Ishmael Beah: The Separation Of Child Soldiers

Political strife has been always present on an international scale with surges of civil war due to government overthrow, sending nations into unrest. Although not common recently, the ideology of recruiting child soldiers still remains, and the lasting effects on the children are traumatizing. From witnessing the carnage of constant bombshells erupting in the distance to whole families being executed, the images are etched deep into their minds, haunting them even after they are discharged from the armies. Although putting an immediate end to child soldiers is unrealistic, the United States should aid in creating and training members of war-affected countries to run long-lasting Rehabilitation centers due to the unqualified and ineffective

Jeffrey stated that “More than 200,000 children worldwide are still used as child soldiers.” This trend is reportedly present mostly in Africa, as generals need to be able to two people for every person that they lose. Moreover, it’s easy to teach kids to something that they can’t tell is right from wrong. After being trained these newly made warriors are trained to kill while being completely stoned or high on a cocaine-gunpowder mix that is given as a drug to them. The fault does not fall upon those trained to kill, but the trainees that put them up to such an awful

When needed in combat these young kids are given serious drugs to morph their minds into a different kind of thinking. The type of thinking that makes them believe it’s ok. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says “drugs are chemicals that affect the brain by tapping into its communication system and interfering with the way neurons normally send, receive, and process information.” Which is a more complicated

Historically, there have been child soldiers even in the United States. Bugler John Cook, served in the U.S. Army at the age of 15 and received the Medal of Honor for his acts during the American Civil War (“Child Soldiers Are Unfortunately Nothing New”). However, the use of child soldiers has dramatically declined in western civilization during the 20th century. Surprisingly, the recent use of child soldiers in Africa is still seen in media today.

Imagine having to fight in a war you don’t want to fight in, seeing friends and family die all around you, but no matter how far you run you can never escape. Child soldiers in Sierra Leone do not have to imagine this - for them, it is reality. Ishmael Beah, who became a soldier at just age 12, as well as researchers such as Christophe Bayer, Fionna Klasen, Hubertus Adam know too well that the events in the war can never be forgotten. The story Beah told in his memoir A Long Way Gone captures the inhumane events that take place in Sierra Leone and tells of a story that many children have to endure. Sources like Harvard claim “among the 87 war-torn countries...300,000 - 500,000 children are involved with fighting forces as child soldiers.” Many of those children are being forced into the war without any choice at all and having to kill others as well. With this information we’re forced to ask the question: how are these children being affected by the war?

No one wants their childhood to be utterly destroyed or have their family taken away from them in the blink of an eye, without the chance to even say one last goodbye. The odd chance of that happening to us, here in America, is slim to none. In Sierra Leone on the other hand, along with many other parts of Africa, child soldiers are being put to use in armies. In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, the recruitment of child soldiers, African living situations, and the psychological trauma endured by the children deals with the issue of child soldiers.

The use of child soldiers have become a normal contribution to armies, especially in countries such as Africa. Although, countries such as Afghanistan, India, and Libya have been using child soldiers since 2011. According to “Children in Conflict: Child Soldiers,” there has been 36 countries involved since 1998. Something needs to be done about this issue due to the fact that thousands of

Recently, two million children have died over the past ten years due to becoming a child soldier. A huge deplorable development that has extended recently is the increase of child soldiers. Children are constantly being used as soldiers for various reasons. In some countries, there are more child soldiers than they are adults because children are more compliant. Children have been exploited as soldiers because they are being recruited to do a violent action, it is difficult for them to, later on, assimilate back to their lives, and child soldiers are regularly used in developing countries.

