Sinai Troops to lose combat exemption, despite increase in danger
Sgt. Christopher Babas, a Maintenance NCO and Reno Nevada native from the 1st Support Battalion, Task Force Sinai, serves as a rifleman during the Multinational Force and Observer’s annual Remembrance Day ceremony, Nov. 11, on North Camp in Sinai, Egypt. Babas and the Soldiers deployed to the Sinai Peninsula, joined their multinational counterparts to celebrate the national holiday which is commonly observed by members of the UK. (U.S. Army Photos by: Sgt. Thomas Duval, Task Force Sinai Public Affairs)
When the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) took to the Sinai Peninsula in 1979 after the Camp David Accords between Israel’s Begin and Egypt’s Sadat, brokered by Jimmy Carter, it seems like bad duty. Over the years, as the two countries became less tense, and the U.S. increasingly grew closer to Egypt post-Sadat, while a shitty time in the desert, was at least tolerable.
By 1995 in fact the U.S. battalion serving as Task Force Sinai became increasingly staffed by reservists drawn from the National Guard and ARES.
Now, although taking losses and things getting hotter since Egypt went to crap in the past few years, it seems the Army’s bean counters are moving to hit some Joes right in the breadbasket over a tax exemption.
From Army Times
Thanks at least in part to increased security concerns brought about by threats from groups connected to the Islamic State group, they do so at camps with blast-proof bunkers, HESCO barriers and fencing designed to repel rocket-propelled grenades.
Multiple attacks have been launched against service members in the region in recent months; a convoy leaving the MFO’s North Camp in September hit two improvised explosive devices, injuring four soldiers
Despite these dangers, Egypt is not considered a combat zone, a designation set by presidential executive order. Until recently, many soldiers with the task force still received the combat-zone tax exemption by participating every month in combat water survival tests held in the Red Sea at the MFO’s South Camp. The Red Sea is covered by the exemption.
A review of pay policy for soldiers in the task force requested by U.S. Army Central did not address added security concerns. Instead, it found that the swim training “is being conducted as a personal convenience merely to entitle a Soldier to CZTE” and that its participants should not be eligible for the exemption, according to a Nov. 13 memo from the Army’s G-1 to the headquarters of 1st Theater Sustainment Command, the Fort Bragg, North Carolina-based parent unit of the task force.