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File: 9506-6
HUNGARIAN MILITARY REFORM AND PEACEKEEPING EFFORTS
Sebestyen Gorka, Senior Reader at the Budapest Institute for
Strategic and Defence Studies
Hungary, a participant in NATO's Partnership for
Peace, is currently engaged in a major reform of its
armed forces and as part of this process, it has
established a special peacekeeping force and
training facility. The Hungarian Parliament has now
given its approval for the first contingent of
fully-fledged peacekeepers to be sent abroad - to
join the multinational force which helps uphold the
Camp David agreements relating to the Sinai.
In common with its counterparts in the Western half of
Europe, the Hungarian Defence Force (HDF) has
undergone great changes since the momentous
political events of late 1989 and 1990. The most
obvious has been the down-sizing of the HDF. Back
in 1989, the total number of personnel, including
civilian staff, stood at 155,700. By the middle of
1995, the full complement, including all personnel
of the Ministry of Defence and background
institutions such as think-tanks, stood at 93,155.
Along with this manpower cut of over a third, state
expenditure on defence has also been slashed. Prior
to the changes in the late 1980s, the defence budget
of the then Peoples' Republic of Hungary stood at
3.5 per cent of GDP. For 1995, the figure for the
reborn Republic of Hungary will be 1.48 per cent.
Does this mean that post-Cold War Hungary feels
itself to be that much more secure? Hardly,
considering that within a hundred kilometres of its
southern border a civil war is being waged, a war
which has at times resulted in armed incursions into
Hungarian territory and airspace (including one
instance when a cluster bomb was dropped on a
Hungarian town - inadvertently , apparently).
Therefore, since the actual threat assessment is
somewhat visibly higher for Hungary at the moment,
the reasons for the aforementioned changes had to
come from elsewhere.
Prior to the 'system change' of 1989, when Hungary was a
member of the Warsaw Pact, the whole military machine was
shaped by requirements dictated by Moscow. Hungary had
the majority of its forces located along its western
frontiers, and had a prescribed role as a glorified
main supply route support area and reserve base for
the Soviet main axis across Germany, if and when
that axis was to move West.
With the end of the Warsaw Pact, Hungary has been able to
cut the size of its army and relocate many units to
spread them across the country, in the process closing
many unnecessary bases and not just those previously
occupied by the Soviet units. The country,
according to recent plans, will now be divided into
only three military districts, including Budapest.
Hungary is a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace
(PfP) programme and has already submitted its
Presentation Document and agreed its Individual
Partnership Programme with NATO, being the only
Partner country so far to publish the latter
document for public consumption. The new Republic
has also hosted a joint peacekeeping training
exercise under the PfP programme with the UK.
Another was scheduled for October this year, this
time with the inclusion of a German contingent.
September saw the opening of the Hungarian PfP
Language Training Centre, a facility open to Partner
and NATO states, teaching English, German, French
and possibly Russian, if there is a demand for it.
By January next year, the Centre will be expanded to
include courses for both military officers and
civilians in arms control expertise and the practice
of the democratic control of armed forces.
These are only the activities planned for the near
future. Beyond this, there is a broad realization among
policy makers and knowledgeable commentators alike
that the reorganization and reform of the HDF will
require a long-term strategy in line with the
challenges the country will have to face and the
contributions it will be expected to make as a
fully-fledged member of the United Nations and the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) family of states and as a prospective member
of the WEU, EU and NATO. With this in mind, the
Hungarian parliament has passed a resolution on the
reform of the HDF, the bill winning a three quarters
majority.
This parliamentary resolution contains
mid- and long-term stipulations concerning the
status of the Hungarian Defence Force. By 1998, the
total strength of the HDF has to be lowered to
60,000 and the control structure has to be
simplified, with many units being subsumed into
larger ones. By 2005, the army must stand at 50,000
men - 0.5 per cent of the population - the majority
of the units being capable of rapid deployment
(however, in time of all-out war, after some months
of refresher training, the national force should be
expandable to 150,000 if necessary). By both
deadlines there must also be a pronounced growth in
numbers of NCOs in relation to officers.
