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By Root 781 0

the pictures of children who have witnessed such terrors. The drawing could be a product of his imagination or a depiction of things he had heard as easily as it could be an eyewitness account. The point is that the image of a soldier wielding absolute power over a weak civilian was in Musa’s mind. With violence so prevalent in his young life, it makes sense that a feud with his friends, the kind of quarrel children have all the time, would lead him to join the army as an impulsive response to his anger. What he knew about the world he lived in—that soldiers have the power to get what they want and to act with impunity—led him to believe that being in the army would make sure his peers could not harass him again. His decision to join seemed rational from his point of view.

Not all children are forced into military service. While children’s recruitment cannot exactly be called voluntary, various surveys have found that over half the children fighting in most forces joined under no direct threat of violence. Other factors, such as societal shame, perceived security, poverty, or a lack of job prospects may have made military service the only option in these youth’s minds, but, like Musa, they were not abducted. They went because they wanted to go. They believed that the military would get them what they needed, whether it was power, revenge, money, food, protection, validation, or simply something to do. Recruiters all over the world, from the United States to Myanmar, know this and take advantage of it. In Sri Lanka, playing on youth’s desire for adventure, recruiters will show up at schools with a motorcycle. The glitzy army recruitment commercials on U.S. television during prime time play on the same feeling. Sometimes, armies will take in unaccompanied children, orphans, and migrant workers, telling the youths it is for their protection, they are not forcing them into the army. But the youths rarely stay out of hostilities for long.

This made sense when I thought about some of the unaccompanied minors I met in refugee camps. They did not want to be helpless recipients of aid, they claimed. They wanted to become responsible and productive adults. Keto, for example, wanted very much to prove his own self-sufficiency and competence. I can imagine that, had he not made it to refuge in Tanzania but instead had been brought into the army, he would have “volunteered” to fight so as not to burden his unit, to prove that he too could contribute. And others, whose wills were not as strong as Keto’s—Lepaix for example—could easily be persuaded to fight alongside the grown-ups.

Some of the exiled Burmese children I had met might have joined armed forces for ideological reasons. I know at least one of them has done so since we met. Children are certainly not without ideology. As Robert Coles discusses in The Political Life of Children, politics do get worked into the life of the young. Children integrate ideologies into their views of the world, as evidenced by racist dogmas spouted by young people in South Africa during apartheid or communist doctrines espoused by children involved with the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in the 1970s. In Iraq, children are fighting the U.S.-led forces that they see as occupiers of their homeland. Coalition forces have engaged with soldiers as young as thirteen. As one adolescent boy who fought against U.S. forces in Najaf in 2004 told the London Daily Telegraph, “We will kill the unbelievers because faith is the most powerful weapon.”

In situations of protracted armed conflict, the opportunities for children to participate in hostilities are many, and it is only through a stringent effort not allowing them to fight, that youth can be kept out of military service. During the Taliban’s reign in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar passed strict edicts against using child soldiers, even though they had been extremely helpful when fighting against the Russian occupation years earlier. Systems of punishment were established for commanders who used children who could not yet grow a beard. For a short while this worked,