Colombia Makes It Easier for Young Men to Dodge Draft

High school graduation means more than parties and celebration for Colombia’s young men.

It is also a time to confront the draft, a year of obligatory military service without pay in a country where the government is involved in a war with three rebel groups. All male high school graduates, even those younger than 18, have faced a draft lottery similar to the one used in the U.S. during the final years of the Vietnam War.

But this year, with all sides in the prolonged Colombian conflict under pressure to stop recruiting minors, the army has announced that no one younger than 18 will be drafted.

“UNICEF is pleased that the armed forces have made this decision,” said Nidia Quiroz, the United Nations Children’s Fund officer for peace in Colombia. By exempting males younger than 18 from the draft, the Colombian government is complying with an international agreement it signed in 1992 promising not to involve children in war, she noted.

“This is the result of a long process” that has included constant pressure on the government from international agencies such as UNICEF, Save the Children and World Vision, Quiroz said.

In cooperation with Colombian groups, the international agencies helped organize a referendum on peace two years ago. “The first line on the ballot was not to involve children in war,” Quiroz said. “The armed forces have responded.”

Army spokesman Col. Paulino Coronado cautioned, however, that the draft exemptions should not be taken as a sign that the military is gearing down in anticipation of the government’s proposed peace talks with the various guerrilla and counter-guerrilla bands now battling one another and the army.

On the contrary, Coronado said: The army has stopped drafting minors as the first step in reorganizing the armed forces into a more efficient and effective fighting force.

“The high school graduate recruits are dead weight,” he said. Each year, 35,000 high school graduates are drafted, trained--and sent out to army posts to do paperwork. Because the Colombian Supreme Court decreed that minors cannot be sent into combat, 30% of Colombia’s armed forces consist of noncombat troops.

“This has been a weak point for the armed forces,” Coronado said. In recent months, the army has been battling its way back from the humiliating defeats suffered last year, when rebels overran several military bases, capturing soldiers, and ambushed a crack anti-subversion unit, inflicting heavy casualties.

Even before the court decision, the new, more aggressive army no longer had a place for privileged groups, which include high school graduate conscripts. As far back as the 1950s, when the seeds of the current insurgency were being sown, draftees with diplomas were put in a special brigade assigned to strictly ceremonial duties.

High school dropouts face 18 months of service when they turn 18, and their activities are not restricted by the court decision.

This year, 10,000 high school graduates who would have been drafted will be replaced by volunteers who expect to make the army their career. Next year, 10,000 fewer will be drafted, and within three years, high school graduates will no longer be drafted.

“The change will be gradual,” Coronado said. “We cannot do without 35,000 draftees all at once.”

Part of the concern is economic. Unsalaried draftees receive a “gratuity” of $28 a month. Soldiers are paid 10 times more. The difference will cost the Colombian government $106 million a year in salaries alone.

Coronado said that cost will be somewhat offset by eliminating money spent on training under the current system. Now, the army is constantly teaching recruits who will leave in a year to 18 months, replaced by another group of civilian soldiers who need to be trained.

The biggest payoff for this war-ravaged country will be a professional army, he said.

“By the year 2002,” Coronado said, “the entire army will be soldiers willing to fight the guerrillas.”