The Child Soldiers of Africa's Red Army

The Child Soldiers of Africa's Red Army PDF Author: Carol Berger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000513289
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This book examines the role of social process and routinised violence in the use of underaged soldiers in the country now known as South Sudan during the twenty-one-year civil war between Sudan’s northern and southern regions. Drawing on accounts of South Sudanese who as children and teenagers were part of the Red Army—the youth wing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)—the book sheds light on the organised nature of the exploitation of children and youth by senior adult figures within the movement. The book also includes interviews with several of the original Red Army commanders, all of whom went on to hold senior positions within the military and government of South Sudan. The author chronicles the cultural transformation experienced by members of the Red Army and considers whether an analysis of the processes involved in what was then Africa’s longest civil war can aid our understanding of South Sudan’s more recent descent into ethnicised conflict. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, and political science with interests in ethnography, conflict, and the military exploitation of children.

The Child Soldiers of Africa's Red Army

The Child Soldiers of Africa's Red Army PDF Author: Carol Berger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000513289
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book

Book Description
This book examines the role of social process and routinised violence in the use of underaged soldiers in the country now known as South Sudan during the twenty-one-year civil war between Sudan’s northern and southern regions. Drawing on accounts of South Sudanese who as children and teenagers were part of the Red Army—the youth wing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)—the book sheds light on the organised nature of the exploitation of children and youth by senior adult figures within the movement. The book also includes interviews with several of the original Red Army commanders, all of whom went on to hold senior positions within the military and government of South Sudan. The author chronicles the cultural transformation experienced by members of the Red Army and considers whether an analysis of the processes involved in what was then Africa’s longest civil war can aid our understanding of South Sudan’s more recent descent into ethnicised conflict. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, and political science with interests in ethnography, conflict, and the military exploitation of children.

Child Soldiers in Africa

Child Soldiers in Africa PDF Author: Alcinda Honwana
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812204778
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Young people have been at the forefront of political conflict in many parts of the world, even when it has turned violent. In some of those situations, for a variety of reasons, including coercion, poverty, or the seductive nature of violence, children become killers before they are able to grasp the fundamentals of morality. It has been only in the past ten years that this component of warfare has captured the attention of the world. Images of boys carrying guns and ammunition are now commonplace as they flash across television screens and appear on the front pages of newspapers. Less often, but equally disturbingly, stories of girls pressed into the service of militias surface in the media. A major concern today is how to reverse the damage done to the thousands of children who have become not only victims but also agents of wartime atrocities. In Child Soldiers in Africa, Alcinda Honwana draws on her firsthand experience with children of Angola and Mozambique, as well as her study of the phenomenon for the United Nations and the Social Science Research Council, to shed light on how children are recruited, what they encounter, and how they come to terms with what they have done. Honwana looks at the role of local communities in healing and rebuilding the lives of these children. She also examines the efforts undertaken by international organizations to support these wartime casualties and enlightens the reader on the obstacles faced by such organizations.

Children of War

Children of War PDF Author: Christine Ryan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857722131
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The use of child soldiers in the Sudan Civil War has shattered the accepted understanding of why children join armies. Thousands of children signed up to participate in Africa's longest running civil war, yet so far the international community and the academic world have viewed them as victims rather than participants. In this groundbreaking new study, Christine Emily Ryan challenges preconceptions which have held back aid work and reconstruction in the Sudan region. Using face-to-face testimonies of former child soldiers, she illuminates the multi-dimensional motivations which children have for joining the Sudan Liberation Army, and unravels the complexity of their political participation. At the same time, interviews with NGO personnel illustrate the gap that exists between the West and the reality of conflict in Africa. 'Children of War' provides a powerful critique of the position taken by the international community, NGOs and academia to the phenomenon of child soldiers, and calls for a new approach to conflict resolution in Africa.

Little Soldiers

Little Soldiers PDF Author: Olga Kucherenko
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191610992
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Germany's war against the Soviet Union raised a small army of child soldiers. Thousands of those below the enlistment age served with regular and paramilitary formations, even though they were not formally mobilised or allowed at the front. For several decades after the war, these youngsters played an important part in Soviet remembrance culture, though their true experiences were obscured by the myth of the Great Patriotic War. Situated at the crossroads of social, cultural, and military history, Little Soldiers is the first to tell the story of the Soviet Union's child soldiers in a critical and systematic fashion. Focusing on the mechanisms and psychological consequences of propaganda on Soviet children, as well as their combat deployment, Kucherenko adopts a three-tier approach to writing the history of childhood: 'from above', 'from below', and 'from within'. A wide variety of new sources provide insight into young soldiers' combat motivations and the roles they played in the field, as well as their routine experiences and relationship with older comrades. Far from being victims, Soviet child soldiers emerge as independent social actors capable of making choices about their behaviour . Little Soldiers interconnects with matters of increasing importance: the role of propaganda in military conflicts, the totalization of warfare, child-soldiering, and social reflexivity.

