This article was published in the
July 2005 volume of the
SWJ Magazine.
A book review and commentary on:Children at War
By: P.W. Singer
New York: Pantheon Books, 2005,
hardback, US $25.00, 288pp.
ISBN: 0-375-42349-4
Modern warfare is changing. No longer the sole
domain of state forces, contemporary conflict increasingly involves a
range of non-state actors: terrorists, jihadi bands, gangs,
criminals and warlords. These actors fight among themselves and against
states for profit, plunder and turf. Failed states and “lawless zones”
provide their base but they increasingly threaten stable regions. These
groups contribute to the barbarization of warfare, frequently operating
outside the norms of war and the rule of law, abandoning the long-held
prohibitions against terrorism, attacks on non-combatants, torture,
reprisal, and slavery, and the use of child soldiers.
“Double Trouble,” a nine-year old boy soldier,
exemplifies this reality. After being observed participating in an orgy
of violence directed against a Khran militiaman in a 1996 battle in
Monrovia, “Double Trouble,” a member of Charles Taylor’s NPFL (National
Patriotic Front of Liberia), is asked by a journalist how old he is.
His response, “old enough to kill a man.”
He is representative of the changing demographics and patterns of
conflict; his militia replaced his family, while violence replaced
school. Political instability and access to lightweight, easy to fire
weapons have made war accessible to children.
The Situation
Worldwide, over a half million children (under
18)[2]
participate in armed forces, paramilitary and non-state forces. An
estimated 300,000 of these child soldiers,[3]
some younger than 10 years old, are involved in over 30 conflicts. In
fact separate studies in Southeast Asia and Central Africa have placed
the average age of child soldiers at just under 13.[4]
They are often “recruited” or abducted and then manipulated to
participate in brutal violence directed at times against their own
communities and families. Both girls and boys are exploited to
participate in acts they frequently are unable to comprehend. The girls
often are required to provide sexual as well as combat services.
While juveniles have been features in past
conflict, notably the Hitler Jugend at the end of World War II, they
were never primary actors. This is changing radically. Global
instability, broad pools of children available for recruitment,
continuing, often multigenerational conflict, the proliferation of
cheap, easy-to-use weapons, and weakened state structures fuel the trend
of child military labor. Warlordism and “lawless zones” that fuel
conflict allow warlords and terrorists to exploit disaffiliated children
as low-cost, expendable troops. As a result, endless supplies of
hungry, gullible and malleable child warriors as a result replace
ideology and traditional military leadership.
Ten-year-old troops wield AK-47s; teenagers
become suicide bombs in this global juvenile jungle. Abducted,
purchased, and even handed over by their own families, child fighters
have been used as suicide bombers in Sri Lanka and Palestine, guerillas
in Colombia and Afghanistan. Singer recounts an interview with a West
African child, setting the stage for his inquiry: “I was attending
primary school. The rebels came and attacked us. They killed my mother
and father in front of my eyes. I was ten years old. They took me with
them. They trained us to fight. The first time I killed someone, I got
so sick I thought I was going to die. But I got better. My fighting
name was Blood Never Dry.”[5]
This account is emblematic of the changing nature of war.
P.W. Singer investigates this change in his book
Children at War. Building upon his prior works on child soldiers and
evolving conflict, Singer provides an essential primer on the escalating
global phenomenon. Singer’s book is divided into three parts: Children
at War, The Process and Results of Child Soldiers, and Responding to the
Child Soldier Problem. In addition, the text contains an appendix: the
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the
Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, and endnotes. Much of his
narrative finds its foundation in interviews with former child soldiers
(from Colombia, Lebanon, Liberia, Kashmir, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Sri
Lanka, and the Sudan), humanitarian aid workers, and current and
ex-soldiers.
Children at War
In the first segment, Singer demonstrates the
widespread scope of child soldiering. He illustrates this new warrior
cohort through research, first-hand accounts, and testimony.
