MILITARY PLANNERS CONFRONT CONSCRIPT SHORTFALL, MULL AN END TO COLLEGE EXEMPTION
Gayane Abrahamyan
Eurasia Insight
ticles/eav073009a.shtml
7/30/09
A looming shortfall in conscripts for the Armenian army is forcing
the country to mull tough choices. A fierce debate has erupted over
a plan to remove university enrollment as grounds for an exemption
from military service. The proposal reflects both concern over the
country’s shrinking male population and worries about the growing
military strength of the country’s long-time archrival, Azerbaijan.
Proposed amendments that are expected to be submitted to parliament
this fall would require young men to enroll in the army either
immediately after finishing high school or after finishing
university. Under current legislation covering the draft, male
university students receive a temporary waiver from military service;
that waiver becomes a permanent exemption if they are enrolled in a
doctorate program.
Teachers and other education specialists worry that the changes
could cause serious damage to Armenia’s higher education system. The
Defense Ministry counters that the army needs the manpower. The recent
expansion of Azerbaijan’s military capabilities is injecting a sense
of urgency into the Armenian debate. [For background see the Eurasia
Insight archive].
Armenia’s demographic situation lies at the heart of the
discussion. Birth rates plummeted during the early 1990s, a period
when the conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh was in its
hot phase, and the Armenian economy experienced turmoil and severe
energy shortages during the jarring transition from central planning
to a market system. Only 39,000 males were born in 1991 — men who
would be eligible to serve in the army as of 2009. That number dropped
to 25,697 by 1995, according to the State Statistical Service. More
than 10 years later, the birth rate has still not improved; roughly
24,000 males were born in 2008, said Karine Kuyumjian, head of the
service’s Demography Department.
Those low numbers will be reflected in the number of Armenian
conscripts starting military service for at least the next decade,
forecasted Kuyumjian.
Although the army’s size is a state secret, the problem is such
that even Deputy Education Minister Ara Avetisian agrees that the
university exemption for military service has to go. "This amendment
is unavoidable because military service is one of the most important
issues for the state," Avetisian commented.
Avetisian favors males entering the army after high school, at the
age of 18, rather than after university. He argues that it would cause
the least disruption to their education. Some experts, however, worry
that young men inducted into the army immediately after either high
school or university would lose interest in ever returning to school.
"Expecting a student who leaves for two years of military service to
return after university to study science or to become a good specialist
after having forgotten everything [he learned] is senseless," said
opposition Heritage Party parliamentarian Anahit Bakhshian, a member
of the parliament’s Committee for Science, Education, Culture, Youth
and Sport. "Neither will boys taken into the army after [high] school
want to study after they get out."
Between the two options, however, Bakhshian, who worked for 30
years as a Yerevan school principal and teacher, also believes
that military service after high school is preferable. "Pupils take
additional classes with private teachers to apply to universities,
so proper conditions need to be created in the army for them to take
the classes there and apply to university after they return and then
study without interruption," Bakhshian said.
Others support the post-high-school option because they believe
that it will help fight corruption in higher education. A 2007
survey carried out by the advocacy group Protection of Students’
Rights found that 30 percent of about 1,000 male students surveyed at
universities nationwide reported that they had only enrolled to avoid
military service. Some 65 percent of that number had paid bribes to
be enrolled in the universities, the survey found.
"Abolishing the waiver will help beat corruption, clean up universities
and have only students who really want to study," commented group
member Anahit Simonian, a sociologist who worked on the survey.
But parliamentarians do not unanimously support the idea of
post-high-school military service. "The army’s effectiveness for combat
can’t be provided by 18-year-old boys," objected Artur Aghabekian,
a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutiun who
served as a deputy defense minister from 2000 to 2007. "Our country
really has a demographic problem, but a general draft won’t solve it."
Opposition politicians also object to the proposed law; the time
has come, these critics argue, for Armenia to have a professional
army. "Was it news for them that we have had demographic problems
beginning the ’90s?" fumed Vahan Shirkhanian a member of ex-President
Levon Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress who served as a
deputy defense minister under Ter-Petrosian from 1995 to 1998. "They
should have thought about creating a professional army long ago."
For the army, going professional raises cost concerns. Maj.-Gen. Kamo
Kuchunts, who oversees the draft, recruitment and the training of
conscripts, termed the idea "important, but . . . highly expensive." He
did not elaborate about projected costs. But he noted that only
"about 8,000 contracts" have been signed since Armenia began in 2005
to enlist army sergeants on contract. Removing the need for military
conscription by building a professional army "needs both serious
resources and a certain amount of time," Kuchunts concluded.
Whether by establishing a professional army or scrapping the university
exemption for military service, time is of the essence, noted political
analyst Igor Muradian. "Especially now, when Azerbaijan has more money
and more resources, we need to find some ways to enlarge the army,"
he said.
Editor’s Note: Gayane Abrahamyan is a reporter for ArmeniaNow.com
in Yerevan.