Since the end of the cold war relatively few wars have been fought between national armies. “All but three of the major armed conflicts registered from 1990-2000 were internal.” Granted, internal conflicts may seem less threatening and may be largely ignored by the international media but the pain and destruction caused by such hostilities are devastating all the same. Millions of people have died in internal conflicts. In fact, during the last two decades nearly five million people lost their lives in just three war-torn countries- Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. In the Balkans, fierce ethnic fighting cost the lives of almost 250,000 people and prolonged guerrilla warfare in Colombia which has left 100,000 dead.
Nowhere is the brutality of civil war more evident than in its effect on children. During the last decade over two million children lost their lives in civil conflict, according to the UNHCR. Another six million were wounded. A growing number of children have been turned into soldiers. Says a one-child soldier: “they gave me training. They gave me a gun. I took drugs. I killed civilians, lots. It was just war….. I only took orders. I knew it was bad. It was not my wish.”
Many children in countries where civil war has become a way of life are growing up without ever having known peace. They live in a world where dialogue takes place through the mouths of guns. 14-year old Siaka says, “So many people have been killed. No longer can you hear the singing of birds, only the sound of the children crying for a lost mother or father, a brother or a sister.” What fuels the fires of such cruel civil wars? Ethnic and tribal hatred, religious differences, injustices and political turmoil are all significant factors. Another root cause is greed-greed for power and greed for money. Political leaders often motivated by greed, stir up the hatred that fuels the fighting. A report published by SIPRI states that many participants in armed conflict “are motivated by personal gain.” The report adds, “Greed is manifested in many forms from the large-scale diamond trading by military and political leaders to village-pillage by youth with guns”. The ready availability of cheap but lethal weapons adds to the carnage. About 500,000 deaths a year, mainly women and children are attributed to so called, small arms. In one African country an AK-47 assault rifle can be bought for the price of a chicken. Sad to say in some places rifles are becoming almost as plentiful as these domestic birds. Worldwide there are now an estimated 500 million small arms and light weapons- 1 for every 12 persons alive. In low tech but brutal civil wars 90 percent of the casualties are civilians rather than combatants. “It is clear that increasingly, children are targets not incidental casualties of armed conflict.” Says Graca Machel, the United Nations Secretary General’s Expert on the impact of armed conflict on children.
Rape has become a military tactic. In some war torn areas, insurgents rape virtually every adolescent girl found in the village they overrun. The goal of such rapists is to spread panic or to destroy family ties. Famine and disease follow in the wake of war. A civil war means that few crops will get planted and harvested, few if any medical services will function and little international aid will get to the needy. One study of an African civil war revealed that 20 percent of the casualties died from disease and 78 percent from hunger. Only 2 percent died as a direct result of the fighting.
On an average every 22 minutes someone loses a limb or his life by stepping on land mine. There are an estimated 60 million to 70 million land mines scattered about 60 countries. People are forced to flee their homes. Around the world there are now 50 million refugees and displaced persons half of them children. “We are only 12 years old. We can’t influence politics and the war but we want to live, we wait for peace. Will we live to see it?” say a class of fifth grade school children at a Liberian refugee camp. “We want to attend school and to visit our friends and family without fear of abduction. I hope the government will listen. We want a better life. We want peace.”
These poignant words convey the heartfelt hope of young people who have suffered for years as a result of civil strife. Their only desire is to live a normal life. But concerting hope into reality is no easy task. Will we ever live to see a world without war? In recent years, there have been international efforts to resolve some civil wars by pressuring opposing sides to sign a peace accord and keeping forces to effect such agreements. But few nations have the money or the inclination to police faraway countries where deep-seated hatred and suspicion make any agreement between warring factions fragile at best. Not infrequently, the flames of conflict flare up again just a few weeks or months after a cease-fire is signed. As the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute points out,” peace is difficult to achieve when combatants have the will and capacity to continue to fight.” Ultimately, though it is hatred and greed rather than bullets and rifles that fuel the flames of war.
Covetousness or greed is a fundamental cause of war and hatred frequently leads to violence. To uproot destructive feelings people need to change the way they think. They need to be educated in the ways of peace. However at present we live in a world that teaches adults and children not the value of peace but the glory of war. Sadly, even children are being trained to kill. At the age of 14, Lawrence became a decommissioned soldier. He was only ten years old when rebel troops captured him and trained him to fight with an AK-47 assault rifle. As a forced recruit he went on food raids and burned down houses. He also killed and mutilated people. Today Lawrence finds it difficult to forget war and to adjust to civilian life. Patrick another child soldier also learned to kill and was reluctant to turn over his weapons. He said. “If they tell me to go away without my gun, I don’t know what I will do, how I will eat.”
More than 300,000 child soldiers both boys and girls are still fighting and dying in the endless civil conflicts that plague our planet. Explained one rebel leader, “They obey orders; they are not concerned about getting back to their wife or family; and they don’t know fear, ‘yet these children want and deserve a better life. In developed countries the appalling situation of the child soldier may seem a world away. Even so, many Western children are learning to wage war in the comfort of their homes. Take Jose from southern-eastern Spain as an example. He was a teenager who enjoyed practicing martial arts. His price possession was a samurai sword that his father had bought him for Christmas and he loved video games, especially violent ones. On April 1, 2000, he emulated in real life the aggression of his screen hero. In an orgy of violence, he killed his father, mother and sister. With the very sword his father had given him. “I didn’t want my parents looking for me”, he explained to the police. Commenting on the effects of violent entertainment author and military officer Dave Grossman noted; “we are reaching that stage of desensitization at which the inflicting of pain and suffering has become a source of entertainment, vicarious pleasure rather than revulsion.”
We are learning to kill and we are learning to kill and we are learning to like it. Both Lawrence and Jose learned to kill. Neither set out to be killers but training of one sort or another warped their thinking. Such types of training, whether for children or for adults, sows the Seeds of Violence and War.
« return.