Youth_Reading Memo

The issue of child soldiers is predominant in conflicts in African nations. This phenomenon produces many considerations for students of security, including strategic, demographic, and moral considerations. The study presented in this article is particularly valuable to gaining a deeper insight into the issue because child combatants are afforded the opportunity to explain their experiences for themselves. This is important because they currently tend to remain trapped within a dual paradigm, viewed either as victims of sinister adults or larger power structures, who would then bear the brunt of moral criticism, or as “vermin” or “barbarians”, often drawn from regional and class issues within the state; in the case of Sierra Leone, the impoverished interior supplied the majority of child soldiers, who were uneducated and poor compared to coastal elites, in part a social structure that is a holdover from colonial times. The problem with such a paradigm is that in both cases the children are more or less denied agency. This denial is done more strongly in the first case, as the critic simply refuses to acknowledge that a child is capable of making a rational decision (which I hold to be at least partly true). But it is also true in the second case, if only because such strong biases against the lower class clouds the critic’s ability to make a nuanced analysis of individual actors and to accept that individual responsibility is at least partly in play, not only structural conditions. I can conceive of no better way to break out of this dangerous and limiting duality than to hear from the individuals themselves. My reflection focuses mainly on the structural conditions elucidated by the under age combatants, which, as the other points out, stand in stark juxtaposition to the ignorance and oversimplification offered by observers. My first observation is on the prevalence of the Green Book offers by Gaddafi. The Maoist guerrilla tactics expounded therein provide a framework for unconventional warfare, including attacks on civilians and economic infrastructure, ambush tactics, and most importantly the promise of a clear political end goal as result, as the strategy involves the construction of a comprehensive insurgency which begins in the most remote regions of a territory and ends with full political control of the state. Such a radical and populist tactic is viable considering the overwhelming view offered by these underage combatants that their main qualm with the status quo was the disruption of their education. Considering the political favoritism showed to certain students afforded the opportunity to study abroad, it is no wonder that those denied such a privilege and subsequently facing a severe disruption of their lifestyle from civil war felt compulsion to engage in the conflict. In addition to these structural causes, the actions carried out by the state military in the 90s, which included special forces’ brutalization of civilians suspected of collaboration with insurgents, appear as a major influence on the decision of youths to engage in the conflict. Again referring back to the Maoist doctrine of raising a guerrilla insurgency, it is very understandable that youths in impoverished rural regions of the country’s interior were so vulnerable to radicalization. Given the limiting of their options in life by the conflict, carried out both by the revolutionary insurgents and the government forces alike, it is clear why the stereotype relating to uneducated and barbarous youths in the countryside was able to gain momentum among elites, though it is equally clear why such a mentality falls disastrously shot of comprehending the overall situation. Following the soft coup that occurred in the capital, the RUF/SL remained excluded from discussions on the provisional council that sought to realign the nation, the emboldening their efforts as a revolutionary insurgent body. Economic factors play a deeper role when we examine the limited pay and inadequate training offered to government forces, suggesting that siding with the insurgents was seen by many not as a politically motivated choice but as a last resort in the face of dire circumstances. In particular the exploitation of diamond mines, chief among Sierra Leone’s economic resources, created a dangerous brew of structural causes in which military targeting of civilians with eh intent of disrupting economic activity become the norm. While viewed from the outside simply as an egregious violation of human rights and conflict norms, the central role of such economic activity to the conflict can deeply inform critical observers as to the agency and motivations of underage conflict participants. Finally, looking especially at the 1994 systematic attacks on these mines, we become fully aware of the interconnectedness of economic activity in the interior to the conflict. The structural position many civilians found themselves in further informs out reevaluation of the rational choices made by these youth combatants. Overall, my reflection centers on two questions. First, how can international organizations, be they within or outside of the African continent, intervene effectively in a conflict with such egregious human rights violations while properly effecting change in the structures that encourage such conflict? Second, to what extent is the over simplified and flawed narrative centered on a false dichotomy of victims and savages responsible for inhibiting effective intervention?