“suffer the little children”
charukesi April 16th, 2007
I have been reading Where soldiers fear to tread for over a month now. It is not the sort of book you can pick up and breeze through. Anything but breeze through. follow the link and see the picture of the boy with the gun - and this is just one of the disturbing images about the realities of relief work in affected areas that John Burnett presents.
From the chapter, Suffer the little children - there are three hundred thousand children under the age of eighteen fighting in thirty armed conflicts around the world. In Afghanistan, as well as Somalia, thirty to fortyfive percent of the soldiers are children. In Ethiopia, Uganda and El Salvador, almost a third of the child soldiers are reported to be girls. Considered a renewable resource, children have become classic cannon fodder. Emphasis mine - renewable resource - there are more where these came from. Read on only if you have the stomach for it.
Children from four to fourteen are the best soldiers. They are easily trained, they don’t ask a lot of questions, they are less demanding, their notions of right and wrong are easily manipulated, they obey their elders, who themselves may be veterans of only fourteen or fiteen years old, they don’t know the effect of killing, they are inexpensive to maintain because they eat less, and they can easily be turned into killling machines through drugs, alcohol and sheer fear. In Burma they are told that if they cry during a battle, they will be shot. All the things that make children what they are - innocent and curious, obedient and rebellious at the same time - manipulated for purposes of war.
And so it goes on… In Guatemala, children have been sent into mine-fields ahead of advancing troops. Some children, according to Human Rights Watch, have been used for suicide missions. During the civil war in Congo, children not quite into their teens were forced into acts of cannibalism.
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Related reading : A gun as tall as me
