Monday was a busy day for the Hungarian army, with 82 new soldiers turning up for work at the training base in Szentendre. At the same time, a team of 129 career soldiers set off from Debrecen to carry out peacekeeping duties in Kosovo. Colonel Judit Arato, the Szentendre base's press officer, has been a career soldier for three years, and has moved as many times, as the bases on which she was serving were closed down. But the graduate PR manager has done well in uniform, benefiting from a secure job.
Job security was the main motivation for the new soldiers as well. Zsolt Szabo, for example, gave up a middle-management job in an electricals company to serve as a soldier in Kaposvár. The 34-year-old said his former job burdened him with great responsibility and little pay. He had done a year's military service in the past, but his colleague, the 29-year-old Vitéz Nemes, is donning military uniform for the first time. Both had to wait a year to join the army, backing up the recruiters' assertion that the army can now pick and choose. Csilla Noémi Király, with a degree in environmental protection, could only have found a job if she obtained a driving licence and learned a foreign language. But without a job, she could not pay for the necessary courses. She will be forced to move, to Hódmezővásárhely.
She is not the only one graduate prepared to serve as a private. János Ocsovai, an engineering officer and head of the recruitment section, told HVG that last year 5 per cent of new recruits to the lowest ranks had university degrees. A probationary private earns HUF101,300 a month, a sergeant HUF124,600.
"If what we are doing today is armed forces reform, then the Trianon Peace Treaty was an armaments programme," said Lajos Kósa the Fidesz mayor of Debrecen. He accused decision-makers of short-sightedness. He said Hungary should not behave as if it were a member of an "eternal and unshakeable alliance", subordinating its every decision to this and abandoning the capacity to set up its own independent national guard if it proved necessary.
It is true that the reforms brought about many closures. Apart from the training bases in Szombathely and Tapolca, now closed, soldiers have disappeared from Nyíregyháza and Taszár The Socialists really are taking an all-or-bust approach. They are counting on Hungary not having to confront a traditional military threat, and assuming further that if such a threat emerged, they would not need to fight the enemy alone. "You may have heard that we have been members of NATO since 1999," György Keleti, Socialist MP and chairman of the parliamentary defence committee said, when asked if the Hungarian Defence Force remained capable of defending the country. The former defence minister pointed out further that Hungary did not have enough aeroplanes to police its own airspace, but that in the case of a real threat there would be joint air defence within a NATO framework.
And - say it sotto voce - the way to prove that Hungary can contribute to NATO is by taking part in peacekeeping missions. It is vital to national prestige that the Swedish Gripen fighters be introduced and deployed in international missions. Unfortunately, most of the development funds had to be spent on the aeroplanes themselves, meaning that the purchase of special winter and summer boots had to be delayed.
Soldiers sent on international missions are better equipped than their colleagues at home. But only while they are abroad - afterwards they return their equipment to stores. But the main attraction is money: even common soldiers can save HUF1-1.3m during a six-month tour abroad. Where, in the days of compulsory military service, conscripts would seek out comfortable office jobs, nowadays a woman in the legal department will leave behind her administrative work to serve a second tour as a common fusilier in Kosovo.
The Bocskai Regiment in Debrecen has a waiting list of hopeful candidates to enlist, according to the regiment's commander, András Szücs his can partly be explained by the fact that a military career is most popular in eastern Hungary, and also by the fact that more are sticking the course than was expected. A few years ago, it was common for people to enlist to keep warm during the winter, leaving the army at harvest time, when agricultural work became available. Now, benefits are such that few are tempted to leave before their five years are up.
Gergely Fahidi