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