Posts Tagged ‘Africa’
child's drawing of a young soldier
by Max Easterman
Dead at 17.
Geoff Gray was found dead on guard duty at the British Deepcut Army Barracks in Surrey. In the past 20 years, children younger than 16 have fought in at least 16 wars in 25 countries. AP/Wide World Photo
Training Begins at Age 16
At the Army Foundation College outside Harrogate, in Northern England, more than a thousand 16- and 17-year-old recruits are trained every year. More than two platoons of junior soldiers recently put through their paces in the gym gave up civilian life only 14 weeks ago. Some 860 recruits have signed up for a variety of reasons: the chance to travel, earn better pay than their friends working civilian jobs, and the opportunity to get a military education as well as a civilian one.
“It’s better than working in McDonald’s,” said one recruit.
There’s little evidence that the youngsters are joining up just to fight for Queen and Country, but you won’t find that in most British kids today. So the Army can’t afford to be too choosy if it hopes to pull in the 4,000 or so junior soldiers it needs every year. They can sign up as early as 15 3/4 and then begin training on their 16th birthday. Seventeen-year-olds fought in the Falklands War and Kosovo, but they’re no longer deployed on active duty until they’re 18.
“If we don’t start recruiting at this early age…they’ll be lost to us.”
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“…you get very naive teenagers getting hold of dangerous drugs and swallowing them in large quantities, just so they’ll be detected, it’s very, very dangerous.”
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‘It Gets Us a Better Army’
Major Dickie Hamzat, the company commander of these young recruits, said the Army couldn’t survive without them.
“I think it gets us a better army,” he said. “They can be molded, even though the decisions they have to make are quite daunting for them, initially…. If we don’t start recruiting at this early age, these people will get into long-term relationships, will look at other aspects of their life in a settled job…. They won’t look to the Army for a career, and they’ll be lost to us.”
The British Army has for years taken advantage of the fact that young working-class men and women prefer to get a job rather than an education. Critics say there is little difference in motive between what Britain and some Third World governments do: recruit teens because they’re easier to shape into fighters.
The Army rejects that argument, noting that parents must approve the child’s decision to sign up.
Colonel Mike von Bertele, the Army’s head of employment, said the British Army offers young people a way out of poverty and social deprivation. He argued that it would be irresponsible to leave willing 16-year-olds in the streets, where they’re more likely to cause trouble.
“I think it really stems from the switch to being an all-volunteer army and getting away from conscription … and so traditionally we’ve taken a large number of people into the Army, who are low educational achievers at school, who are effectively thrown out of school at the age of 16or even 15with very few employment prospects ahead of them,” von Bertele said. “We know that if we can get them young enough before they settle into low-paid work, for example, we can do a lot with them.”
Recruits include “low achievers” who have significant educational or social problems, von Bertele said.
“It’s one of the great things about the Army, it does take those people and it does an awful lot with them,” he said. “It gives them an education, it gives them a skill, it gives them a trade, and gives them a huge sense of self-worth.”
Tragedy in the Barracks
Critics say the Army promises junior soldiers education and job skills, but often doesn’t mention they may have to serve as long as 12 years if they take skills training courses. When the junior soldiers realize this, the consequences can be disastrous, according to Gwyn Gwyntopher, a counsellor with the soldiers’ advice center “At Ease.”
“I’ve had clients who’ve broken their own right arm … others have attempted suicide,” she said. “One quite common thing is, when they’re on leave, they get hold of drugs. They plant them in their own bed space. They’ve then gone out to a phone box and made an anonymous call to the Army, saying that they’ve got drugs, in the hope that the Army will kick them out. A lot of youngsters try to get hold of drugs just before they’re having a medical, knowing that it’ll be detected. And this is quite frightening, because where you get very naive teenagers getting hold of dangerous drugs and swallowing them in large quantities, just so they’ll be detected, it’s very, very dangerous.”
The crisis some junior soldiers find themselves in has been tragically highlighted at the Deepcut Barracks in Surrey, near London.
While sexual harassment is a problem throughout the Army, the junior soldiers have been particularly vulnerable at Deepcut. And no fewer than four juniors have been found shot dead there. The Army claims they’re all suicides, but their parents don’t think so. They attribute the deaths to a culture of bullying by fellow soldiers.
Geoff Gray was 17 when he was found dead on guard duty, a week after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. He was shot twice through the head. In spite of that, the Army still claims it was suicide. His father, also called Geoff, lives in Hackney, East London, and believes his son would never have taken his own life.
