Child Soldiers

“Boko Haram often uses its child soldiers and other forced recruits to form the first wave of an attack, before sending in the more experienced fighters to finish off operations.”

I'm one to say that America should not get involved with other countries issues, but in this case were not talking about men 18+ years of age. We're talking about little kids being used as weapons. Boko Haram is uses young children to run into battle and kill as many as they can before they are killed themselves. One of the most sickening things i have ever heard of. 





These are some of the worst images I have ever seen. These pictures were posted on Twitter by Boko Haram. At this point the UN should be involved. They should be getting in and getting out with the children that they are trying to use as weapons.

http://www.newsweek.com/boko-haram-release-shocking-images-child-soldier-training-camp-302000

FDLR

The FDLR is the Democractic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda. This group has been causing havoc in Rwanada for 20 some odd years. This is the same group we learned about when watching Hotel Rwanada in class. It is primarily made up of Hutus. The group was given until January 2nd of this wear to unarm themselves. Some odd thousand people of the group did not do so, because of that the UN military and Congolease army will be going after those who have yet to surrender. These group is responsible for the many of the killings during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. They are charged with killing and making women their sex-slaves. The only problem that the UN military and Congolease army face is that the rest of those in the FDLR are in very remote areas that are hard to get to.

What people don't see is, things do get done. Yes this group may have been in existence for the last 20 years, but at least it is finally being stopped. Better now than never. I see a lot of "why isn't anyone doing anything?" in this blog but it does take time for things to get done. We can't just send troops into something we don't have them prepared for. Also when it comes to other countries, the US can't just choose to get involved. They have to be invited into that country before than can enter it. You don't always see the help but a lot of the times, there is someone trying to help.

http://www.irinnews.org/report/101042/in-the-un-s-gun-sights-one-of-drc-s-most-infamous-rebel-groups

To Trial or to Not Trial

I'll be sticking with my talk about the LRA for the current moment because of an interesting article I found on http://www.irinnews.org/ It talks about a senior leader of the LRA that is being transfered to the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity. Dominic Ongwen is the senior leader that surrendered himself after a battle. Dominic was abducted at the age of 10 on his walk to school. This is almost the exact same thing that happened to Ishmael Beah in the book, A Long Way Gone. He was forced to fight against the rebel army in Sierra Leone at the age of 12. The biggest controversity of this story is that Dominic was abducted and forced to fight, forced to commit these horrible crimes. He was taught since the ago of 10 to kill or be killed. The question set forth is should he be tried for his crimes against humanity?

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael spoke of how he killed before, yet his story is a little different he was never tried for doing so. He was picked up by the UN as a kid and sent to a rehabilition center to get off the drugs the army hooked him and to help him move past the memories he had of being a boy soldier. I understand that he was only a kid when they picked him up so why should he be tried? But what if he was never picked up by the UN? He would have grown up through all of that and been exaclty like Dominic. Is it Dominic's fault for all of the crimes that he has commited? Yes you could say that he had a choose but really he didn't. It was either he did the killing or he be killed himself. What would you say happens to him?

For Example, there is Caesar Achellam who voluntarily joined the LRA. He was taken into the custody of Uganda military and tried for his crimes against humanity. He and the others like him who voluntarily commit these terrible crimes should be tried to the highest degree for their crimes. I'm not saying all shouldn't be tried but the ones who didn't have to choice should have some other form of punishment than the others. Personally I would die before i committed any of these horrid acts and that's why I believe they should still be punished but not in the way that people like Caesar Achellam and Joseph Kony should be.

Thoughts?

The LRA

The LRA

Boko Haram has been the most talked about more recently in the news and especially on this blog. LRA stands for Lord's Resistance Army.  Unlike the Boko Haram who is a extremist Muslim terrorist group the LRA is extremist Christian terrorist group. Although they are of different religion they both get their word across in the same way, violence. Their goal, to rule according to the Ten Commandments.

The LRA has been accused of breaking many laws set forth by the UN

• Murder
• Abduciton
• Mutilation 
• Child-sex Slavery 
• Forcing children to participate in hostilities 

The LRA was actaully a very well known name a few years ago. Maybe it was exactly the LRA that was heard of, but I bet when you hear the name, Joseph Kony, you'll remember it. His name was all over social media, because he is the leader and founder of the LRA. He is Internationally wanted for his crimes against humanity. You may even remember these pictures all over Twitter in 2012. There were big campaigns against him and what he was doing.

