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Child's play in deadly earnest
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Child?s play in deadly earnest
>From The Statesman Newspaper, dated April 17, 2001
By ERIC SILVER
ISLAMIST rebels send boys in their early teens to plant bombs and
carry out surprise attacks in their guerrilla campaign against the
secular Algerian government. A young woman witness testified that all
the killers who raided her village were boys under 17. Some of them, who
looked about 12, decapitated a 15-year-old girl and played catch with
her head.
This atrocity was reported to 110 delegates from 14 countries in West
Asia and North Africa, who met earlier in April in the Jordanian capital
of Amman, in the fourth of a series of regional conferences under the
umbrella of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.
They urged all states to outlaw the use and recruitment of boys and
girls under 18 as soldiers in their armies or as fighters in rebel
forces. The coalition estimates that more than 300,000 boys and girls
under 18 are currently fighting in armed conflicts in more than 30
countries worldwide. Most are 15 to 18, but many are recruited from the
age of 10. Girl soldiers, it says, are particularly at risk of rape,
sexual harassment and abuse.
The campaigners explain: ?The widespread availability of modern
lightweight weapons enables children to become efficient killers in
combat. Child soldiers are often used to commit atrocities against their
own families and communities. While many children fight in the
frontline, others are used as spies, messengers, sentries, porters,
domestic helps and sexual slaves. Children are often used to clear
landmines.?
The problem is said to be most critical in Africa and Asia, but children
are also used as soldiers in the Americas, Europe and West Asia. ?While
some children are recruited forcibly, others are driven into armed
forces by poverty, alienation and discrimination,? the coalition
reports.
Myanmar heads the list, with an estimated 50,000 child soldiers fighting
on the government side and with ethnic insurgents. Child soldiering is
not restricted to the developing world. The British army takes more than
40 per cent of its annual intake from 16-18 year olds, and is resisting
attempts to raise the minimum age.
Rory Mungoven, the coalition?s Australian coordinator, told me: ?Britain
is one of the few industrialised states to send under 18s into combat
situations. They are policing in Northern Ireland and Kosovo. They
fought in the Gulf War, where two of them were killed.?
Like Britain, India and its South Asian neighbours still have a minimum
recruiting age of 16. The physical and psychological legacy of child
soldiering does not end when they become adults.
Rachel Brett, a British Quaker, estimates that at least one million
people are scarred. ?When we talk about a figure of 300,000 child
soldiers,? she said, ?we?re talking about those currently participating
in armed conflicts. But when you?re 18 and no longer a child soldier the
effects don?t go away. There are very protracted conflicts in places
like Afghanistan, Myanmar and Colombia in which generations of children
have been involved.
?These are people who have never known anything other than a conflict
situation. The whole framework of their identity is tied up with being
a soldier. They don?t have any idea of what their identity might be,
what a society might look like, outside that.?
When it was suggested that adults must suffer the same alienation and
trauma, Ms Brett replied: ?You have to go back to why we distinguish
between adults and children. We recognise that children have particular
qualities ? physically, mentally, emotionally, cognitively ? that are
not fully developed.
?A malnourished child, for instance, will suffer from the problems of
malnutrition throughout his life. In the same way, you can stunt the
development of a child by denying it access to education at crucial
stages of development. In the same way, you can distort the emotional
and moral development of a child in a way that is much harder to do with
an adult.
?You can train an adult that in certain circumstances it?s permissible
to kill, but in other circumstances it is not. Children don?t have the
developed capacity to make the distinction between circumstances where
they?re told it?s permitted to kill, to torture, to chop off limbs and
rape, and peacetime circumstances where these things are not permitted.
They become killers, rather than people who at certain times have
killed.?
There were no ex-soldiers at the Amman conference to testify to their
ordeal, but Eva Ahlen, a Swedish field worker with Save the Children,
talked to me about her experience in a refugee camp in the West African
republic of Guinea. There are 500,000 refugees in Guinea from a civil
war in neighbouring Sierra Leone. They include hundreds of girls who
have been used as sex slaves.
