Child Soldiers of Sierra Leone

Child Soldiers of Sierra Leone

Childhood is supposed to be a time for innocence, the only time in a person's long life where their cares are allowed to be limited to the enjoyment of life and to the education they receive in school. This is supposed to be the time where they are allowed to indulge in the activities that bring them joy and to develop into the adults that they will one day become. It is not the time when they are supposed to be forced into the world of the adults and to perform actions which will prohibit any chance they have of becoming normal individuals as they age. However, for a large number of very unfortunate young people, childhood is cut short by the ambitions and desires of adults in their community. There are factions of children soldiers throughout the world (Denov & Maclure 2007,-page 243). From the continents of South America to Asia and Africa, adults have taken it upon themselves to disrupt and retard the natural development of children and turn them from innocent versions of humanity into disciplined, unquestioning murder machines, willing to commit any atrocity at the behest of their leaders. It is believed that at the present there are more than three hundred thousand child soldiers throughout the world (Capodalglio 1999). In the country of Sierra Leone in Africa, children are being recruited and then indoctrinated as soldiers in the guerilla militaries of rebels. Young people, instead of focusing their energies on things like math and learning to read are instead being taught how to fire guns, to load weapons, and to kill other people in the service of an uncaring authority figure. The children of this country are forced into the adult world of violence and death long before they have reached puberty. Children as young as seven are being taught to pick up weaponry and to fire at the enemy, whoever that may be. Understanding this phenomenon and how to eradicate it, everyone must be made aware of how children become soldiers, what they do in this role, and how they might recover.

History:

Sierra Leone has a history of violence starting from before World War II. In the 1930s, a rebellious group was started by I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson called the Youth League which focused on the education and acquisition of rights for young people throughout the country (Rosen 2005,-page 67). This group, comprised of the nation's most intelligent people such as teachers and other educated people was focused on the creation of equal rights for all members of the nation, no matter their social position or class. The Youth League was one of the first to utilize underage citizens to spread the ideas of the rebellious faction and to immerse younger people about a certain ideological vantage point. After the imprisonment of Wallace-Johnson, the Youth League was suppressed and it is believed that the failure of this peaceful governmental change led the groundwork for the subsequent ultra violence of later rebellious groups. It became apparent that the government was unwilling to listen to dissenting attitudes and would do whatever was deemed necessary to silence opposition. This episode also taught subsequent factions that the youth of Sierra Leone could easily be coerced or indoctrinated into a system of belief antithetical to the policies of the government, a lesson which would feature heavily in the lives of later generations.

These rebellious groups, going as far back as the early 1990s, were trying to incite a civil war which was intended to overthrow the present government of the nation of Sierra Leone. During that period, the group known as the Revolutionary United Front or RUF began a campaign against the government wherein they would systematically attack many towns and villages of the country (Zach-William 2006,-page 122). There, the adults and children, men and women as well, would be systematically murdered by members of the rebel army. Those who were allowed to live would often find themselves at the mercy of their aggressors. Young people, like Ishmael Beah, who were fortunate enough to escape the initial attack on their village would eventually find themselves forced into recruitment when starvation and the cruelty of the elements demanded that they seek some kind of refuge from nature (Beah 2007). Through a systematic exclusion of moral foundation and an inclusion of violence and drug use, adults compel young children and teens to commit acts of violence against others until the child has little or no emotion whatsoever about their actions.

The conflicts following the year 2000 have had more to do with friction between groups in Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia but were still an extension of the first Civil War period. The conflict with Liberia was more to do with that nation's own governmental difficulties. This neighbor of Sierra Leone also has a history of using children as a form of armed forces during their guerilla warfare. There have been widespread reports of children being "recruited" in Sierra Leone and then taken across the border and into Liberia, where they are made to perform military actions against enemies in that location (Doek 2009). They are an extension of the earlier Civil War of the 1990s, but in an expanded form. Rebels who determined that they would be less able to overthrow the government of Sierra Leone tried to create a community where they would be the government in control and would not have to answer to the official government or its leaders.

