Although the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) does not seem to be recruiting children in Uganda, women and children are still present in its ranks, and the rebel group is allegedly enlisting young people from neighbouring countries, according to a United Nations report released today. The LRA, which has fought a civil war with the Ugandan Government since the mid-1980s, became notorious during the conflict for abducting as many as 25,000 children and using them as fighters and porters. The children were often subject to extreme violence shortly after abduction, with many girls allocated to officers in a form of institutional rape. 'Owing to the apparent absence of LRA from Ugandan territory, there have been no recent cases of recruitment and use of Ugandan children, or other grave violations against children attributable to LRA,' Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes in a new report to the Security Council. 'However, children and women are still present in the LRA ranks, and there has been no movement on their release,' he adds. In addition, he notes there are reports alleging that the group has been recruiting children from southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR).
At a glance, I'm wondering: what does Ban Ki-moon think the presence of women in the LRA ranks has to do with the problem of child recruitment? While recruiting children is a war crime, enlisting adult women is not.
"The United States has detained approximately 2,500 people younger than 18 as illegal enemy combatants in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay since 2002, according to a report filed by the Bush administration with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child."
The 33 comments, some advocating genocide against those whose children risk their lives to protect kin and country, are here. An interesting and depressing commentary on the state of debate.
"Thirty thousand people used to live here... Now it's a ghost town."
A ghost town where pitched battles are a way of life for over 2 million children... Empty avenues, run-down buildings, and the burned hulks of vandalized cars. A distant crackle of gunfire; these are the streets where much of America's youth is growing up.
This is the virtual world of CALL OF DUTY 4, and it's the latest episode in a disturbing trend to train tomorrow's soldiers today.
How good is it? From the perspective of this old warhorse, all that's missing are the civilians running from the fight (no chance of collateral damage here) and the smell.
Oh, this is just good, clean fun, indeed! Now instead of going to a movie and watching Bruce Willis blow things up and kill people, you and your friends can go online and take matters into your own underage hands.
You can play as US Marines, or as Islamic freedom fighters; Russian or British Special Forces, making this a rather egalitarian simulation.
And although this medium is a great method for deprogramming that pesky First Commandment from the Nation's youth (Thou shalt not blah, blah, pass the grenades, please!) your humble correspondent does have just a few small suggestions to improve upon this virtual arena...
1. ADD CIVILIANS, PLEASE! A few non-combatants running around will add not only realism, but more potential scenarios. There's already the "Vandalism" challenge where you blow up cars for points; we can now add the "Revenge" challenge where you have to mow down at least 5 civilians within 1 minute after one of your buddies gets wasted. Good times! (oh, and for the Spetnaz and Al Qaeda contingent, the challenge is slightly different; it can be completed at any time, but the civilians must be captured with the "Tie Hands" perk, then "executed" with either a bullet in the head, or a knife (off with their heads!) - sure, this sounds a little more complicated than the good-guy version, but hey, nobody said villainy was easy!
2. MAKE THE GOOD GUYS BETTER! Right now the game's too fair - the team sizes are even, and for example, in the "Sabotage" mission, each side takes turns attempting to plant a bomb, or defuse it. Everyone knows only the terrorists plant bombs; Marines would never do that. So, how about scenarios where only the Islamic troops get to plant bombs? In crowds? They score points for total numbers of people killed; Marines can only win by killing all the opposition without sustaining excessive losses - for fairness sake, such scenarios will of course only allow a "handful of insurgents" to fight against a "surge" of US forces.
3. ADD THE MISSING SOUND EFFECTS... The sounds of the various guns, explosives, and helicopters is perfect. Even the sound of footsteps crunching in dry leaves. But something's missing - oh, snap! It's the screaming of injured soldiers. Adding in the pitiful wail of a gut-shot Marine begging for water, or a Russian calling out for his mother would certainly add another layer of realism, and opens up all sorts of game possibilities! You can already commit suicide with your pistol, or booby-trap your dying body with a grenade, but what if you could hope for a buddy to come rescue you if you lay in the street and howled? It would give the opposition a good reason to shoot-to-wound (vice kill) and use you as bait to lure in the do-gooders...
4. CONTRACTORS! Wouldn't life be better if the cities of the damned were patrolled by renegade mercenaries in heavily armored vehicles escorting random diplomats or warlords? Computer-generated, highly accurate warriors who answered any gunfire or suspicious motion with a hail of bullets and grenades? Sure it would...