First Kill Your Family

First Kill Your Family PDF Author: Peter H Eichstaedt
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1569762600
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Told through the voices of those who have suffered, this illuminating expose examines how a forgotten region of one of Africa's most promising nations-Uganda, dubbed "the pearl" of Africa by Winston Churchill-has been systematically destroyed by a bloody, senseless, and seemingly endless war that has gone largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. For the past 20 years, the Lord's Resistance Army has ravaged northern Uganda and has been led by the reclusive Joseph Kony, a former witch doctor and self-professed spirit medium. Through the large-scale abduction and manipulation of children, Kony transformed his army into an efficient killing machine that has murdered nearly 100,000 and displaced two million people. Kony utilized the society's pervasive belief in witchcraft to instill cultlike convictions in his fighters. This insightful analysis delves into the war's foundations and argues that, much like Rwanda's genocide, international intervention is needed to stop Africa's virulent cycle of violence.

The Lost Boy

The Lost Boy PDF Author: Ayik Chut Deng
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 0143796305
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
As a boy living in the Dinka tribe in what is now South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, Ayik Chut Deng was a member of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). During his time as a child soldier, he witnessed unspeakable violence and was regularly tortured by older boys. At age nineteen, he and his family escaped the conflict in Sudan and resettled in Toowoomba, Australia. But adjusting to his new life in small-town Queensland was more difficult than he anticipated. He was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that was misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, leading to years of erratic behaviour on the wrong medication. He struggled with drugs and alcohol, fought with his family and found himself in trouble with the law before he came to the painful realisation that his behaviour was putting his life, as well as the lives of his loved ones, at risk. As an adult now living in Brisbane, Ayik is a father, working as an actor and volunteering at his local youth centre. Overcoming a childhood filled with torture and war was a process of lifelong learning, choices and challenges that included a remarkable chance encounter with a figure from his past, and an appearance on national television. The Lost Boy is an honest and revealing account of the complexities of trauma, and one man’s story of how he got to where he is today.

War Child

War Child PDF Author: Emmanuel Jal
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312383223
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This extraordinary memoir tells the true story of a former child soldier, who survived and escaped a violent life to become Africa's number-one hip-hop artist and an international ambassador for children in war-torn countries.

Innocents Lost

Innocents Lost PDF Author: Jimmie Briggs
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786738502
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Ida, a member of Sri Lanka’s Female Tamil Tigers, fought with one of the longest-surviving and successful guerilla movements in the world. She is sixteen. Francois, a fourteen-year-old Rwandan child of mixed ethnicity, was forced by Hutu militiamen to hack to death his sister’s Tutsi children.More than 250,000 children have fought in three dozen conflicts around the world, but growing exploitation of children in war is staggering and little known. From the “little bees” of Colombia to the “baby brigades” of Sri Lanka, the subject of child soldiers is changing the face of terrorism. For the last seven years, Jimmie Briggs has been talking to, writing about, and researching the plight of these young combatants. The horrific stories of these children, dramatically told in their own voices, reveal the devastating consequences of this global tragedy.Cogent, passionate, impeccably researched, and compellingly told, Innocents Lost is the fullest, most personal and powerful examination yet of the lives of child soldiers.

Child Soldier

Child Soldier PDF Author: China Keitetsi
Publisher: Souvenir Press Ltd
ISBN: 9780285636903
Category : Child abuse
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Caught up in a horrifying guerrilla war at the age of eight, China Keitetsi experienced years of abuse in Uganda. She has spoken at the United Nations on the rights of the child, and here tells her own story.

How de Body?

How de Body? PDF Author: Teun Voeten
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429982004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
In 1998, acclaimed photojournalist Teun Voeten headed to Sierra Leone for what he thought would be a standard assignment on the child soldiers there. But the cease-fire ended just as he arrived, and the clash between the military junta and the West African peace-keeping troops forced him to hide in the bush from rebels who were intent on killing him. How de Body? ("how are you?" in Sierra Leone's Creole English) is a dramatic account of the conflict that has been raging in the country for nearly a decade-and how Voeten nearly became a casualty of it. Accessible and conversational, it's a look into the dangerous diamond trade that fuels the conflict, the legacy of war practices such as forced amputations, the tragic use of child soldiers, and more. The book is also a tribute to the people who never make the headlines: Eddy Smith, a BBC correspondent who eventually helps Voeten escape; Alfred Kanu, a school principal who risks his life to keep his students and teachers going amidst the bullets and raids; and Padre Victor, who runs a safe haven for ex-child soldiers; among others. Featuring Voeten's stunning black-and-white photos from his multiple trips to the conflict area, How de Body? is a crucial testament to a relatively unknown tragedy.