How Children Become Soldiers:

International law forbids the recruitment or employment of people under the age of fifteen into any military, governmental or rebel, but that has not deterred many factions from continuing the practice. Although child soldiers are utilized around the world, it is widely acknowledged by international groups that Sierra Leone is the worst offender in this avenue. Most of the children involved in the guerilla or rebel militaries are recruited by force into becoming soldiers. Very few actually volunteer or go at all willingly into the service of these groups. Almost all of the child soldiers come from poverty-stricken areas of Sierra Leone. In some instances, impoverished adults will actually sell their children into the army or other forms of slavery, such as the sex trade (Capodaglio 1999). A large percentage are physically dragged from their homes and kidnapped by revolutionaries. Their parents are very often murdered right in front of them. In some instances, the children themselves were forced to kill their own parents, lest they and their siblings also lose their lives. The traumatic psychological effect of this is obvious; after taking the lives of their own family members, there would likely be nothing the child soldiers would subsequently be unwilling or unable to do (Richardson 2006). Any sense of morality or right and wrong that the child had developed up until this point in life would be eradicated by this action. An additional reaction to such a murder would be that there would be no authority figure in the child's life to compete with those of the revolutionaries and the child would have no choice but to rely and thus become loyal to the person or persons who had destroyed their lives.

After this kidnapping, a systematic brainwashing occurs wherein the children are eventually indoctrinated into believing themselves acting on the side of good and moral right. The revolutionaries would instruct the children about their political viewpoints. Children would be taught protest mantras and the oral history of the rebels. For most, this would be the only form of education they would receive while in the military. The only form of entertainment would be when the rebel leaders would have the children watch violent films featuring rebellious heroes such as Rambo. They were thus taught that to be heroes, they must fight against the government because the authority was in the wrong. Thus committing violent acts were heroic and following the demands of the rebel armies was the best way to serve the moral right. An example of this comes from a report by BBC News in 2005 wherein a young former child soldier was interviewed. He said:

I was a small boy, 12 years old, and I was going to school when the rebels captured me and a lot of my friends. They caught my mother and father, and then killed my father in my presence. Then they went with us to the bush to go and train how to fight (AK-47).

This is not a rare occurrence. Most child soldiers of Sierra Leone and other countries around the world have or will have experienced something similar to this young man's "recruitment" into the army.

Activities of Child Soldiers:

There are many different jobs which are given to child soldiers. They can be trained in relatively safe occupations such as by being trained as cooks or healers of the rebellion factions, preparing meals and treating wounds. Or they could be trained as reconnaissance members and spies, forcing the children to infiltrate and observe enemies in order to allow the rebel authorities to strategize. Such jobs would put the children in potentially the most dangerous and deadly of the jobs available. Failing to perform tasks to the approval of superiors, whether that be fetching firewood, carrying ammunition, or committing a murder, would invariably lead to severe punishments. There were even reports of young girls being killed for failing to cook properly (Denov 2005,-page 3). Among the most common forms of punishment was the severing of limbs by someone who had committed an infraction to the displeasure of rebel leaders (Zack-William 2001,-page 73). Pictures from the area abound which show young boys and girls, even some infants, who are missing hands or feet because they have upset their superiors. The children are most often trained as violent soldiers, who take up the first wave in armed interaction, leading to a high percentage of casualties, many of them fatalities. The children were taught not that they were killing enemies, but that they were defending themselves against death by another group of soldiers.

According to recovered child soldier Ishmael Beah, there became a point where the violence to which the children were exposed becomes an everyday matter. This was one of the goals of the rebel leaders, to acclimate the children to murder to the point where their actions were mundane and ordinary rather than harrowing. He writes on one fight with another child, "I wasn't sure whether he was unconscious or dead…No one screamed or cried during the fight. After all, we had been doing such things for years and were all still on drugs" (Beah 2007). Children were taught that they would either kill or be killed. Death and murder were not something to be mourned or concerned about. It was as normal as eating or sleeping, just a part of life.

Drug use is rampant among factions which utilize child soldiers. By providing large quantities of alcohol and other narcotics, children become more easily coerced into actions which they might otherwise not agree to. The secondary purpose of this drug introduction is to make the children addicted to whatever drugs are being offered (Denov 2005,-page 4). In this way, they become dependent upon the adults as providers of the narcotic to which they are addicted. If they do not follow the orders of their military superiors then they will be injured or killed, which works as a deterring factor at first but once the children become immune to the violence and no longer fear death, this is no longer a convincing argument. However, the potential refusing of drugs and subsequent withdrawal will be an effective way of keeping the child soldiers subservient and obedient to authority. The drugs also have the effect of subduing the children and encouraging them to commit acts that they may not do sober. Among the more atrocious things committed by rebel leaders is the massive insertion of narcotics into children's bodies shortly before an attack. According to a report by the British Broadcasting Channel (BBC) (2001):

One boy, 12-year-old Osman, has a scar deep into his forehead. The rebels often use a machete to cut into the skull. They then fill the wound with drugs and tape it over. High for days, the children are sent to the front and fight, little knowing, understanding or caring what they are doing (Sierra page 1).