The significance of these proposals is clear in that
they entail a ground up review and reorganization of
the armed forces, which will eventually bring
Hungary's defence capacity in line with norms
recognized in other Western democracies, the main
factors being professionalism, proportionality and
ability to react in a timely fashion. These
characteristics will also improve Hungary's capacity
to contribute professional forces to international
peacekeeping efforts. The military reform in itself
facilitates the viability of the lower troop figures
as it also permits the country to Tmake good' on
certain informal obligations. These obligations
concern making a net contribution to European
security, rather than being simply a consumer.
Peacekeeping
The bipolarity of the Cold War environment did in
truth make life much easier for both sides of the
Iron Curtain, at least as far as planning for the
future was concerned. Now, both sides of the former
divide are struggling with the fact that they still
have armies to maintain and territories to protect
yet they have no clear military objective or obvious
single foe. In the past, the unifying motivator in
the West was the 'Red Menace'; in the East it was
the ideologically loaded threat of 'Capitalist
Imperialism'. Each side had one clear adversary.
Ask any Ministry of Defence, Pentagon, or Foreign
Office mandarin what the threats to both the 'old'
democracies and the newly independent states are,
and the answer will be manifold, including such
things as terrorism, drug-trafficking,
fundamentalism, proliferation of fissile materials
and atomic know-how, inter-ethnic strife, organized
crime and so on. The difficulty of compiling a
comprehensive list is only compounded by the
difficulty in prioritizing any such list.
Even so, one requirement is almost universally
accepted and that is the need for all countries
professing and exercising the values of democracy
and the market economy, and who maintain armed
forces, to develop and dedicate at least a
proportion of their forces for possible deployment
in roles other than those typified by conventional
warfare and the mind-set of all-out conflict
prevalent throughout the Cold War. More
specifically, as the stability that the old bipolar
system ironically supplied progressively slips away,
we will see more and more scenarios unfold worldwide
where international 'peacekeeping' and 'peacemaking'
units will have to be deployed.
Hungary is one of the countries that has recognized this
future requirement and responsibility, a responsibility
which was heightened after it was host to the last
CSCE Summit in December 1994, and then afterwards
took on the chairmanship of the renamed OSCE. As a
result of this desire to contribute to peacekeeping
efforts, the Budapest Peacekeeping Forces Training
Centre was established.
The Peacekeeping Forces Training Centre
The political decision to create a peacekeeping
force was taken by the former coalition government
led by the Hungarian Democratic Forum, back in the
spring of 1993. Plans were originally for a
brigade-level operation, but, for financial reasons,
this was scaled back for the time being to a
(reinforced) company-level facility. However,
within the Hungarian Defence Forces, the Centre has
the organizational status of a regiment, due to its
importance as a role model for the rest of the army,
and it hopes to eventually expand.
The tender for applicants - since ordinary conscripts
were not to be deployed - was announced at the beginning
of 1994, with personal interviews of applicants, after
screening by committee in May of that year. By the
middle of June 1994, Lt.Col.Zolt n Horv th had taken
command of the Centre, and the officers and NCOs of
the peacekeeping company had been assembled and had
undergone a brief immersion course on the proposed
programme, the available facilities and on the types
of missions envisaged on completion of the
programme. On 1 July, the other ranks joined the
company officially, opening ceremonies took place on
4 July, and actual training began the very next day.
The tender was open to all Hungarian citizens who
had already completed mandatory military service,
which now stands at 12 months. If the individual
passed aptitude, medical and physical tests, he was
granted an interview and, if this was successful, he
would be invited to sign a two-year contract to
serve with the Training Centre. Rank would be at
least Private First Class with pay in-country fixed
at 30,000 Hungarian forints a month before tax
(approximately US$250) - 50 per cent more than the
average junior HDF officer - and earmarked monthly
wages of US$2,000 while deployed abroad. Board and
lodging are provided free.
Each contractee is subject to a 90-day probation period,
has 20 working days of annual leave and is entitled to
leave the base in the evenings without prior permission,
so long as he is back on parade and ready for duty by
the start of the next day's training. This last
privilege of Training Centre privates is unique and
a first amongst HDF units.
In the event of a breach of contract, the trainee is
liable for the refund of training costs up to that date.
In the first company batch, there were only four
drop-outs, all of which occurred in the probationary
phase. Otherwise, probably due to the combination of
good basic pay and realistic privileges, discipline at
the base has been maintained at an unusually high
level, especially when compared to units where the
majority of soldiers are conscripts.