Well, that's my two cents; of course this new version of the game would be highly recommended as a "fix" for PTSD; use methadone to wean drug addicts off the hard stuff? Why not use interactive gaming to wean combat addicts off violence? Hey, you can beat a 9-year old online instead of the wife and kids in the next room... Three cheers for modernity! Hip-hip-hooray!
Is this an authentic video or a propaganda film by the US military? It doesn't strain the imagination to think of al-Qaeda training youngsters, but the timing of the video's release is certainly interesting. Could it be aimed at drawing Americans' anti-child-soldiers sentiment toward our enemy, and away from the fact that the US military is preparing to prosecute Omar Khadr, a Guantanamo detainee who was only 15 when he was captured on the battlefield. Under US treaty obligations (the US signed the Optional Protocol to the CRC in 2002), Omar Khadr should not be tried as an adult, but this is unlikely to save him.
For what it's worth I'm not sure I agree with either position. The 18-years cut-off point below which it is supposedly unethical to recruit persons is a arbitrary Western construct. In many societies, including areas of Central Asia, young men reach fighting age much sooner, just as young women are married off in their teen years. We may object to this, but the mere evidence of such training doesn't by itself signify a lack of "civilization" on the part of al-Qaeda. I think it's much more important what these young lads are being trained to do.
As for Khadr. His lawyers argue he should not be tried at all. But is that appropriate? If the alternative is to rot in Gitmo without a trial like the other several hundred inmates, I'm not sure Khadr wouldn't prefer to have his day in court.
I took my children to see National Treasure II this Christmas and was dismayed, as I often am, by the extensive military recruitment ads blasted at them in the pre-previews period while we waited for the movie. In this case, it was Three Doors Down's video “Citizen-Soldier” – replete with a National Guard logo during the song, with follow-up blurbs by the guy who asks you to turn off the cell.
Not that the video is itself objectionable (but, see "Kingdaddy" over at Arms and Influence); not that we shouldn’t be proud of our troops or acknowledge their sacrifice, valorize them even, as long as they do their jobs admirably. In fact compared to the quality of much popular music, it’s healthy to see political themes, whatever they are, as an antidote to the sappy mush that keeps our kids' focus on sex and fashion.
Surely this includes subjecting them to military recruitment ads.
So why is the US military permitted to buy ad space in theaters for films with lower than an R rating?
True, the United States has not signed the Optional Protocol on the Convention to the Rights of the Child banning child recruitment. (Oh, right, the US hasn’t signed the framework convention itself either.) But it doesn’t matter, because the Special Court for Sierra Leone has ruled that child recruitment is banned not only in treaty law but in customary law, meaning that so many countries agree its wrong and don’t do it anymore that even those who claim the right to recruit children are breaking international norms.
What would it take to get these ads out of movie theaters, I wonder?
A funny thing happened when I first told some friends and family about this blog and explained the title and epigraph: some were shocked.
This is because the epigraph is drawn from a book that apparently "glorifies child soldiering." [Admittedly, in Card’s Ender’s Game, Ender Wiggin enters “Battle School” at age six and battle itself at age nine, and by age ten is a full-fledged, if unwitting, xenocidaire.] My admiration for the story puzzles people because I run with a pack that tends to lobby against child recruitment as it is practiced by certain countries and rebel groups today.
The easy answer to this question (besides: "duh, it's just a book") is that the Ender series doesn’t so much promote the conscription of children as suggest that children can be and are moral and political actors much like adults.
But this frame does indeed have political implications. These will no doubt be revisited by critics once the Ender’s Game film, now in the screen-writing stages, hits the box office. After all, if the original novel can be interpreted as pro-child-recruitment (debatable), it’s certainly easy to suppose a bastardized film version will.
An obvious “negative” side-effect from a human security perspective is that images of child combatants as heroic political agents could adversely affect international standard-setting against child recruitment. It might do so by problematizing the simplistic stories transnational advocacy groups trade in: stories that tell us children are victims not actors, abductees rather than willing volunteers, and innocents rather than strategic, rational actors.
Then again, isn’t challenging stereotypes also perhaps a good thing?
A political scientist, a conflict analyst and a soldier of misfortune arguing about the gap between national and human security. For more, see our Inaugral Post.
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