THE growing numbers of men seeking exemption from the army on psychological grounds has become mired in politics, led to calls for a radical restructuring of the National Guard and prompted introspective discussions of the “whither our society?” variety.
At a meeting last Thursday between top psychiatrists and defence ministry officials, the ministry was told that both the way psychological assessments are carried out and the way the National Guard treats its recruits were in need of overhaul.
At the forefront of the call for change is head of the Psychiatrist Association Dr Neophytos Papaneophytou who has long argued that assessments must take into consideration two main categories of people.
“The first are soldiers who go down the path of visiting psychiatrists and expressing emotional problems with the army because they simply do not want to be there. There is no deep psychological problem,” he told the Sunday Mail last week. “There is another group however, that goes into the army with the aim of completing it, complete KEN [the training camps] but end up with problems, anxieties and phobias as a result of a whole range of negative factors within the camps such as belligerent superiors, bullying and other bad behaviour.” It is the latter group which has prompted the calls for National Guard reform.
As it stands, the diagnosis of psychological incapability to serve involves two steps of verification. The first is a visit to a psychiatrist who can be either private or provided by the army, and whose role is to discern whether a conscript has a psychological disorder. If this psychiatrist is convinced that the conscript does, a certificate is signed, providing a professional recommendation that the army’s own panel of psychiatrists issue a deferral. The latter is the second step, and nearly always ends in the approval of whatever recommendation has been made by the preliminary psychiatrist and the issuing of a six month deferral. After the six months are up, the conscript will undergo a revaluation, and is usually granted another six month deferral. On the third visit, the conscript is relieved from service.
The effectiveness of this process in weeding out people with minimal or no psychological problems is dubious, as was revealed a couple of weeks ago when Takis Evdokas, a leading psychiatrist, said that he knew of other psychiatrists who were effectively turning the issuing of certificates into a business, with some charging up to €1700 to conscripts willing to pay up.
The other obvious problem highlighted by Evdokas was the fact that no one wants to assume the responsibility of denying a request of deferral from a soldier who claims to be suicidal; a fact that has become common knowledge among conscripts.
Numbers of those getting out
DEFENCE minister Costas Papacostas has described the growing numbers of young men seeking to avoid military service as a “ticking time bomb”, but specific figures are hard to come by.
The official policy of the Defence Ministry is not to release any detailed figures, but recent figures in Simerini newspaper, carried more than a ring of truth. In 2000, the paper said, the number of conscripts declared unfit for service due to psychological problems stood at 43, rising to 566 in 2006 and reaching 995 in 2008. Meanwhile, the number of conscripts granted a deferment on the same grounds was 436 in the year 2000, jumping to 1163 in 2006 and reaching 1293 in 2008.
The above figures seemed to confirm other estimates that a whopping 20 per cent of young males are avoiding the draft in one way or another.
A major effect of this increase is that failure to do the army no longer carries the previous baggage of automatic stigmatisation and inevitably fuels the fire for ever-increasing numbers of young men seeking exemption. Essentially, one of the main barriers to their freedom – social conformity – is apparently eroding.
For conscripts whose families support their efforts at discharge, a major remaining obstacle is, of course, dealing with the bureaucracy of the army. Another disincentive is that most jobs in the public sector will only be given to men who have completed service. However, there is no specific law governing this, and it is largely based on whether the department or sector someone is applying to contacts the Defence Ministry for a reference.
Additionally, while working in the civil service was the main option for anyone in decades past, our increasingly privatised society means the threat of being barred from government jobs packs less of a punch.
According to the president of the Psychiatric Association, Dr Neofytos Papaneophytou, since many conscripts visit psychiatrists for the first time in their lives in the army, the cause of their declared illness can in many cases be said to be the army.
“So when they are out of the army, it can be said that they have no psychological problem,” he said. “This means that being certified as psychologically unfit does not end up pervading one’s whole life.”
It is also the reason why the Defence Ministry has found it difficult to have conscripts discharged on psychological grounds banned from driving.
Who serves?
Finding out who serves and for how long can be tortuous as there are so many subdivisions depending on which parent is the Cypriot and where the conscript was born.
“Any person who has a Cypriot father needs to complete the full term of service. If someone has a foreign father then a six month term is often applied,” explained the Permanent Secretary of the Defence Ministry Petros Kareklas.
“Exemption can sometimes be granted if a person doesn’t hold a Cypriot passport (i.e. they share the nationality of the father). There are other situations, such as family issues or when a Cypriot has grown up abroad but moved to Cyprus later, where different durations are applied.”
The Defence Ministry’s ‘Map of the Rights of Citizens’ which can be found on their website provides a more detailed breakdown of who needs to serve what amount. Since 2007, the previously exempt minority groups of Maronites, Latins and Armenians need to serve full terms. Orphans have service reduced to 14 months, as do the third sons of families. If a family has more than four sons, then it is only compulsory for two in the middle to serve their full terms. If a parent is declared by the public services to be “fully disabled, missing, or dead due to war” then, the eldest son of a family is exempt, while other male siblings need to serve 13 months. For those who have a foreign father and were born between August 16 1960 and June 1 1999, then six months will need to be served. However this rule is the greyest of areas as those who are considered to have foreign citizenship and nationality, i.e. their ideology and identity are foreign, can be granted exemption even if they have a Cypriot mother.
For Cypriots born and raised outside of Cyprus, compulsory service can range from 18 months if the child arrives between the ages of 10 and 13, all the way down to three months if they arrive after the age of 26. The list goes on, with the general gist being that it is hard, if not impossible, to be exempted from army service automatically if you possess a Cypriot passport, are resident on the island and are male. This inevitably leads to many Cypriots who have grown up in diaspora communities to shy away from returning to live permanently on the island, and of course leads many to seek exemption by citing psychological problems.
Alternative service
The alternative options of service provided by the National Guard are by its own admission seriously in need of revision.
Defence Minister Costas Papacostas has ordered a new set of plans to be put before the parliament for approval at some point after the summer recess.
Defence minis
try permanent secretary Petros Kareklas said last week that the new alternative service will be implemented “hopefully before the end of the year”.
“These new measures will be part of a broader package of planned reforms to the National Guard that will attempt to curb the issuing of deferrals,” he said.
According to Kareklas, various logistical issues have to be sorted out such as the management of the different squads to the coherence of their various tasks with the advice of doctors:
“If for example, a group of conscripts who have chosen the alternative service are sent to the Forestry Department to carry out work, who is responsible for them?” he asked. “They should be under the control of the NG, but this means that superiors of the NG need to be trained in the civilian duties that the alternative service will involve.”
Alternative service lasts for 33 months, which for many is a punitive length of time compared to the 25 demanded for the military wing.
“The timeframe of 33 months is analogous to the amount of time a normal national guardsman will have to spend in duty,” justified Kareklas. “If conscripts doing alternative service go home every day at 2.30 pm, then this is not the same as a soldier who needs to spend many nights in the army, on guard etc. If it is decided to reduce the overall length of service, then the 33 months will also be reduced correspondingly.”
Whatever form the alternative service finally takes, one thing is clear. Once the programme is implemented, conscripts will find it a lot harder to obtain deferrals due to psychological issues.