?One 17-year-old girl,? Ms Ahlen recalled, ?had been a sex slave for the
rebel forces. She was very beautiful, very proud, married with two small
children. Her husband, whom she married earlier when she was 15, had
disappeared. She came to us completely traumatised. She was suffering
from several sexually transmitted diseases. She was pregnant.
?I could only talk to her for a couple of minutes, then when the
questions got too close to home, she drifted away. She couldn?t face
it.?
The camps also house dozens of boys, aged 15 to 18, who had been in
combat. ?They had been given drugs by their commanders,?? Ms Ahlen said.
?Sometimes they could be very nice, very sad, then suddenly they could
turn very aggressive.
They would go off into town to get drugs. We tried to get them into
school, into a normal social life. We tried to persuade the community
that these kids were victims, not perpetrators.
?The most important thing was to trace their families and reunite them.
Then they can get protection and support. We also support the families.
They don?t understand the boys? traumas. We have to convince the boys
and their families that what they feel is absolutely natural.? Another
Save the Children staffer, Shirin Persson, worked with refugees on
Pakistan?s border with Afghanistan. Boys, she testified, join the rival
Islamist forces as part of their loyalty to tribe or clan. ?Where the
tribe is interested in supporting one side or the other,? Ms Persson, a
Sri Lankan Muslim, explained, ?the whole group gets drawn in. The boys
find it harder to leave than to join.
Clockwise from top left: They have a guilty feeling that they haven?t
completed their mission. ?They have been brainwashed by religious
teachers to believe that you complete it when you give up your life and
become a martyr.??
(The author, The Statesman?s Jerusalem-based correspondent, was recently
in Amman.)
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<center><b><u><font color="#3333FF"><font size=+2>Child?s play in deadly
earnest</font></font></u></b></center>
<p><font color="#FF0000"><font size=+1>From The Statesman Newspaper, dated
April 17, 2001</font></font>
<p><font size=+1>By ERIC SILVER</font>
<p><font size=+1> ISLAMIST rebels send boys in their
early teens to plant bombs and carry out surprise attacks in their guerrilla
campaign against the secular Algerian government. A young woman witness
testified that all the killers who raided her village were boys under 17.
Some of them, who looked about 12, decapitated a 15-year-old girl and played
catch with her head.</font>
<p><font size=+1>This atrocity was reported to 110 delegates from 14 countries
in West Asia and North Africa, who met earlier in April in the Jordanian
capital of Amman, in the fourth of a series of regional conferences under
the umbrella of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.</font>
<p><font size=+1>They urged all states to outlaw the use and recruitment
of boys and girls under 18 as soldiers in their armies or as fighters in
rebel forces. The coalition estimates that more than 300,000 boys and girls
under 18 are currently fighting in armed conflicts in more than 30 countries
worldwide. Most are 15 to 18, but many are recruited from the age of 10.
Girl soldiers, it says, are particularly at risk of rape, sexual
harassment and abuse.</font>
<p><font size=+1>The campaigners explain: ?The widespread availability
of modern lightweight weapons enables children to become efficient killers
in combat. Child soldiers are often used to commit atrocities against their
own families and communities. While many children fight in the frontline,
others are used as spies, messengers, sentries, porters, domestic
helps and sexual slaves. Children are often used to clear landmines.?</font>
<p><font size=+1>The problem is said to be most critical in Africa and
Asia, but children are also used as soldiers in the Americas, Europe and
West Asia. ?While some children are recruited forcibly, others are driven
into armed forces by poverty, alienation and discrimination,? the coalition
reports.</font>
<p><font size=+1><b><font color="#FF0000">Myanmar</font></b> heads the
list, with an estimated <b>50,000 child soldiers</b> fighting on the government
side and with ethnic insurgents. Child soldiering is not restricted to
the developing world. The British army takes more than 40 per cent of its
annual intake from 16-18 year olds, and is resisting attempts to raise
the minimum age.</font>
<p><font size=+1>Rory Mungoven, the coalition?s Australian coordinator,
told me: ?Britain is one of the few industrialised states to send under
18s into combat situations. They are policing in Northern Ireland and Kosovo.
