Army desertion rate highest since 1980

By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press
November 16,2007

Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year.

"We're asking a lot of soldiers these days," said Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources for Army personnel. "They're humans. They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So, I'm sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier."

The Army defines a deserter as someone who has been absent without leave for longer than 30 days. The soldier is then discharged as a deserter.

According to the Army, about nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared to nearly seven per 1,000 a year earlier. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared to 3,301 last year.

The increase comes as the Army continues to bear the brunt of the war demands with many soldiers serving repeated, lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military leaders — including Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey — have acknowledged that the Army has been stretched nearly to the breaking point by the combat. Efforts are under way to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to lessen the burden and give troops more time off between deployments.

"We have been concentrating on this," said Wallace. "The Army can't afford to throw away good people. We have got to work with those individuals and try to help them become good soldiers."

Still, he noted that "the military is not for everybody, not everybody can be a soldier." And those who want to leave the service will find a way to do it, he said.

While the Army does not have an up-to-date profile of deserters, more than 75 percent of them are soldiers in their first term of enlistment. And most are male.

Soldiers can sign on initially for two to six years. Wallace said he did not know whether deserters were more likely to be those who enlisted for a short or long tour.

At the same time, he said that even as desertions have increased, the Army has seen some overall success in keeping first-term soldiers in the service.

There are four main ways that soldiers can leave the Army before their first enlistment contract is up:

_They are determined unable to meet physical fitness requirements.

_They are found to be unable to adapt to the military.

_They say they are gay and are required to leave under the so-called "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

_They go AWOL.

According to Wallace, in the summer of 2005, more than 18 percent of the soldiers in their first six months of service left under one of those four provisions. In June 2007, that number had dropped to about 7 percent.

The decline, he said, is largely due to a drop in the number of soldiers who leave due to physical fitness or health reasons.

Army desertion rates have fluctuated since the Vietnam War — when they peaked at 5 percent. In the 1970s they hovered between 1 and 3 percent, which is up to three out of every 100 soldiers. Those rates plunged in the 1980s and early 1990s to between 2 and 3 out of every 1,000 soldiers.

Desertions began to creep up in the late 1990s into the turn of the century, when the U.S. conducted an air war in Kosovo and later sent peacekeeping troops there.

The numbers declined in 2003 and 2004, in the early years of the Iraq war, but then began to increase steadily.

In contrast, the Navy has seen a steady decline in deserters since 2001, going from 3,665 that year to 1,129 in 2007.

The Marine Corps, meanwhile, has seen the number of deserters stay fairly stable over that timeframe — with about 1,000 deserters a year. During 2003 and 2004 — the first two years of the Iraq war — the number of deserters fell to 877 and 744, respectively.

The Air Force can tout the fewest number of deserters — with no more than 56 bolting in each of the past five years. The low was in fiscal 2007, with just 16 deserters.

Despite the continued increase in Army desertions, however, an Associated Press examination of Pentagon figures earlier this year showed that the military does little to find those who bolt, and rarely prosecutes the ones they find. Some are allowed to simply return to their units, while most are given less-than-honorable discharges.

"My personal opinion is the only way to stop desertions is to change the climate ... how they are living and doing what they need to do," said Wallace, adding that good officers and more attention from Army leaders could "go a long way to stemming desertions."

Unlike those in the Vietnam era, deserters from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars may not find Canada a safe haven.

Just this week, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the appeals of two Army deserters who sought refugee status to avoid the war in Iraq. The ruling left them without a legal basis to stay in Canada and dealt a blow to other Americans in similar circumstances.

The court, as is usual, did not provide a reason for the decision.

Cairo farmers fight army for land

by Charles Onians
Agence France Presse.
Sun Nov 11, 2007

Bayonets fixed, the soldiers scrambled onto the island in the middle of Cairo, rolled out barbed wire and set up camp. The reasons why they did so are as murky as the Nile waters that flow around them.

Al-Qursaya island is home to 5,000 people, mostly farmers who have lived there for generations. It is one of the last undeveloped pieces of land in the mega-city's ever-expanding concrete sprawl.

The army's arrival in September heralded that of mechanical diggers swaying atop barges as they set about expanding the island, which can only currently be accessed by a small ferry.

More ominously, the farmers have been told to stop paying rent as the land "will be cleared," according to the only official document any of the residents has seen.

Officials have spoken vaguely about transforming the area into a public park, but no one on Al-Qursaya believes them.

They fear that their homes and livelihood will be taken from them to make way for yet another tourist development dreamed up by wealthy men who straddle the worlds of business and politics.

And in Egypt, no explanation is needed when the all-powerful military is involved.

Sociologist Sameh Naguib says the army is increasingly involved in development projects and that "for tourism, for roads, there is always a struggle for the land."

"The army is a major landowner in Egypt. If there's a problem with a road project the army gets involved -- they say the army owns it," says the American University professor, who is based in Cairo.

But beyond so-called projects of national interest such as roads, Naguib says that the government, pushing a programme of liberal economic reforms, "wants foreign investors."

"Because the value of real estate has tripled in recent years, because of all this the army's involvement is accelerating," he says.

One analyst who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue said that President Hosni Mubarak's son, Gamal -- a former merchant banker widely seen as being groomed to be the next president -- could be currying favour with the army.

One question mark over Gamal's inheritance is that he would be the first president from a non-military background, and "this could be Gamal's way of winning the army over. Maybe he's giving them a bigger cut with the businessmen," the analyst says.

The farmers are increasingly worried.

"I feel that we have no rights. We're afraid," says one, asking not to be named for fear of reprisals. "When we're asleep and the dog barks, we are afraid the soldiers are coming to kick us out."

The soft, black earth gives easily under foot, stretching half way across the Nile and marked only by the occasional cluster of ramshackle homes or a modest villa.

Just to the south lies the wealthy suburb of Maadi, home to much of Cairo's expat community and some of the most expensive real estate in this city of 16 million.

Around 100 troops have set up mini-camps in people's gardens and taken over several small homes. They have raised Egyptian flags alongside signs saying "This land belongs to the army. No photography."

Emergency laws in place for decades mean that any Egyptian will think twice about reporting on military activity, and the few media references to what is happening on the island studiously avoid mentioning the army.

Old men drink tea on the river bank, wondering what their fate will be. "This is worse than what the Israelis do to the Palestinians," grumbles one.

The ministry of defence declined to comment on the army's presence, while a security source said that the army is in fact deployed to protect the island from "a group of investors," including prominent members of the ruling National Democratic Party.

In 2001, a similar drama was played out on the nearby island of Dahab, home to 50,000 people and the prospective site of unspecified "tourist projects." On that occasion investors backed off in the face of massive demonstrations.

Many now fear developers are going for Al-Qursaya as a less-populated "soft target," with the media spotlight dimmed by the army's involvement.

"The army has long been involved in business, as an institution and as individuals," said another analyst who requested anonymity.

"There are reports that the army is becoming more aggressive in its business practices... there are stories of pressure by generals on farmers to sell their land and if they don't comply then bad things happen to them."

He says the military "has a very diversified portfolio of economic interests" from chicken farms to mineral water springs, and that if Gamal were to take over "he has to placate the senior ranks of the military."

"You're talking about fewer than 20 individuals of the top brass and the rest will follow."