 

Even though you don't as commonly hear about the LRA now like you do Boko Haram we can't forget that Boko Haram isn't the only group out there like that. Joseph Kony is still out there and at large, The LRA is still out there. If we want to stop all of these terrible things, we have to make sure to put a stop to all of the groups like this.

Human Trafficking

In my previous posts, I have been verbose while speaking about the subject of child abduction and the ills that develop from its presence, such as child soldiers. However, I have neglected to research the human trafficking epidemic itself. In this post, I will be remedying both faults, by presenting a comprehensive list of most know facts about he crisis in Africa.

• 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year,with the most prevalent cases being located in the continent of Africa.

• Human trafficking is a direct violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights set up by the UN

• Trafficking of children is connected to some of the worst forms of child labour(sweat shops,construction sites, domestic services

• Poverty, cultural values and traditional belief systems all contribute to the loss of human rights for children.

• Women are most likely to be trafficked

• Trafficking is more prevalent in South Africa than the rest of the continent

• Organ harvesting is a normal part of trafficking.

The first step to eradicating any social issue is to educate as many people as possible to its existence. This is why Stephen Biko fought so hard to get his people's struggle published and why Doctor Woods tried so hard to help is dream>Without a doubt,the written word is powerful>I have presented this evidence to you.It I up to you to figure out what to do with it.

To find out how to get involved, check out Stop Demand

UNESCO

Global Alliance in Traffic Against Women

The Path to Evil

 

The evil of child abduction is an complex one. In Africa, it is an even more complex issue as it intertwines with other sociopolitical and global problems to form an insurmountable obstacle to peace in the region. The ill detailed by Ishmael Beah in his memoir, A Long Way Gone, is rampant across the globe.There are more than 250,000 child soldiers throughout the world, young kids who are being used as nothing more than "cannon fodder" by ruthless warlords.(CNN).Some of these children have been ripped from their own homes, taken from their very beds. Some are conscripted by local militias, usually the same that have slaughtered these children's loved ones. Some are recruited willingly, as young people may see the militias as the only ways out of an already horrible situation,

But how are these innocent children turned into cogs in the war machine?

In Long Way Gone, both the RUF and the Army controlled their troops by isolating them from their family ties ( a fairly easy tasks as many of these children had lost their families.) and giving them mind altering drugs in order to make them numb and unresponsive to the violence that they themselves perpetuated. They also kept them constantly thinking about war by exposing them to war movies and television. This trend is eerily echoed by the grisly noms de guerre they take for themselves, names like Col. Rambo and Sgt.Chop Em Up.

In Hotel Rwanda, the Hutu rebels created a dedicated fighting force by teaching their own to hate the Tutsi people from a very young age, before the moral cognitive functions are set in stone. This is similar to how religious extremist group Boko Haram take children from their families and brainwash them in their radical Islamic ideology. Rendition is much easier the younger a subject is, and rehabilitation becomes equally as difficult the longer a subject undergoes the effects of brainwashing.

We have seen the damage that can be done when humans are taught from a young age to hate and perpetuate violence. Some of the most ruthless and capable killers, unfortunately, were at one time innocent children who have been warped by self-destructive substances and ideologies. That is the true horror of combating child abduction and its various ripple effects: We are not only fighting people, we are fighting an idea.

All is not lost however. there is hope. What is needed the most right now is awareness of the issue. The distance between our country and the afflicted regions may seem large, but resources like the Internet allow us to bridge this gap of ignorance.To educate yourself on these issues, check out the links below.

BBC World News: Children In Conflict

Kids Into Killers

            On January 21^st Cameroonian troops and their allies have freed a German man who was held for six months by Islamist terror group Boko Haram.  Boko Haram kidnapped German citizen Robert Nitsch Eberhard in Nigeria. The rescue mission that the Cameroonian troops followed was not discussed during the press conference. Robert stated that he did not know if he would make it out alive or not. He described the Boko Haram militants as dark, just total darkness. I would interpret that to mean that they had done some pretty dramatic things to him physically and mentally.  That was all that was said by Robert, he did not go into detail about what the Boko Haram militants did to him.

The big question I ask myself is why in the first place did they even kidnap him?

I understand why the kidnap little boys and girls, but what message could they be possibly sending by taking an elderly man?  The only connection that gives us the clue why he got kidnapped is that he he was teaching at a vocational school in Gombe, Adamawa state, Nigeria, before the insurgents took him hostage in July. Boko Haram could be trying to stop education therefore taking teachers that are promoting it.

