Army manoeuvres
Military service may be compulsory in Vietnam, but
there's no shortage of
ways to avoid it. For those who do serve, a stint in the
army can be a useful leg up the social ladder
HANOI - After failling his university entrance exam, 18-year-old
An slips into lazy
ways. He carouses in Hanoi cafes, stumbles home in the
early hours, sleeps
late. Dismayed, his parents confront their wayward son
and give him his
marching orders: He must go off and serve his two-year
military service,
which is mandatory in Vietnam for men aged 18-27.
Initially floored by the
army's strict discipline, the boy soon acquires maturity
and strength. On a
visit home, he impresses his girlfriend by protecting her
from a band of
thugs. One of them spies An's army-issue shoes and tells
his pals, "Don't
mess with him, he's in the army."
Like most Vietnamese TV melodramas, the recently
broadcast My Son Joins the
Army makes its message plain: If you do your duty for
national defence,
you'll become a better man. Quite a lure, but not enough
for many young men,
or their families. Brandishing money or special favours,
parents urge local
officials to pass over their sons in compiling draft
rolls. Excuses abound.
"Ten thousand people could serve in my place," asserts
one Hanoi
draft-dodger. Says another: "I love my country, but in my
own way." It's a
far cry from the days when 14-year-olds lied about their
age to rush into
battle against American troops.
Yet for all the attempts at evasion, few Vietnamese argue
for ditching the
draft. Haunted by a long history of war, Vietnam is
insecure in peace, wary
of its giant neighbour, China. Ironically, even dodgers
argue that the draft
is necessary. "Psychologically, we are still a country at
war," says one, a
26-year-old, overseas-educated Hanoi man. "If we let go
of the draft, and
then we're attacked, it could take too long for us to get
our act together."
What is changing, though, are individual responses to
military service-and
in ways that mirror broader movements in Vietnamese
society. For young men
in the depressed countryside, a stint in the army
represents a chance to
escape the land. For their counterparts in the cities,
though, expanding
economic and educational opportunities mean that unpaid
military service
holds little lustre. Luckily for them-and unlike in some
other parts of Asia
that retain the draft, like Singapore, Taiwan or South
Korea-there's ample
opportunity to beat the system.
In late december, outside military headquarters in
Hanoi's Hoan Kiem
district, red-and-gold banners proclaim the "enthusiastic
participation" of
the young men who appear for their army health checks.
Instead of rousing
marching songs, loudspeakers blare pop tunes with various
sentimental
metaphors: "Without soil, how can the tree survive?"
For all the public pageantry, though, secrecy surrounds
just how the army
targets its draftees. Broadly, regional military commands
decide how many
recruits they need and pass the numbers along to
provincial commanders, who
in turn divide the pool among local villages and
city-based wards. Police
and local officials then compile lists of eligible
candidates, making house
calls if necessary to double-check their details.
There's still plenty of room to manoeuvre, since the
system is highly
subjective. For example, evidence of a decent job in the
private sector can
get one candidate off the hook but prove useless for
another. And the law
provides a long list of exemptions. If you're the sole
family breadwinner,
have brothers in the army or have a father who was killed
or disabled in
war, there's no need to serve. Also excused are those who
work in remote
provinces as teachers or political cadres, and those
assigned to work on
important research projects "certified by ministers or
heads of agencies."
Medical problems can also serve as an excuse.
While it's widely assumed that university graduates are
exempt, technically
only active students qualify for deferment. That leaves
the country's hordes
of recently qualified graduates jittery. Even officials
question whether it
makes sense to sweep up educated young men into the army:
"I find the system
illogical," says one Hanoi ward official. "I think
students should be given
one or two years to find a job, so their knowledge can be
used to build the
country."
One solution: pursue a second or even a third university
degree. The desire
to avoid military service has also helped fuel a
lucrative industry in
part-time classes and university preparatory courses,
since most students
fail the university entrance exam the first time around.
For many families, though, bribery is the best solution.
Take 23-year-old
unemployed graduate Thanh. Last October his father forked
over 300,000 dong
($20) to ward-level officials to remove Thanh's name from
the list. He
figures he got off cheap; other friends paid 500,000
dong. Had he been
drafted, Thanh estimates his family would have been
compelled to send him a
monthly allowance of 400,000 dong-to be spent on extra
food to supplement
the basic army fare, and on gifts to military commanders
to spare him from
any particularly arduous tasks. It would have cost
600,000 dong monthly in
bribes, he claims, to enable him to slip home and just
return to base for
routine flag-raising ceremonies.
Will the officials want another bribe when the
recruitment drive comes
around again next year? "They already got the money, so
they know how to
protect me," Thanh answers confidently. Artful dodgers
like Thanh argue that
patriotism lies in finding good jobs and generating
income for the nation.
"Rich people make a rich country, and a rich country is a
strong country,"
says Thanh. "The state can use the money to buy weapons."
While many city-dwellers are ducking for cover, most of
their rural brethren
are more than willing to serve. It's yet another sign of
Vietnam's widening
social gap. In the countryside, particularly the north,
young men often
still see military service as a good way to grow up, get
some useful skills
and escape from places where jobs and land are scarce.
For rural youths who aspire to a local government
position, military service
helps. It's easier to join the communist party while
enlisted, since
acceptance depends primarily on loyalty to commanders and
efficiency in
following orders. It's harder back home because party
hopefuls must
negotiate a minefield of family politics and patronage
networks. Once
military service is over, the newly minted party member
can return with
heightened status and job expectations.
In fact, Vietnam could easily recruit enough warm bodies
from the
countryside alone and forget the city kids-especially as
it quietly wants to
trim costs by cutting the size of its estimated
500,000-strong military. But
it's not that simple. The army wants more educated
youngsters from the
cities because they are quicker at picking up technical
skills needed for a
modernizing force. An openly discriminatory policy would
also violate
communist principles of equality among citizens.
Another factor is high-level concern over the ideological
direction of city
youth. As reflected in state-run TV shows, drinking and
idleness is a
growing worry. Reckless motorcycle racing and mounting
drug addiction are
cutting down youth in their prime. Officials "feel that
youths in the city
are going out of control," says one Hanoi diplomat.
"Conscription in urban
areas is one way of curbing those tendencies."
The drug problem has motivated some parents to buck the
trend and sign up
their wayward children for military service. Fearful of
the harsh conditions
inside the state-run detox camps, but helpless to curb
their sons'
addictions at home, "parents hope that military
discipline can help their
children," says a Vietnamese sociologist. But doctors and
officials try to
weed out addicts from the fresh draftees, because they
are not strong enough
to cope.
Certainly, life in the army is physically demanding.
After six months of
drills, recruits usually find themselves building roads,
planting trees or c
arrying out other infrastructure projects in rural areas.
While this is
often a matter of public service, some analysts say the
soldiers
occasionally work for military-run construction
companies. But it's
difficult to confirm such reports: Senior officials have
noted the storm
over prison labour in Chinese factories and are keen to
avoid similar
international controversies.
At home, there's little public debate over the draft. A
rare exception came
in November in a letter addressed to the military and the
media by Ho Chi
Minh City resident Tran Quang. In it, he bitterly
described the draft as a
"human-rights violation" and decried the "injustice"
facing his younger
brother. "My brother feels terrified, but he offers no
resistance and
accepts it as his misfortune," writes Quang. Even in
Vietnam, money can't
always buy freedom.
By Margot Cohen - The Far Eastern Economic Review - January 31, 2002.
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