Geoff and Diane Gray hold a picture of their son Geoff.
Suicide?
Geoff and Diane Gray of London hold a picture of their son Geoff, one of four soldiers to have died at the British Deepcut Army Barracks in Surrey. The Army says the recruitsincluding Gray who was shot twice in the headcommitted suicide. AP/Wide World Photo
“There’s Bullying and Sexual Harassment”
“We’ve got a situation where I think Deepcut is run on a two-tier level,” Gray said. “We’ve got the officers living in their own little world, and then we’ve got the noncommissioned officers who are actually running the camp. Some are out of control, and we’ve got a situation where there’s bullying and sexual harassment, and it isn’t being picked up by commissioned officers.
“If an officer had told Geoff to do something that wasn’t of the norm, he would say something. He would probably say ‘no sir, I can’t do that because of “A” or because of “B.” My real worry is that Geoff paid the ultimate price of bullying … that he didn’t accept what he was being told to do and he’s paid the price for it.”
The parents are demanding a full public inquiry into what happened at the Deepcut Barracks; the Army and the government have refused. They have, however, conceded that bullying and sexual harassment are rife in the British Army, and have now drawn up an action plan to monitor noncommissioned officers and stamp out these activities.
But the wider point is undeniable: junior soldiers in Britain face some of the same kinds of problems as child soldiers everywhere. If you give young people guns and live ammunition, sooner or later, they use them.
( _http://www . warchildren . org / young_guns.html )
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A Tale of Two Brothers
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault
The war ended in 2002, but the legacy of child soldiers continues. The struggle for reconciliation in the new Angola includes brothers Feliciano and Jerimias Salamungo, who fought on opposing sides until they met by chance after a 22-year separation.
Feliciano Salamungo was 11 years old when he was forced to join the fight.
It was a day like any other. Feliciano was walking home from school, as oblivious to the scorching Angolan sun as he was to the men lurking in its shadows.
“In the middle of the way, I met a UNITA patrol. I was taken by them,” Feliciano recalled. “I was frightened. I was not expecting anything like that. Suddenly, there were troops asking me to join the group.”
Feliciano had no choice but to followfor the next two decades.
“We were obliged to walk a long way,” he said. “We reached unknown areas. We didn’t have any idea where we were living. It was living in the middle of the bush, like a strange land.”
That got stranger all the time.
“You never have a permanent home. You are here today. Two hours later, you move. Sometimes you have to sleep under trees. Sometimes you have to sleep in rivers, in water.”
‘Several Times I Cried’
Not yet a teenager, Feliciano was forcibly conscripted into a brutal civil war that started before he was born and made a mockery of the former Portuguese colony’s independence in 1975. As the liberation movements that fought together for freedom fractured, Jonas Savimbi’s guerrilla movement known as UNITA retreated to the bush.
Despite intermittent attempts at peace, the war went oneventually claiming the lives of more than 1.5 million Angolans. Landmines maimed countless numbers of innocent men, women, and children. Pitched battles that knew no boundaries rendered hundreds of thousands homeless.
Eleven-year-old Feliciano had no idea why he was taken or why the guerrillas who took him were fighting. He just knew he had to do what he was told.
“Otherwise, your life could be in danger,” he said. “I saw people being whipped … people being sent to distant areas…. When there was physical punishment, we were invited to witness. We were told that if you disobeyed, this could happen to you.”
“When there was physical punishment, we were invited to witness. We were told that if you disobeyed, this could happen to you.”
map of angola
“I would like to see my daughters have a different life from the one I’ve had so far….”
Jerimias Slamungo with Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Charlayne Hunter-Gault pictured with Jerimias Salamungo at a camp for demobilized UNITA guerrillas and their families in Kuito, Angola. Salamungo is a former government soldier whose younger brother was forced to fight for the rebels. Photo by Reese Erlich.
The US Role
UNITA became known for its tactics of kidnapping whole villages and attacking civilian supporters of the government. The United States and apartheid South Africa backed UNITA on the grounds it was fighting Soviet expansion in Africa.
Feliciano recalled the support UNITA got from the United States.
“I was told relations between the US and UNITA were very good. This was proven, because I myself saw medicines sent from the US. I used to distribute some weapons from the US to my fellow soldiers.”
The United States stopped supporting UNITA in 1993 when the guerrillas violated an internationally brokered peace plan. But UNITA continued fighting, forcing thousands of children to become soldiers. Many, like Feliciano Salamungo, were forced by circumstances to become men. But the child in Feliciano lay just beneath the surface.