This kind of inhumanity is commonplace for children reared in Sierra Leone. No one is left without either physical or emotional scars from the actions of the guerilla rebels in the African nation.

Gender has not excused any child from military service. Often, young girls are forced into the militia along with their male counterparts. Unlike the boys, however, little girls are not only forced to kill, but they are also forced to perform sexual activities both with young boys and with adult men, serving as "solder wives" and an incentive for young men to perform even more heinous acts (Wessells 1997,-page 2). All girls who have been interviewed have reported that they were sexually violated as a matter of routine. Those who were forcibly paired off with ranking officers of the rebel army were often in better shape than their unrestricted counterparts. These girls, also referred to as "bush marriages" or "AK-47 marriages" would be able to acquire more food and better shelter (Denov 2005,-page 4). Many of these girls then became pregnant but because of the squalid conditions and lack of food, very few of these infants survived longer than a few days and in most cases the mother died as well. Those children that did survive would find themselves part of the vicious cycle of the rebel army. As soon as a child was old enough to hold a weapon, they would become part of the militia. Grenades were given to the very young because they required the least amount of coordination to be set off.

How Child Soldiers Can be Returned to Civilization:

In 1995, UNICEF had become involved in the issue of child soldiers. Reporter Mike Wessells said that he had visited Grafton Camp in Sierra Leone and investigated these children who had been demobilized. According to Wessells (1997):

Many of the boys, ranging from nine to 16 years of age, had killed people as they fought in a civil war that [had been] paused with a fragile cease-fire in 1995. The camp director said that when the youths had been given drugs -- most likely, amphetamines -- while soldiering, they "would do just about anything that was ordered." Some, [the director] added, were proud of having been effective killers (page 1).

Wessells was most amazed to see that only after a relatively short period with the people of UNICEF, the children, who had just a short time before been blood-thirsty assassins, were now playing with one another in cooperative play. At the core of each of these children was an innocent who had only committed acts of violence because they had not been taught either to have a moral compass or to dare to question the orders of their elders.

For children who are able to escape from army life, there is no guarantee that they will be able to return to a normal existence. Many of them are forced to reenter the military either through force or through lack of opportunities. Some children have reported that when they escaped and returned to their families, the adults of the villages would kick them out either through fear that the army would come looking for the children or from fear of the danger that a killer child posed to the villagers (Richardson 2006). Females are especially marginalized when they return to their homes. Since they have been sexually violated, the girls are considered unclean and no longer worthy of familial life.

Even after the issue of child soldiers became internationally known, there were still guerilla factions which employed the practice. By 1997, children had once again begun training to kill others on the orders of adults. A large percentage of the people in the guerilla army of Sierra Leone are under the age of 18 (Wessells 1997,-page 1). Documentation exists to prove that child soldiers are being used in much of Africa and frequently in the Middle East. Recently, children have been used as human shields for those committing acts of violence in the Gaza Strip, leading to further international attention to the crisis of child soldiers throughout undeveloped countries of the world.

The issue of children as soldiers is still very much alive even though the world is aware and modern technologies allow for more documentation of the practice. In June of 2007, the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, was indicted for illegally recruiting soldiers under the age of 15 to fight in Sierra Leone (Doek 2009). The Child Rights Act of June 2007 made it illegal in Sierra Leone to use people under the age of 18 in any military endeavor. In the same year three other former guerilla leaders were found guilty of war crimes, including the usage of child soldiers during the Civil War of Sierra Leone (Shepler 2005,-page 199). This was the first time in history that anyone had been convicted of the forcible use of children in violent action by a militia, setting a precedent that will hopefully impact the practice throughout the world. Special prosecutor for the case David Crane was quoted as saying, "This particular judgment sets the cornerstone forever -- those who recruit children into an armed force are criminally liable" (Roy-Macauley 2007,-page 2). It is hoped that the knowledge that the use of child soldiers will be considered as a crime against humanity will deter the practice both in Sierra Leone and throughout the rest of the world.