We were frightened because we were young children
and we didn’t know anything of the army. Even on the shooting range,
when they tell you to fire, you’re always very scared. For me to
overcome that fear, I had to kill someone at the training camp. They
brought someone to me one night when I was on duty guarding an
entrance. It was a child, whose face they covered, and they told me he
was a rebel, an enemy, and I had to kill him. That’s exactly what I
did…G. age ten
He uses the case study of Charles Taylor in
Liberia as an exemplar. Notably, in the Liberian conflicts up to 70
percent of the forces used by Taylor and his adversaries were children,
amounting to nearly 20,000 child combatants. An escaped convict from
Massachusetts, Taylor fled to Liberia and became a warlord through the
exploitation of thousands of child soldiers, running a criminal enclave
known as Taylor Land sustained by $300 million a year’s worth of illegal
trade. Eventually, his child army became the center of gravity of a
force that took over the government of Liberia. Taylor demonstrated
that child warriors can enable gangs to become low-cost, combat
effective forces—forces that are able to regenerate despite a lack of
popular support and devaluation of ideology. Personal profit and
plunder can become the fuel for on-going conflict.
A similar outcome is found in Joseph Kony’s
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA operates in northern Uganda.
With about 200 adult followers, the cult-like gang has assembled a force
that at its height consisted of 14,000 fighters, many of them children.
The LRA uses all the tools of exploitation found in child armies:
abduction, enslavement, beatings, rape and sexual assault to make escape
and reintegration into society difficult if not impossible. The LRA has
been able to stay in the field for over a decade.
In this section, Singer also recounts US
encounters with child soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first US
serviceman killed in the Afghan conflict, Sergeant First Class Nathan R.
Chapman, a green beret, was killed by an Afghan child on 4 January 2002;
the child warrior threat continued when Sergeant First Class Christopher
Speer was killed by a fifteen year old al-Qaeda fighter from Canada.
Later on in Iraq US forces encountered child soldiers in Saddam
Hussein’s forces, some as young as ten years old. In addition, at least
five underage fighters suspected to be members of al-Qaeda or the
Taliban have been imprisoned in the US military prison at Guantanamo
Bay.[7]
The spill-over effects of children in conflict
are great. Frequently, the children are enculturated into violence and
continue to fight in one conflict or another until dead or
incapacitated. Consider the case of Burma’s (Myanmar) Karen National
Liberation Army which fractured into a number of groups including “God’s
Army,” led by a pair of notorious 12 year-old twins, Luthur and Johnny
Htoo. The threat is not limited to boys; girls are also increasingly
deployed as child soldiers, with 30% of child-using forces deploying
girls under 15. These girls with guns are found in 55 countries. In 27
of these they were abducted, in 34 they saw combat, in virtually all
they are subject to sexual abuse, rape, and enslavement serving as
“soldiers’ wives” and providing sexual services to their “leaders” and
fellow fighters.
The Process and Results of Child Soldiers
In the second part of Singer’s text, he recounts
the causes of this child exploitation. He describes the children
employed as war labor as a “lost generation,” occupying a global
security situation where conflict, economic pressures, extreme poverty
and hunger, failed states, and “lawless zones” prevail. The impact of
the AIDS pandemic and the surplus population of orphans, at risk of
disease, hunger and crime, provide fodder for the recruitment—forced or
otherwise—of child soldiers. The result: children can make the fiercest
soldiers, emerging as the new warriors in the 21st century wherever wars
rage.[8]
As Singer notes, a desperate global security
situation fuels the use of child soldiers, “[D]esperate and excluded
children constitute a huge pool of labor for the illegal economy,
organized crime and armed conflicts.”[9]
Warlords, gangsters and terrorists recruit from this listless mass. In
Africa alone a third of all children are malnourished and by 2010 this
will rise to one-half. This emerging generation of disconnected
children is the ranks from which child soldiers are borne. Abduction
and forced recruitment are standard, as recounted by Singer.
I was abducted during “Operation Pay Yourself, “
in 1988. I was 9 years old. Six rebels came through our yard. They
went to loot for food. It’s called “jaja”—“get food.” They said, “we
want to bring a boy like you—we like you,” My mother didn’t comment; she
just cried. My father objected. They threatened to kill him. They
argued with him at the back of the house. I heard a gunshot. One of
them told me, “let’s go, they’ve killed your father.” A woman rebel
grabbed my hand roughly and took me along. I saw my father lying dead
as we passed… A, age fourteen.
Such abduction is often followed up with killing,
rape, and beatings. The “inductee” complies or dies. Even voluntary
recruitment (roughly two-thirds of child soldiers volunteer or are
enticed to join with some kind of “inducement”) is colored by poverty,
hunger, displacement, the need for a sense of belonging or revenge.