They fought in the Gulf War, where two of them were killed.?</font>
<p><font size=+1>Like Britain, India and its South Asian neighbours still
have a minimum recruiting age of 16. The physical and psychological legacy
of child soldiering does not end when they become adults.</font>
<p><font size=+1>Rachel Brett, a British Quaker, estimates that at least
one million people are scarred. ?When we talk about a figure of 300,000
child soldiers,? she said, ?we?re talking about those currently participating
in armed conflicts. But when you?re 18 and no longer a child soldier the
effects don?t go away. There are very protracted conflicts in places like
Afghanistan, <font color="#FF0000">Myanmar</font> and Colombia in which
generations of children have been involved.</font>
<p><font size=+1> ?These are people who have never known anything
other than a conflict situation. The whole framework of their identity
is tied up with being a soldier. They don?t have any idea of what their
identity might be, what a society might look like, outside that.?</font>
<p><font size=+1>When it was suggested that adults must suffer the same
alienation and trauma, Ms Brett replied: ?You have to go back to why we
distinguish between adults and children. We recognise that children have
particular qualities ? physically, mentally, emotionally, cognitively ?
that are not fully developed.</font>
<p><font size=+1> ?A malnourished child, for instance, will suffer
from the problems of malnutrition throughout his life. In the same way,
you can stunt the development of a child by denying it access to education
at crucial stages of development. In the same way, you can distort the
emotional and moral development of a child in a way that is much harder
to do with an adult.</font>
<p><font size=+1> ?You can train an adult that in certain circumstances
it?s permissible to kill, but in other circumstances it is not. Children
don?t have the developed capacity to make the distinction between circumstances
where they?re told it?s permitted to kill, to torture, to chop off limbs
and rape, and peacetime circumstances where these things are not permitted.
They become killers, rather than people who at certain times have killed.?</font>
<p><font size=+1>There were no ex-soldiers at the Amman conference to testify
to their ordeal, but Eva Ahlen, a Swedish field worker with Save the Children,
talked to me about her experience in a refugee camp in the West African
republic of Guinea. There are 500,000 refugees in Guinea from a civil war
in neighbouring Sierra Leone. They include hundreds of girls who have been
used as sex slaves.</font>
<p><font size=+1>?One 17-year-old girl,? Ms Ahlen recalled, ?had been a
sex slave for the rebel forces. She was very beautiful, very proud, married
with two small children. Her husband, whom she married earlier when she
was 15, had disappeared. She came to us completely traumatised. She was
suffering from several sexually transmitted diseases. She was pregnant.</font>
<p><font size=+1> ?I could only talk to her for a couple of minutes,
then when the questions got too close to home, she drifted away. She couldn?t
face it.?</font>
<p><font size=+1>The camps also house dozens of boys, aged 15 to 18, who
had been in combat. ?They had been given drugs by their commanders,?? Ms
Ahlen said. ?Sometimes they could be very nice, very sad, then suddenly
they could turn very aggressive.</font>
<p><font size=+1>They would go off into town to get drugs. We tried to
get them into school, into a normal social life. We tried to persuade the
community that these kids were victims, not perpetrators.</font>
<p><font size=+1> ?The most important thing was to trace their families
and reunite them. Then they can get protection and support. We also support
the families.</font>
<p><font size=+1> They don?t understand the boys? traumas. We have
to convince the boys and their families that what they feel is absolutely
natural.? Another Save the Children staffer, Shirin Persson, worked with
refugees on Pakistan?s border with Afghanistan. Boys, she testified, join
the rival Islamist forces as part of their loyalty to tribe or clan. ?Where
the tribe is interested in supporting one side or the other,? Ms Persson,
a Sri Lankan Muslim, explained, ?the whole group gets drawn in. The boys
find it harder to leave than to join.</font>
<p><font size=+1>Clockwise from top left: They have a guilty feeling that
they haven?t completed their mission. ?They have been brainwashed by religious
teachers to believe that you complete it when you give up your life and
become a martyr.??</font>
<p><i><font size=+1>(The author, The Statesman?s Jerusalem-based correspondent,
was recently in Amman.)</font></i>
<p> </html>
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