Reserve officer training system in Georgia serves as indicator of military corruption

Giorgi Kandelaki: 7/23/02

During the summer months, private and state universities and institutes in Georgia flood the television airwaves with commercials seeking to attract students. Many of the schools have little to offer academically, yet they all have no problem filling all available slots. That is because they can offer a way for youths to avoid being drafted into Georgia's chaotic and under-funded military.

Virtually all Georgian higher education institutions feature a so-called Military Department, or Voyennaya Kafedra, a Soviet-era holdover that offers students training as reserve officers. The plethora of such reserve officer training programs is an indicator of widespread corruption within the Georgian military establishment, polling data indicates. Georgia's military has no need for the large number of reserve officers being churned out by the training programs. But observers say the programs provide a vital source of illicit income for officers in charge of administering them, while affording students the chance to escape the privations faced by army conscripts.

"Corrupt relations between students and instructors had always existed in this system. But this sort of corruption was minor as opposed to what is going on now, with the explosion in the number of military departments," said David Darchiashvili, the director of the Civil-Military Relations Center at the Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development.

University students are exempt from the draft, which remains in effect in Georgia even though the country's military budget has declined dramatically since 1997. Funding for the military in 2002 is about $18 million, about one-third the total five years earlier. The army now finds itself in disarray, as underscored by the July 19 incident in which an estimated 100 officers and non-commissioned officers tendered resignations from an elite fighting unit.

As the military has contracted, the number of military departments at higher education institutions has risen during the past decade from five to 75. At the same time, the quality of instruction has suffered a dramatic decline. The result is a plethora of poorly prepared reserve officers – an estimated 5,000 new ones every year. According to a Ministry of Defense estimate, 84,079 reserve officers were trained between 1991-2001. Meanwhile, Georgia's standing army comprises about 22,000 troops. US military advisors are now in Georgia, conducting programs aimed at improving the army's combat capabilities.

The military training given to students is largely unchanged since the Soviet era. Students still attend military-related classes for one full day every week for two years and then undergo several months of basic training. Even at the country's most prestigious universities, military instructors teach outdated strategy and tactics. For example, many instructors continue to rely on Soviet-era textbooks that refer to NATO as a potential aggressor.

"Sometimes the books we use were printed in 1960s. When we go out to the unit in the end of the two-year course, there is no food, nothing," said one Tbilisi State University student. "As for training, they let us shoot only nine bullets total."

Students say they have to pay bribes to pass some exams. In addition, some resort to bribery to avoid basic field training, or to erase negative reports from their personnel file. According to those with knowledge of the system, getting a negative report erased from one's file costs $600. A survey conducted by the Defense and Security Analytical Research Group, a Tbilisi-based NGO, found that 77 percent of students questioned believed military instructors were mainly motivated by bribe-taking. At the same time, 70 percent regarded the knowledge gained from reserve officer training as "outdated and useless."

President Eduard Shevardnadze's anti-corruption commission has identified the military departments at universities as a source of corruption, adding that Georgia had no need for such a large pool of reserve officers. That impression is apparently shared by Defense Minister David Tevzadze, who in 2001 began calling for the abolishment of military departments at universities. He wants to reallocate the estimated $1.3 million it costs the state budget to operate the military departments for other purposes.

Despite such influential opposition, military departments continue to thrive, largely because they retain the support of the military bureaucracy. "If I could, I would abolish all military departments today," Tevzadze said.

Irakli Aladashvili, a military analyst for the Kviris Palitra newspaper, says a major reason for the survival of military departments is the active lobbying by top instructors. Poor strategic planning within the Defense Ministry is also a factor, he added.

A new draft of law on Military Service seeks to eliminate military departments and would make university students eligible for the draft. But some experts, including Darchiashvili, there are enough loopholes in the draft legislation that many military departments, especially those at the more prestigious universities, could survive. "If this law is adopted, it is very likely that departments at the major state universities will remain," Darchiashvili said.

Editor's Note: Giorgi Kandelaki is a senior at the Department of Political Science at Tbilisi State University. He is a member of the Youth Atlantic Council of Georgia.

Posted July 23, 2002 © Eurasianet