute and torture captured fighters and civilians suspected of helping the Soviet resistance.