Why Children Make Good Warriors
DID YOU KILL? “No.”
DID YOU HAVE A GUN? “Yes.”
DID YOU AIM THE GUN? “Yes.”
DID YOU FIRE IT? “Yes.”
WHAT HAPPENED? “They just fell down.”—World Press Review, January 1996.
THIS chilling conversation between a social worker and a child soldier in Africa reveals the confusion in a young mind struggling to come to terms with the past.
In recent years, in 25 countries, children under the age of 16 have joined in the fighting. During 1988 alone, some 200,000 children were taking an active part in wars. Because they have been manipulated by adults, child fighters are also victims.
Their Value as Soldiers
In the past, when armies fought with spears and swords, a child had little chance of standing in battle against an adult wielding a similar weapon. But this is an era of lightweight weapons. Today, a child equipped with an assault rifle—a Soviet-made AK-47 or an American-made M16—is a match for an adult.
These weapons are not only light but also easy to use and maintain. An AK-47 can be stripped and reassembled by a ten-year-old. These rifles are plentiful too. Some 55 million AK-47s have been sold. In one African country, they sell for as little as $6 (U.S.). M16 rifles are also abundant and cheap.
Apart from being able to wield assault rifles, children are valued soldiers for other reasons. They do not demand salaries, and they rarely run away. Moreover, children have a deep yearning to please their elders. Their sense of right and wrong is overshadowed by the desire to be accepted by whatever liberation group or guerrilla army has become their “family.”
Many of them also tend to be fearless. Explained a military observer in West Africa: “Since [children] don’t seem to share the same understanding of death as older soldiers, they are less likely to surrender in hopeless situations.” Boasted a Liberian boy, who bore the name Captain Killing Machine: “When the big men turned and ran, we small boys stayed to fight.”
Ironically, though boys make good soldiers, they are usually viewed as the most expendable. During one war in the Middle East, companies of child soldiers were ordered to lead the way through minefields.
Recruitment and Conditioning
Some children join armies or rebel movements because they seek adventure. Also, when danger threatens and families are in disarray, a military unit offers a sense of security and becomes a substitute family. Says the United Nations Children’s Fund: “Children who have grown up surrounded by violence see this as a permanent way of life. Alone, orphaned, frightened, bored and frustrated, they will often finally choose to fight.”
Other children join armies because there may appear to be no better option. Sometimes, when food is scarce and danger threatens, joining an army may seem to be the only way to survive.
Children may sometimes see themselves as fighters for social justice, religious beliefs, or cultural identities. In Peru, for example, children who have been forced to join guerrilla bands undergo long periods of political indoctrination. Frequently, however, that is not needed. Said Brian Milne, a social anthropologist who studied child soldiers in Southeast Asia: “Kids don’t have a doctrine or ideology. They are merely sucked up by one side or another and put to work.”
Still other children are forced to join. In some African wars, factions raid villages to capture children, who are then made to witness or take part in the torture and execution of their own families. Sometimes they are forced to shoot their parents or to slit their throats. Once terrorized, the boys are led to terrorize others. These brutalized youngsters often commit acts of cruelty that even seasoned adult soldiers would balk at.
The Return to a Normal Life
It is not easy for such children to adapt to a life without violence. Said the director of a children’s center in a West African country: “The kids we’ve dealt with are all traumatised to various degrees. They’ve raped, killed and tortured. Most of them were given alcohol or drugs, mostly marijuana, but sometimes heroin. . . . You can imagine the terrible effect such things have on the minds of children, some of them as young as eight or nine.”
The situation is the same in neighboring Liberia, where tens of thousands of children have spent their childhood terrorizing the countryside. It is not easy for teenage majors and generals to give up the status and power afforded them by an AK-47. A resident of Somalia said: “If you have a gun, you have life. No gun, no life.”
Frequently, child fighters cannot return home because of reprisals or rejection by their family. Said a child counselor in Liberia: “Mothers will say to us, ‘Keep him. We don’t want this monster in our house.’”
Though many children have adjusted to living peaceful lives, doing so requires a great deal of love, support, and understanding from those around them. It is not easy for either the children or their families. A social worker in Mozambique explains: “Compare a life of being able to take whatever you want, to tell others what to do, to your life when you come back to the village. Especially if you are 17 years old and can’t read and have no skills. You are banished to a life of boredom. It is pretty hard to have to go back to having other people tell you what to do and start the first grade again.”
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Thirteen-year-old Anwar lives in Afghanistan. A veteran of six battles, he killed for the first time during the seventh. He shot two soldiers at close range and then prodded the bodies with his rifle butt to make sure they were dead. When asked how he felt about the incident, Anwar seemed puzzled at the question. “I was happy because I killed them,” he said.
During the same battle, Anwar’s fellow soldiers captured four enemy troops. The captives were then bound, blindfolded, and shot. How did Anwar feel about that? The young fighter cocked an eyebrow and answered slowly and deliberately, as though addressing a simpleton. “I was happy.”
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A soon-to-be-released prisoner in West Africa was handcuffed, but the military commander had lost the keys. The commander solved the problem by ordering a boy soldier to cut off the hands of the prisoner. “In my dreams I still hear that man’s screams,” says the boy. “Every time I think about him, I regret it.”