Youth_Reading Memo

The readings for the class on youth and violence in African conflicts were of very varying nature. Hoffman´s article reflected on violence as labour and made a case study of Manu River War for this proposed concept. Even after the end of conflict, it is difficult to measure how much the peace and disarmament was successful. Hoffman offers a new way of analysing combatants´ role in conflict. He argues that we often see them as fighting on the grounds of ethnicity and ethnic differences, but this is not always the case. In this particular conflict, rebels were identifying themselves as youth and differentiating themselves this way from elders. They did not hold any perception of enemy really. They even had recognition and identified themselves with their adversaries in fight. Hofmann showed us that ethnic identity but also national identity can be flexible notions. In short, for the youth joining the conflict and fighting violently, the war itself was their aim, their work, their labour. Outside of war, they had very little and unstable options of work. Opportunism and mobility became important, if young person wanted to ´se débrouiller´. According to Hoffman, we can understand conflict in terms of market, violence as a form of labour, and thus, money became the most valuable asset, standing higher than identity or nationality.

            Honwana presented us with a raising voice of youth that is being established in Africa. Frustration of young people on this continent coming from unemployment and lack of civil liberties started to be pushed through series of protests. We say that African youth are experiencing a period of waithood, which means that they are being involuntarily stuck between childhood and adulthood. This is caused by the fact that they are not provided by possibilities to fully become adults as they cannot afform to establish families, build households and became independent from their parents. Youth is therefore not constrained by age but by what a person accomplishes in life. The series of protests were many times successful and even emerged a wave of similar protests across the world. However, as the movements managed to overthrow a regime in the country (=attaining their aim), these young protesters struggled to give their efforts a valuable or reasonable continuity. Regime change is a start in getting a better life, but unfortunately, youth activists and their social movements struggle in formulating what they want. Generally, these young people seem to have a lot of energy in terms of acting in what they are angry about, but they don´t think in advance. I would say that making a regime change is such important step, that it is quite incomprehensible how these people can go for it without considering future steps. We may probably discuss this point in the class, and compare African youth activism with the one that we know in Europe. It would be interesting to find differences, or whether we have such kind of eagerness here as well. If youth makes a step towards change and overthrows an incompetent regime, but does not have a plan of what to do with it afterwards, it is only logical that this shift creates space for re-emergence of traditional politics. And as we could have read, this pushes the young activists back in the corner of political arena.

            Leonardi in his article highlights the importance of connections that exist in African families and how military and politics is perceived by public. Unlike in the article by Hoffman, we observed here that African, or more concretely South Sudanese, youth is not really seeking the violence by itself. Leonardi argues, that young people rather balance in between ´hakuma´ (representing the sphere of politics or military) and ´home´ (social sphere, family, community). Even though that the lines between these spheres have blurred over years, they are still there and youth still holds moral authority of their families. As pointed out, even though the youth tries to balance and not to get incorporated in neither of these spheres on a full scale, at times, young people are captured by the ´hakuma´. Having historical roots, even education of children is perceived, mostly by rural citizens, as stepping into the government sphere. But also, joining the military is the way. This used to happen forcibly, but also voluntarily. The latter was often only a way of how to protect one´s family, to spare its other members. In addition to this, Leonardi pointed out the importance of family in a young person´s transformation to a ´full person´, to an adult. For this, marriage was an important precondition, which should be accompanied by other achievements such as establishing household. But what is important, is the role of family of symbolic nature when it blesses the marriage. In this regard, I found two point a little odd. First, as the marriage is presented as a very serious, almost sacred value, but the author also describes the presence of casual sex in the community among young people and some kind of ´fines´ being paid for it, this does not make much sense to me. Secondly, the author explains that a way for youth to escape capture by either of the spheres (government and home) they aspire to run away to foreign countries. However, as we were presented with a portray of very close relations in traditional African families, which are still being highly valued by the youth, how could getting away and stop caring for their elderly be acceptable solution to their problems?

            The fourth article by Peters and Richards presented us various reasons of why the youth fights and joins military in African conflict. This was realized by nine interviews with former child combatants. This article was particularly interesting for me, as it gave me the sense of really getting into heads of the child soldiers and their perception of the conflict. These cases included young boys and girls who entered fighting voluntarily but also involuntarily by being captured. There were cases of educated and uneducated, or rural and city background. The reasons for them joining the fight voluntarily were varying from revenge (for killed or dispersed family, or interrupted education), to following a partner or family member. There were some, that would return into the war, and others which are glad they are out of it. Some drug addicts, some not. The variety in so many aspects that was given in these interviews was really interesting. The authors however do not make any concluding statements on whether we should perceive the child soldiers as evil individuals or victims. They let us decide. For me, I incline more towards the victims. Often, the children are joining the war forcefully, sometimes not even understanding it. They are deprived of normal life, of loving family, of possibility to make their own decisions on what is right and wrong. I would say that even when joining the combatants voluntarily, children often still don´t quite understand the horrific nature of what is going on around them and that this is not a normal state of affairs. Yes, some claim to enjoy the war. I would assign such claims to childish imprudence. But of course, other colleagues could have different opinions, which would probably be an interesting point to discuss.

            Lastly, Utas and Christensen wrote about ex-militias and their role in politics after the conflict ends, in the case of Sierra Leone. Right after the conflict, ex-militias members find themselves with very specific skills, no job, and being marginalized in the new political order. However, as times went on, these ex-militias became asking for being repaid for their services during war. As the new government was perceived as being the force which pushed militias from power, it is the government that has to repay them, that has the debt. First, in 2007 elections, politicians found a way to use ex-militias. They provided politicians with ´the gift of violence´, simply put, with personal protection before elections. After the elections, the losing party supporters quickly realised that their service is not going to be repaid as their candidate was not successful. However, the winning party supporters found themselves in a very similar situation as well. Some were granted jobs in Iraq, which they still found insufficient. In the campaign for the next elections in 2012, politicians expressed a shift in their cooperation and did not accept the violent services of ex-militias as acceptable. This way, they were trying to please both international community and local citizens who did not like ex-militias positions in supposedly new political order. They therefore decided to silence the violence, which turned to be even a weaker way to make their claimed services to be paid for. To conclude, this article showed us that ex-militias and politics is being reciprocally connected and they are mutually dependent on each other, whether to a greater or smaller degree.