Indoctrination follows. This includes coercion of various types,
“brainwashing” or psychological conditioning, including forced
participation in ritualized killing, or participation in atrocity, and
occasionally “branding” like slaves to provide a disincentive for
escape. Typically this results in dissociation, where for example in
the case of a child formation in Sierra Leone, the child fighters called
themselves “cyborgs” to denote their status as killing machines with no
feelings.
Training follows. Singer gives the example of
the Tamil Tigers (i.e. LTTE who also use child suicide bombers) who
break the links with families, regulate sleep and food, emphasize drill,
indoctrination and weapons training, all the while extolling the virtues
of risk-taking. This results in more capable and daring warfighters
than typical adult recruits. When action emerges, the result is
effective combatants that operate with audacity and impunity. Higher
casualties, enhanced confusion, and the presence of fighters that
conventional forces are conditioned not to harm result in serious
threats to civilians and conventional forces when child fighters are
present.
Child fighters deploy with a sense of
fearlessness, take undue risks, have a diminished sense of mortality and
are unable to fully weigh the consequences of their actions.
Frequently, these factors are reinforced by the use of alcohol and
drugs. Children fighters can become the fiercest of fighters, in essence
becoming audacious killing machines operating in small units under the
command of a small number of adults. Their numbers and firepower are
often directed into mass charges of human-wave attacks with the children
viewed as expendable.
Part three also includes a brief section on
“Children of Terror” where Singer recounts the use of child terrorists
by al-Qaeda, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the ELN and FARC, and the
LTTE. In a supporting op-ed piece, Singer notes that “Groups such as
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have pulled children into the
terrorism game. More than 30 suicide bombings since 2000, according to
Time magazine, have been carried out by children, and multiple juvenile
al-Qaeda terrorists have been detained at the U.S. military prison at
Guantanamo Bay in the special “Camp Iguana” facility.”[11]
In an earlier, yet related essay, Singer notes that children as young as
13 have been deployed as suicide bombers in the Palestinian conflict,
while child suicide bombers have been used in Sri Lanka, and Colombian
guerillas used a nine-year-old boy to bomb a polling place in 1997.[12]
Child terrorism has also crossed the gender gap where women and girls
are employed by the LTTE to circumvent the scrutiny and body searches of
male security personnel.
Children serve in a variety of roles in these
fourth generation armies: infantry shock troops, raiders, sentries,
spies, sappers, and porters.[13]
They are able to man “child-portable,” easy to handle weapons systems in
an extremely effective manner, even when poised against adult troops.
For example in 1997 the LTTE’s Leopard Brigade—an elite child formation
primarily comprised of orphans—surrounded and killed about 2000 Sri
Lankan army commandos, a loss that demoralized the whole army since
children routed their elite vanguard.[14]
Responding to the Child Soldier Problem
The use of child soldiers violates international
law and is the result of the willful, systematic erosion of the ethical
injunctions against the use of child fighters. The two Additional
Protocols of 1977 regarding international and internal armed conflicts,
respectively, impose the obligation on parties to conflict to “take all
feasible measures in order that children who have not attained the age
of fifteen years do not take a direct part in the hostilities.”
The Additional Protocols also call upon parties to refrain from child
recruitment. In addition, the 1988 Rome Statute for the International
Criminal Court makes using child soldiers a war crime. Human Rights Law
also weighs in. The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)
sets 15 as the minimum age for going to war. Yet in many African
nations beset by internal conflict, for example, typically one-half the
population is under the age of 15, making child participation in
warfighting likely.
In 2000, The General Assembly adopted the “Optional Protocol to the
Convention of the Rights of the Child,” raising the age of legal
participation in war to 18.
In the third segment of his book, Singer explores
prevention and responses to child soldiers. He observes, unfortunately
quite rightly, that the use of child fighters results from deliberate
choices by actors ready to thwart the rule of law in the pursuit of raw
power, plunder and personal profit. The loss of these norms turns the
practice of the last four millennia of warfare on its head. Despite a
strong customary and codified objection in International Humanitarian
Law to proscribe the use of children in combat, the practice is on the
rise.
Singer closes his discussion by recounting the
dilemmas found in fighting children, reviewing the various types of
political action available to counter the threat, and the challenges of
demobilizing, rehabilitating, and reintegrating former child soldiers
back into society.