The Peacekeeping Forces Training Centre was designed on
a layered basis, consisting of a permanent Control
Component - permanent staff, logistics branch,
personnel section and finance section; a permanent
Training Component - combat training staff and
technical training branch; a deployable Peacekeeping
Company; and finally, a 12-man reserve/skeleton unit
in case of a need for more ground staff, or
replacements as a result of injuries or accidents.
The permanent staff numbers 24 officers, 20 NCOs and
12 civilians.
The assembled peacekeeping company undergoes a four-month
training period, the first month consisting of
basic/refresher training in drill, marksmanship,
nuclear/biological/chemical warfare protection, and so
on. The next two months are devoted to specific systems
training: on Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs), mine
clearance, etc. The last month is dedicated wholly to the
specialities encountered in the peacekeeping
scenario and specific UN procedures. These
procedures include observation drills, check point
management, searches, interposition and
negotiations. Throughout, this is complemented by
English language training, the number of hours taken
being second only to the number dedicated to
peacekeeping procedures.
As a result of the political consensus in Hungary
concerning integration with Western security bodies, more
than just UN norms are employed. For instance, the unit
has done away with Soviet era abbreviations and
map-marking, favouring instead the more
comprehensible standard NATO versions. It is hoped
such steps will aid any eventual cooperation with
NATO forces, if and when necessary.
Armaments and equipment
As already stated, the Hungarian Defence Force has
to cope with ever-decreasing funds for procurement
and operations. Therefore, the options for
equipping a new HDF unit, possessing a wholly new
military mission, were somewhat limited. The
purchase of completely new equipment was out of the
question, yet it was realized that the existing
resources could be just as effective in the new
role, if a little imagination and ingenuity were
employed. So, apart from the bullet resistant flak
jackets which are issued, the new company does not
have any special weapons or equipment. What it has
at its disposal can also be found in other units of
the HDF.
The Training Centre has two mirror-image
vehicle parks, one in white, for eventual UN/OSCE
deployment, and another in combat colours for
training purposes. Each includes 11 domestically
produced D-944 wheeled APCs and Russian made Ural,
ZIL and GAZ transport trucks. There are also
specialist DAC vehicles for fuel, water, etc., which
are of Romanian origin. For the company commander
there is also a 4x4 jeep.
As seen in former Yugoslavia, the work of the peacekeeper
is at times most threatened by the lone urban sniper,
therefore the Hungarian unit is equipped with the
semi-automatic Russian-made SVD rifle, for
counter-sniper operations. Heavier weapons include
the FAGOT anti-tank missile and the disposable
Russian LAW type rocket-propelled grenade as well as
the IGLA anti-aircraft weapons system and the
Romanian KPVT large machine gun.
Small arms are all Hungarian in origin, being the PA-63
pistol and the AMMSZ assault rifle.
The deployable reinforced company consists of 20
officers, 31 NCOs and 117 soldiers, with a total of 47
vehicles. The make-up of the company is three infantry
platoons, two with three squads and one with two squads,
plus a support platoon with anti-tank and air defence
capability. There is also a logistics platoon, medical
section and the Control elements.
Since 1988, the HDF has been involved in 11 UN or
CSCE/OSCE-type missions, sending small numbers of unarmed
officers with roles as observers. Four of these are
still going on: UNIKOM (Iraq-Kuwait), OSCETG (Georgia),
UNAVEM II (Angola), and UNOMIG (Georgia). The Hungarian
army, therefore, has some experience of the difficulties
involved in peacekeeping missions. However, since
the Centre is the first full-size unit dedicated to
peacekeeping missions in an armed capacity, it has
endeavoured to foster professional relations with
other more experienced peacekeeping bodies. The
Centre itself sees frequent visits by delegations
from NATO and non-NATO Scandinavian countries which
are prepared to assist the Hungarian training
programme. The staff of the Centre have also
visited similar facilities in Norway, Sweden,
Austria, the Netherlands and France, as well as US
units stationed in Germany.
The first batch of recruits completed training towards
the end of last year but due to political complications
with their immediate deployment, they underwent a further
period of sustainment training so as to maintain
levels of operational capability. However,
following recent parliamentary approval, the first
historic operational deployment of Hungarian forces
abroad since the collapse of the Iron Curtain was
carried out in September when a contingent of 41
military police officers (including four women) was
sent to join the Multinational Force and Observers
(MFO) which operate to uphold the Camp David
agreements relating to the Sinai.
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