On Sunday, suspected Boko Haram militants kidnapped 80 people in Cameroon's Far North Region, officials in the country said. By Monday, military operations had freed 24 of the captives; three others were found dead, state-run media reported.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/21/world/cameroon-boko-haram-german-hostage/

As the Boko Haram terrorist organization rules the Central African villages, with each kidnapping they are gaining strength. In late May of 2014 the Boko Haram committed its most intense kidnapping. They raided a school in midday and took almost 200 girls. To this day no one has a clue where these girls are or what they are experiencing.

             On Monday the 19^th the leader of this terrorist group released a shocking video of what his future plans were with the kidnapped girls. While in a full army suit and an Ak-47 by his side he reads into the camera, “I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market; by Allah There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women.” While watching this video in complete confussion, I realized that the man behind the video is laughing casually while telling his plans of selling off young women.

            The Boko Haram name means "Western education is sin." In his nearly hourlong, rambling video, Shekau repeatedly called for Western education to end. In recent years, Boko Haram has carried out dozens of attacks, killing thousands of people at schools, churches, police stations, government buildings and elsewhere. These are some of the major attempts to stop education. Boko Haram has gained training in weapons and communications from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in recent years. This helped it move from little-noticed attacks to more spectacular ones, including against Western targets and the Nigerian government, which it seeks to overthrow.

            On January 10, 2015 across the seas in Africa the extremist group “Boko Haram” has struck again. This terrorist group is notoriously known for kidnapping young defenseless children and forcing them promote the ideal Muslim society. Boys are most likely to be transformed into a mindless killing machine and girls are being married off and used in the sex trafficking business.  In the case, a little girl no more than 10 years old gave up her life to pursue a suicide bombing mission instructed by the Boko Haram. As she walked into the crowded northern Nigerian Market, the bombs hidden underneath her veil detonated, killing 20 innocent people and wounding many more.

People were shocked as they were represented with a new tactic in the Islamists’ campaign with their decision to use perhaps their youngest-ever suicide bomber.

            To the people of Africa, this terrorist organization has been motivated to increase the number of girls being kidnapped. The Boko Haram is now using women as suicide bombers, even as it has stepped up its abductions of girls across northeast Nigeria.

            This Market place did have security and making sure that people were safe. As the little girl approached and the men screened her with the metal detectors they noticed bulging in her hip region. The girl resisted being restrained and patted down, but it was too late and before security was able to pat her down the bombs had already gone off killing 20 and injuring 18.

Due to all of the recent terrorist attacks in Africa, police and security guards can no longer trust anyone. Now, one has to be suspicious of any lady wearing a hijab — whether it’s a young lady, or an old lady.

This story reminds me much of how Ishmael in the book “A Long Way Gone” was kidnapped and instructed to do nearly the same thing as the little girl. Ishmael was kidnapped by the rebels and forced to put his own life in danger to make sure he was satisfying the rebels.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/world/africa/suicide-bomber-hits-maiduguri-nigeria-market.html?_r=0&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Africa&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=article

On December 31^st of 2014 Northeastern Nigeria had a very chilling encounter with the well known terrorist organization Boko Haram. Mohammed Yusuf, a charismatic young cleric, founded the group 12 years ago as part of his push for a pure Islamic state in Nigeria. He was killed in 2009, but his group lived on. These rebels are an extremist Islamic group in Nigeria that have created havoc across the north of the country and in the capital, Abuja. Its violent attacks on government offices, the United Nations, and churches threaten to destabilize the country. A range of conflicting narratives has grown up around Boko Haram, and the group’s origins, motivations, and future plans remain a matter of debate. They had barged into the village of Malari and kidnapped 40 boys and young men as hostages.

Next, we may ask ourselves why did this extremist group forcibly take 40 hostages and kill none.

            They have a recent past of kidnapping children as a way of campaigning fear into the citizens. The main belief as to why they are doing this is to recruit and mentally brainwash these younger boys. They will try to influence them and turn against their own people. As they proceed to convince young boys into becoming rebels, the girls are not forgotten. Some girls and women are kidnapped to take the place of wives, and perform chores and sexual services, according to rights groups. They deliberately raid schools knowing they will successfully kidnap and transform these children into slaves.

            This could very easily be related to a situation in the novel “A Long Way Gone.”  While running for his life, Ishmael Beah is captured by soldiers fighting rebels and forced to become one of them. In the process of transforming Ishmael into a rebel killing child they influence him into different drugs and disturbing facts that change his point of view. Ishmael is made into an animal in a matter of days and prepared to kill people just because he is instructed to do so.