While active child soldiering was normally
outside the scope of war, child soldiers are a current threat to
conventional forces. Facing child soldiers can demoralize troops,
expose them to great danger and have negative results on public
perception. New, area-specific rules of engagement (ROE) that factor in
the presence of child fighters, when their action is likely, must be
crafted. These ROE must be supported by intelligence assessments that
factor in the cultural situation and potential for facing child
soldiers. Failure to do so could have severe tactical consequences.
The reluctance to face child soldiers is a cultural artifact that must
be tempered to ensure both force protection and mission success. A
child bearing an AK-47 or suicide bomb poses a threat regardless of
age—a reality police have long faced with gang members and violent
juvenile offenders.
Singer observes that effects-based operations at
the tactical level may assist. Often adult leaders are the center of
gravity for child soldiers. Eliminating the adult leadership and
countering child swarms by holding them at a distance and applying
indirect fire in an effort to shock and disperse may be effective. He
also rightly notes that non-lethal weapons options may provide an
additional choice for neutralizing and disrupting the threat in an
effective and humane fashion. Additionally, force protection efforts
should require children to be scrutinized to the same degree as adults
(not all children are threats, but all require scrutiny). Finally,
Singer notes that the aim should be to convince child soldiers to stop
fighting and seek rehabilitation and reintegration into society. Thus,
Singer’s triad for military operations against child soldiers can be
summarized as Intelligence, Force Protection, and Effects-Based
Engagement (including non-lethal weapons, shaping the opposition). In
all cases post-conflict debriefing and treatment opportunities should be
made available to units exposed to child warriors.
Conclusion: Assessing Singer’s Contribution and the Future
Singer adeptly documents and assesses a
significant facet of current and future warfare. Child soldiers today
are a reality, and they are likely to continue to plague future battle
and opspace. Child soldiering is no longer the exception seen at
Newmarket, with powder monkeys and drummer boys. Child warriors are on
the front line and can be expected to remain a major factor in future
warfare and terrorism. Fighters as young as 10 years old can deploy
“child portable weapons” yielding firepower equivalent to a Napoleonic
era regiment. While that may have little effect on modern mechanized
forces, the impact on peacekeeping, counterinsurgency, and constabulary
operation—not to mention civilians—could be devastating.
Failed states and “lawless zones” fuel a bazaar
of violence where warlords and martial entrepreneurs fuel the
convergence of war and crime. Some call this post-modern situation
fourth generation warfare (4GW). It is the realm of the non-state
(criminal) soldier, where predatory actors target civilians to steal,
rape, and pillage for a range of cause—political or otherwise. This
endless conflict that Singer calls a “merry-go-round” of violence is
fueled by and exploits child soldiers.
Children at War effectively describes this
environment. Peter Singer’s book is essential reading for both military
and counterterrorism practitioners. Military officers and senior NCOs
engaged in peace enforcement and peacekeeping, non-combatant evacuation,
constabulary and counterinsurgency operations should consider Singer’s
book a primer for the threats they will face. Others engaged in small
wars, military police, intelligence, civilian police deployed to
constabulary operations (CIVPOL), and humanitarian aide workers and
diplomats will find this useful, as will members of the police and
security services responsible for counterterrorism duties. Reading this
text should be a required element of “intelligence preparation for
operations” in all failed states and “lawless zones.”
Singer’s Children at War is compelling, if not
disturbing. I found the exploitation of children as warriors and
terrorists strikingly similar to the dynamics of street gang violence in
Los Angeles, where bands of youths seeking turf, belonging and power use
violence as a salve for their powerlessness to intimidate and dominate
“failed communities.” As gangs morph and migrate into transnational
criminal bands, I see the potential for a deadly convergence between
third generation gangs[18]
with child soldiers. Thus, Singer provides us a warning about what is,
as well as the potential for a more violent future that may come to be.
John P. Sullivan is a researcher and
practitioner specializing in intelligence, counterterrorism, counter
insurgency and urban operations. He is a lieutenant with the Los
Angeles Sheriff’s Department, where he is assigned as
co-officer-in-charge for strategic operations of the Los Angeles
Terrorism Early Warning Group (TEW). His current research focus is
civil-military interaction and emerging threats at the intersection of
crime and war.
Corinne Dufka, “Children as
Killers,” Roy Gutman and David Rieff (Eds.), Crimes of War:
What the Public Should Know, New York: W.W. Norton & Co.,
1999, pp. 78-79.
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