"A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah
In
this shocking memoir by a former child soldier, Ishmael Beah tells the
harrowing story of fighting in Sierra Leone's brutal civil war, which lasted
from 1991 until 2002. Ishmael
Beah, writes about his traumatic experience and recovery.
"Children at War" is the first comprehensive examination of a disturbing and escalating phenomenon: the use of children as soldiers around the globe. P.W. Singer, an internationally recognized expert in modern warfare, introduces the brutal reality of conflict, where children are sent off to fight in war-torn hotspots from Colombia and the Sudan to Kashmir and Sierra Leone.
Mr. Singer retells stories from U.S. soldiers having to fight children in Afghanistan and Iraq to juvenile terrorists in Sri Lanka to Palestine, the new, younger face of battle is a terrible reality of 21st century warfare. Indeed, the very first American soldier killed by hostile fire in the “War on Terrorism” was shot by a fourteen-year-old Afghan boy.
Mr. Singer explores this phenomenon, how and why children are recruited, indoctrinated, trained, and converted to soldiers and then lays out the consequences for global security, with a special case study on terrorism. With this established, he lays out the responses that can end this horrible practice. What emerges is not only a compelling and clarifying read on the darker reality of modern warfare, but also a clear and urgent call for action.
by
Peter Eichstaedt
“First Kill Your Family" is told
through the voices of those who have suffered, this illuminating expose
examines how a forgo tten region of one of Africa's most promising
nations-Uganda, dubbed "the pearl" of Africa by Winston Churchill-has
been systematically destroyed by a bloody, senseless, and seemingly endless war
that has gone largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. For the past 20
years, the Lord's Resistance Army has ravaged northern Uganda and has been led
by the reclusive Joseph Kony, a former witch doctor and self-professed spirit
medium. Through the large-scale abduction and manipulation of children, Kony
transformed his army into an efficient killing machine that has murdered nearly
100,000 and displaced two million people. Kony utilized the society's pervasive
belief in witchcraft to instill cult-like convictions in his fighters. This
insightful analysis delves into the war's foundations and argues that, much
like Rwanda's genocide, international intervention is needed to stop Africa's
virulent cycle of violence.
In
conflicts around the world, there is an increasingly popular weapon system that
requires negligible technology, is simple to sustain, has unlimited versatility
and incredible capacity for both loyalty and barbarism. In fact, there is no
more complete end-to-end weapon system in the inventory of war-machines. What
are these cheap, renewable, plentiful, sophisticated and expendable weapons?
Children.
Roméo Dallaire was first confronted with child soldiers in unnamed villages on the tops of the thousand hills of Rwanda during the genocide of 1994. The dilemma of the adult soldier who faced them is beautifully expressed in his book's title: when children are shooting at you, they are soldiers, but as soon as they are wounded or killed they are children once again.
"Soldier Boy" by Kelly Hutton
A true story from the Uganda Civil War
Child Soldiers In Africa" by Alcinda Honwana
"Children of War. Child Soldiers as Victims and Participants in the Sudan Civil War"
by Christine Ryan
"Child to Soldier. Stories from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army"
by Opiyo Oloya