“I missed my family,” he recalled. “Several times I cried.”
He especially missed them when he heard that his mother had died. He had not spoken with her since he was taken 25 years before. “I was very sad because I didn’t know my father. When I heard about my mother’s death, I was very sad. I cried a lot.”
Feliciano belonged to a force supporting the front linesproviding food, clothes, and ammunition. He says he saw many young people like himself forced to kill, but he says he never had to. That was one of the few good things about his time as a guerrilla. Because there was a chance the Angolan government soldier on the other side may have been his own brother.
‘It Was Hard, But What Could I Do?’
Jerimias Salamungo had joined the Angolan army before Feliciano was abducted. The government didn’t abduct children to become soldiers, but teens under 18 fought in the government militarysometimes as volunteers, sometimes as conscripts. Jerimias had no idea that his brother had become his enemy. But one day he got the word.
“It was hard, but what could I do?” he said. “I was also forced to do that. At that time when you don’t identify with the side where you are, you can be identified as somebody collaborating with the other side. This could be very dangerous.”
The Salamungo family was touched by the war in many other ways. Their sister was forced to marry an MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) officer. Like many women, including those forced to marry UNITA guerrillas, once the war ended, she left her husband. It was different for Feliciano, who married in the busha young woman, herself abducted at the age of eight.
A 12-year-old girl created this drawing of a mother killed in the Chechnya conflict.
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child’s drawing of a burning house and a dying woman
“When I heard about my mother’s death, I was very sad. I cried a lot.”
The Brothers Meet
Augusta Chilombo was forced to tend the wounded on the battlefield. Fortunately for the Salamungos, the brothers didn’t meet on the battlefield. Instead, they met in a camp as the armed forces were demobilizing after a peace treaty was finally signed in 2002.
By this time, 39-year-old Jerimias had long since been discharged from the Army and was working for an international food aid agency, one that provided food for the former guerrillas in the quartering camps where they were waiting to reenter civilian life. By chance, Feliciano heard his brother’s name called by a colleague. He then asked that he take a letter to the man he thought could be his brother. Jerimias read the letter in disbelief.
“I had to control myself,” Jerimias said. “So okay, if it’s my brother, he’s welcome.”
Within a week, Jerimias was in the camp.
“Before 10 minutes, they were coming with somebody who I couldn’t recognize. I was still keeping an image of my brother when we separated. He was short and a little bit slim. As he was coming closer to us, I recognized his chin. It was the same I used to see when we lived together 22 years ago.”
Feliciano was speechless.
“All the words disappeared from my mouth,” he said. “Twenty-two years of separation isn’t an easy thing.”
Ticking Time Bombs
Nor is it easy for the former UNITA guerrillas who did in fact killif not their brothers, their own kindand were killed in return. Reconciliation is a key challenge in this deeply wounded country.
The other challenge lies in preparing the former soldiers for the lives they left behind when they were children.
“Now the real change is that we are not dealing with them as ex-soldiers but as a child, principally,” said Mario Ferrari, who heads the United Nations Children’s Fund in Angola. “If we can reunite them with families and get them to school and get vocational training, those children can go back to a normal life.”
The Angolan government is keenly aware of the challenge it faces, said Joao Kussumua, Angola’s minister of Social Assistance and Re-insertion.
“Children from 10 to 20 years old were used as soldiers,” he said. “They didn’t study. We have people who passed school age that we must teach to read and write. As you know, the government must solve all the problemseconomic and psychological.”
And that’s the ticking time bomb that makes the peace of Angola so precariousfinding the resources and the places for the thousands of children and adults whose only skills were those learned on the battlefield.
The government must also figure out how to help those like Feliciano’s 29-year-old wife, Augusta Chilombo, who gave birth to their four daughtersvirtually on the battlefield. As shy as she is tiny, she rarely speaks above a whisper until asked about her dreams for her young daughters.
“I would like to see my daughters have a different life from the one I’ve had so far,” she said, her voice filled with commitment and determination. “We were suffering because of war. Now that the war has ended, I would like to see my children having a better life. I would like to see them studying. Then having jobs so they can live well.”
Whatever else Angola’s long night of war may have destroyed, it failed to destroy the capacity to dream. It’s now up to the people of Angola and countries around the world to help the dreams for their wounded children become reality.
(_http://www . warchildren . org /two_brothers.html#more)