From AWOL to Exile

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Other members of the armed forces have taken the drastic measure of deserting without fleeing the U.S. Navy Petty Officer Pablo Paredes, 23, a weapons-control technician who refused on Dec. 6 to board the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard to help transport 3,000 Marines to Iraq, has been assigned to janitorial work while awaiting a ruling on his conscientious-objector application. Raised in the Bronx, Paredes joined the Navy because he was eager to get an education. Nearly five years later, he says he is ashamed to be a member of the same military responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and claims to be a victim of the "poverty draft," which he says encourages poor people with no career prospects to join the armed forces. The most famous deserter, Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun, who briefly appeared to have been kidnapped in Iraq last June only to resurface in Lebanon unharmed, recently disappeared again, failing to return after a holiday leave from his base in North Carolina, where his pretrial hearing was being held; he is now on the Naval Criminal Investigative Service's most-wanted fugitive list. In what may be the most desperate attempt to avoid going back to Iraq, Army Specialist Marquise Roberts, 23, allegedly had his wife's cousin shoot him in the leg and then told police he had been caught in random crossfire on a North Philadelphia street corner.

Overall, however, desertion is rarer than it has been in quite a while. The number of deserters classified as such by the Army dropped 33% from fiscal 2003 to last year, to 2,436--less than 1% of the total service and the fewest since 1998. One reason, surely, is that the men and women who join the military have a greater sense of duty in wartime. But it is also true that the military has become more efficient at preventing desertions: since 2001, unit commanders, instead of one central authority, have had responsibility for identifying potential deserters and reintegrating those who have gone AWOL. Even as the number of desertions has fallen, the number of prosecutions, while still tiny, has edged up, from 153 in fiscal year 2002 to 171 and 176 in the past two years. Whereas offenders once had a good chance of getting a slap on the wrist and a dishonorable discharge, they now must consider the well-publicized case of Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, 28, of the Florida National Guard, who is serving a yearlong sentence at a military prison for his refusal to return to Iraq for a second stint.

The Pentagon, which did an extensive study of deserters four years ago, says the vast majority tend to be younger soldiers with troubled records who make a break for it because of personal or financial woes rather than moral or political objections. "Often, we have found, soldiers cannot find an honorable way out and just leave their units," says Lieut. Colonel Susan Danielsen, the provost marshal at Fort Bragg Army base. Whatever the reason, discontent in the ranks seems to be starting to show, especially among National Guard and Reserve soldiers, some of whom probably never bargained for the full-time, life-threatening commitment that their service, in many cases, has become. Staff members at the G.I. Rights Hotline, based in Oakland, Calif., say calls from soldiers seeking help have jumped 30% in the past year, to around 33,000 in 2004, almost a third of which were from soldiers contemplating going AWOL.