Terrorism - Articles

Wars are fought by adults. The use of children in combat activities is revolting, especially when children are drawn into violent conflict for the fact of being children. There are two major factors behind children being preferred for soldiering.

Firstly, recruiting and maintaining children is cost-effective. They eat less; wear less; and are paid less. But, when it comes to work, they are treated like adults fighting on frontlines, carrying heavy war supplies and, at times, injured or dead soldiers, cleaning, guarding and cooking. Unlike their adult colleagues, the fearlessness and ignorance of children are manipulated to employ them on the most hazardous tasks like laying and clearing landmines and handling toxic weapons. All these services are available at lower costs. It is estimated that expenditure on child soldiers is less than half than what is spent on their adult counter-parts.

Secondly, grooming children into becoming soldiers is not difficult.. They are highly motivated for one reason or the other, which actually pushes them to join soldiering. They can be easily intimidated and are most obedient. Due to less experience, emotional immaturity, and high ignorance, they are highly vulnerable to manipulation. Children can be easily persuaded to switch sides by threats or inducements. Thus, one can find many instances of the same children fighting on opposite sides during civil wars. However, those children who continue to stay on in a particular armed group for a long period till their adulthood, became fanatic soldiers as a result of protracted indoctrination. Constant exposure to violence since a young age results in desensitization and alienation from normal social life. Such recruits are ideal for suicide missions that demand complete indifference towards their own and others’ suffering.

Children are forced to get involved in soldiering for various reasons. The United Nations Report on ‘Impact of Armed Conflict on Children’ (1996) notes that “one of the most basic reasons for children joining armed groups is economic.” For orphan children, joining armed groups is attractive to guarantee themselves with basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter. At times, poverty forces parents to offer their children for fighting in return for money.

However, the children of parents involved themselves in armed conflicts drift into soldiering by default. If there is a strong prevalence of violence within a particular community in a conflict area, there is a greater likelihood of children belonging to such communities to be part of hostilities on one side or the other. In these circumstances, a gun in their hands is a safer option rather than being without one. Such instances are found in conflict-ridden African countries like Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sierra Leone.

Children readily join armed opposition groups to avoid harassments from the government forces. For instance, the ranks of Tamil militant groups in Sri Lanka and Kurdish rebel groups in Turkey have been swelled by child recruits due to state repression. The urge to seek revenge in children for harassment by government forces is built on and carefully manipulated by armed groups for their advantage. The ferocity of girl recruits in the LTTE ranks was partly because of the successful conversion of their sufferings into a mind-set seeking violent vengeance by skilled Tiger trainers.

The children also pick up guns for the thrill and power behind wielding weapons. But, most child recruitment takes place by force. Kidnappings and press-ganging are popular methods used in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Known as afesa in Ethiopia, children are picked up in streets by roaming security forces personnel. Orphans, displaced and street children are potential victims.

Propaganda, widely used by armed groups, also persuades children to enroll themselves en masse. The LTTE is notorious for employing this technique to attract school children to its cadres. A sense of guilt is inculcated in the children’s mind to make them believe that resort to arms at the earliest is the only way to defend their families and communities. War is glorified and a ‘cult of martyrdom’ created to lure children on the grounds of “national liberation,” “social reform” or “defending religion.”