Youth_Reading Memo

When it comes to a war different people develop and maintain different roles. With regards to civilians many may be involved directly in the war as fighters, be it voluntarily or forcibly but they might as well contribute to warfare indirectly through weapons production or distribution and so on. Unfortunately a lot of civilians end up as victims of war when they become homeless, displaced, injured or dead. If I think about the right cause, if there is any right cause at all, why so many civilians get in the war waging I have came across one basic idea. It is the idea of people throughout the war that if they would not take the position of a fighter or a worker in a factory for weapon production someone else would agree upon that position and take the job. To be more concrete this idea is closely tied to that one explained in the readings of Krijn Peters and Paul Richards who conducted various interviews with (former) child combatants in Sierra Leone or in the paper written by Daniel Hoffman.

To put it simply the idea described above can be explain by the fact that many combatants perceive their duty in the war as a work that earns them some living as if they were farmers or vendors but the war change conditions so they are now fighters. That is quite understandable from the rational point of view since everybody needs to earn some money or food, etc. to continue their lives.  In implies in my opinion generally to many people around the world and through different periods of time, considering the World War I and World War II, Balkan wars or nowadays conflict in the Middle East or to states in the African continent. However, what is pretty appalling is that this logic is applied also by children. The fact that children at the age of 9 to 18 and even smaller are capable to position themselves in such a role is really inconceivable to me since the logic to kill someone because it is a “job to do” is rather brutal even for adult soldiers. On the other hand as was shown via the interviews with Sierra Leoneans child soldiers provided by K. Peters and P. Richards there are also other logics that child combatants carry with themselves. These include land, family or local community protection, revenge or survival since if they would no go and kill they would most probably ended up killed. On different occasions they may occupy these from the beginning of the war when they join voluntarily or they might develop them throughout the time they “work” as soldiers when they are captured by commands involuntary. But once again these are also very strong reasons for any children to adopt and make it as their own and most of all to kill for them. Furthermore such logics also carry some emotional, insight meanings that are not usually elaborated by children’s minds as the idea to kill for revenge or to kill to survive. On the other hand fear and threats play certainly a big role if these positions are acquired. That is why it is quite hard to assess these logics when we applied them to children. Could it be described as brave or rather bad and depraved when a child wants to protect family or village?

Either way I agree that all child soldiers are “victims” of military manipulation and war robbed them of normal childhood, chances to education, family members, and their homes. And education is particularly another important issue as in variety of cases presented by the readings children expressed their frustration of loss of opportunity to educate themselves and stated it as the cause to go and fight. It gets me then to another picture in which children are either students or combatants. Some of (former) child soldiers introduced by the readings were attending primary or secondary school before the war came to their villages and many of them would be really like to go back to school again. However, it makes me to put questions there, which are: Why child soldiers admire education that much? What does the whole process of education represent to them?  What does it mean for them to be educated, to attend a school, to graduate? Besides the sometimes rather false impression of connection between being educated and having more opportunities on a job marked it main show that there are only two worlds for children who went to school in the pre-war period. I would describe it as a kind of a psychological dilemma that you either go to school or to war and being able to get back to school means that there is no war, no need to protect family members or their own lives because you are in a way safe. That kind of thinking would pose the education as an opposition to war in child logic which is pretty interesting to me.

Another significant point was brought up by D. Hoffman who wrote in relation the Mano River War: „War was something one does, rather than an activity one specifically undertakes against another” (Hoffman, 2011, p.: 39). This and other readings indicate that there is usually no enemy specified when it comes to youth violence and that rival combatants more or less identify with each other. They often share the same sense of marginality and political exclusion, and hopelessness due to social and economic inequalities produced mainly by corrupted and nepotist governments. In this way they actually share a sense of common enemy. Nevertheless in a war against each other they lack the logic of othering which would distinguish them from the opposing side and works as a kind of bonding procedure against common enemy. I would say this is another case when youth combatants become “victims” of military manipulation and as Hoffman puts it they become available as just in time production. Youth with no purpose in life, probably uneducated and unemployed is very vulnerable but at the same time very “flexible” when it comes to military or rebel commanders who need military “workers” to pursue their goals and interests. It is also the case of a stalemate of young Africans characterized as “waithood” by Alcinda Honwana. On the top of already mentioned despairs of African youth such as political marginalisation, is the sense of being trapped in the period between childhood and adulthood. It means that they are unable to continue their lives towards the state of being fully independent; being able to set up a family and being respected in the community they live in. However, one of the problem that causes the trap in this prolonged childhood might be that African youth is perceived to be able to identify only what they do not want or what they want to change and that is mostly corrupted and dictator leaders, nepotist governments and undemocratic regimes that they live within. On the other hand there is no collective vision on how this would be achieved or what would newly established regime encompassed at all. And that might be particularly the biggest problem which actually disunite the African youth and makes it vulnerable to rebel and military forces.