Imagine being forced out of your home with a gun to your back. All your muscles are tense making, sure that you don’t make the wrong move. Stepping out of your house, you see the people who invaded your home point a gun at your parents. You scream for them to stop, but they ignore you. You want to do something about it but your body won’t move. Tears roll down your eyes because you know what they're about to do. In a blink of an eye they do it. They kill your parents to make sure that you can never come back to your home. You’re now stuck in the war, someplace you never wanted to be. This is what happened to many child soldiers. They were taken out of their homes and forced into the war. During the war, commanders would force drugs into their

As with any victims of trauma, child soldiers experience post traumatic stress disorders, but they may also experience withdrawal if drugs were used to keep the child soldiers in line. In A Long Way Gone, Beah describes his experience with withdrawal: “My hands had begun to shake uncontrollably and my migraines had returned with a vengeance… No one paid any attention, as everyone was busy going through our own withdrawal stages in different ways” (140) and post traumatic stress disorder: “Whenever I turned on the tap water, all I could see was blood gushing out… Other times, the younger boys sat by rocks weeping and telling us that the rocks were their dead families” (145). The wounds these children gain might be physical as well, as children were often used to clear minefields or as cannon fodder (Child Soldiers

What are child soldiers? Child soldiers are people under eighteen who partake in either a regular or irregular armed group in any way. According to Warchild there are an estimated 250,000 child soldiers in the world and often as a part of their recruitment they are forced to either kill or maim a loved one so that they cannot go back home. In Ishmael Beah’s novel A Long Way Gone (Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) the author recounts his life as a child soldier fighting on the government side in Sierra Leone from age thirteen to sixteen. This paper will be attempting to answer the questions of why certain armed groups use children, why it is wrong to do so, and how people are taking a stand to stop it.

Visualize men with guns breaking down your door and pointing them at your family. Now imagine these men taking your children, forcing them to serve in their military force. In only an instant, your children are gone and you are left with no knowledge of the fate of your kids. As terrifying and seemingly impossible as this imagined scenario may be, it is a stark reality for many families in third world countries. Where families fear not if their children will be taken but when those doors will be broken down, and their screaming children will be dragged out through the front door. The parents know that they cannot not stop these men even if they attempt to. Yet, in an unreasonable twist becoming a child soldier is not only a gamble with the reaper, but it is also a chance to survive. Enough food to survive is more or less guaranteed, while back at home the odds of surviving are insurmountably against them. Becoming a child soldier is a double edged sword that is neither ally nor enemy to the children. These children are abused and coerced into staying with the men who ripped them from their families. Those that attempt to escape or resist are torn down brutally in order to be rebuilt, while those that embrace it sacrifice their humanity and risk the onset of psychologically damaging PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Militias and rebel forces, strained on man power, turn to child soldiers as a cheap and readily available replacement source. Trained to become war hardened

27% of child recruits in the Sierra Leone civil war who were interviewed by Theresa Betancourt’s research team had killed or injured others during the war. 77% saw stabbing and shooting close-ups. “We went from children who were afraid of gunshots to now children who were gunshots”, a dispirited information reported by Ishmael Beah in the article EX-Child soldiers: Shooting became just like drinking a glass of water from CNN. Children learn from adult’s actions. Kids such young ages are more likely to be influenced by the violent actions from their commanders and adult fighters. In effect, they would become vicious human beings.

These are the words of a 15-year-old girl in Uganda. Like her, there are an estimated 300,000 children under the age of eighteen who are serving as child soldiers in about thirty-six conflict zones (Shaikh). Life on the front lines often brings children face to face with the horrors of war. Too many children have personally experienced or witnessed physical violence, including executions, death squad killings, disappearances, torture, arrest, sexual abuse, bombings, forced displacement, destruction of home, and massacres. Over the past ten years,

Children recruited into the armed forces in these countries are forced by their commanders to commit atrocities against other soldiers and villagers. They may also suffer through punishments themselves. Commanders have been known to force their child recruits to witness and/or commit abuses against their own families or captured prisoners (“Coercion and Intimidation of Child Soldiers to Participate in Violence” 1). For instance, child soldiers recruited into Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army have been forced to tie their parents to trees and club them to death or be killed themselves (Taylor 1). Physical