Reflection

It seems like it is easy to ignore the fact that these people fighting in Uganda are still children because they are performing such adult tasks. No one should be introduced to the idea or experience of killing another person. It is hard to think of a child as a victimizer, but as a fighter of war, as someone who is performing killings and murders, that it just what they are doing, and it should be stopped. I wish I had the opportunity to meet and speak with anyone who had first hand experience with the war in Uganda and the use of child soldiers. I am very appreciative of all the comments I have received, especially from my commenter from Uganda. This experience was the closest I have had to an actual cultural encounter and this encounter, while only communicating online, was what helped me most in writing my blog. I had my first flash of recognition after receiving the comment from Tumwijuke in Uganda. I realized the power that words have, especially when you are writing or talking about something that you are unfamiliar with. I now understand how important it is to dismiss my own beliefs and thoughts before engaging in something I am unfamiliar with and become open to learning about something new. People are not all so different when it comes to war and trauma. Writing this blog has been one of the most eye opening experiences because it allowed me to learn about another culture through my own mistakes, which I believe are inevitable, and expanded by encounters with others outside of my life circle.

How do we deal with this?

I recently watched a movie called 11’09’’01- September 11. Eleven directors from all around the world were asked to make a movie about September 11th in eleven minutes. I watched a scene filmed by the director from the United States and a scene filmed by the director from Iran. Both clips showed ways to deal with the catastrophic events of September 11 and the current Iraq war. Immediately I was struck by the similarities of both films. I quickly realized how the pain and suffering endured, after the events of the attack, became universal. We do not all have to be from the same place, believe in the same things, or even fight for the same rights, to experience terror and have similar reactions. I’ve begun analyzing my original title for this blog by calling it a culture of war. I am not sure if I believe that war has its’ own culture. While individuals construct war, the consequences of war happen to everyone in that culture. However, in cases where there are child soldiers, for example, like in Uganda, children are brought into war and end up being factors of war. There have been so many documentaries and films made and books written about September 11 and the Iraq war. Yet, I wonder how much information about the war in Uganda or even the horrible thought that children are being used to fight in the war is being put out in the public’s view. I hope my blog has an effect on people’s perceptions and, perhaps, create a new dialogue about the use of child soldiers. I hope it helps to stop the sad reality.

How is society effected?

My parents always encouraged me to go to school, get an education and find a profession that interests me which will allow me to support myself when I am older. I realize now that my friends and I and other classmates are a group of young adults who are on our way to making up a new generation of professionals who will ultimately support, influence and impact our society. We rely on the lessons our parents and elders teach us as well as our education to guide us through to adulthood. Thus, a society, which raises child soldiers, must be greatly affected by the loss of such a large population of future leaders, doctors, teachers and good citizens. What can the future of a country be if they lose a generation of children? One of the most impacting results of being a child soldier is the loss “of education and work experience . . . largely because of the time away rather than violence and brutality.” It must be extremely difficult for a former child soldier, who was under the pressures and threats of death and violence, to assimilate back into a functioning society. I have heard many times that my teenage years are supposed to be considered the best years of my life. Child soldiers are missing these years, fighting when they could be learning to read, write and learn life’s lessons outside of war. The lack of education does not only affect the individual but also society and its economy. The nation’s economy ultimately suffers when “children who are in the army do not go to school, [and] do not prepare to enter the workforce, etc.” It makes me sad to think of the plight of child soldiers who not only are loosing the freedoms and joys of their youth but are also robbed of a functioning and stable adulthood.

http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2007/10/former_child_soldiers_pariahs_1.php

http://www.itvs.org/beyondthefire/Lesson_plan2.html

Can child soldiers return to society?

When young adults like me and many others I know my age leave our families for a long period of time, we are accepted back into our homes, towns, and families with open arms. Whenever I come home from college, I am always greeted with love and care. However, it must be hard for child soldiers to be welcomed back home after the war or controversy ends. In many instances, they are excluded from society. In fact, where is there home? Many have lost their parents, their villages burned to the ground and their siblings, if still alive, dispersed through the country. Both I and the children fighting wars in Uganda are sent away from their homes to fulfill a responsibility. In my case, it is a voluntary leaving. In the case of a child soldier, it is usually forced. I also do not experience the traumas of war and combat when I am away at college. It is very different to grow up in a situation when you have to live away from home and you must watch your parents get hurt, do things against your will, and not be able to rebel or challenge authority. Of course, the values, morals and lessons that parents teach their children must be similar all around the world. All parents must teach their children not to talk back to authority figures. However, I do not face the same repercussions and I am not under the same fear and threat as child soldiers are when they wish to speak against authority. Thus, it becomes harder for child soldiers to come back into society after fighting in war because of these limitations. They do not have the opportunity to be nurtured, educated, or well fed while in guerilla camps. When students go off to college, they come back to the society that they left, with more knowledge and experience. But, when child soldiers return to their societies, they come back knowing only what to do and what not to do in a fighting environment. However, the cause to integrate child soldiers back into society has not been lost forever. There are some that have been able to become influential members of society. Ishmael Beah is a former child soldier who was kidnapped at the age of 12 by Sierra Leone’s national army and was forced to fight in the rebel attacks. Now at age 26, Beah has been “named an ambassador for the U.N. children’s agency . . . vowing to be an advocate for children worldwide, not just in African war zones.” He has also written a memoir detailing his “remorse over the war and how he eventually found support from a UNICEF rehabilitation program and from a new adoptive family in the United States.” The future of a child soldier depends greatly on whether or not the society that sent him or her away receives them back openly and does not shun them away.

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/detail/Former_child_soldier_becomes_UNICEF_ambassador.html?siteSect=143&sid=8447422&cKey=1195621643000&ty=ti

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/6865

My Real Cross-Cultural Encounter

My expectations for writing this blog were to learn about a culture of war and the history of child soldiers. I had no anticipation of hearing from someone who would respond to my blog. I always knew my blog would be in a public domain but I never realized what effect posting your own thoughts in public could have on others. While I expected to receive comments from my classmates, I was astonished that someone from Uganda, the place I was studying, read and commented on my blog would ever read it. For me, this became a real cross-cultural encounter. It gave me an opportunity, whether my facts were right or not, to have an exchange with someone who could intimately relate to the topic and made the issue more personal. The initial point of my blog was not to just tell a story, but to get a response and encounter people who could teach me more about my subject. While I still have not spoken to or met a child soldier, this encounter got me to rethink and expand my facts and beliefs. It forced me to see whether or not my western Caucasian background, my views and attitudes towards the information I gathered, were accurate or slandered. The importance to me was not so much about what I was writing in my blog, as much as putting something out in the public view to form a dialogue and come in contact with people who had personal experience. I am much more aware of what and how I write now as I am certain people, not just close to me, but all around the world, could be reading my thoughts and information.

A Child's Story

"Poyo too pe rweny. " This is a common saying among the Acholi people of Uganda that translates to mean, "Death is a scar that never heals. " No culture is unfamiliar with the concept of death. Almost all people have experience the death of a parent, grandparent, sibling, child, friend, relative, even perhaps a pet. The idea and image of death changes when you yourself are committing the crime against your will. When people speak of an incident that they are uncomfortable with, they often try to dissociate themselves from the experience either by forgetting it or showing no emotional connection.
One girl, Sharon, 13 at the time, retells her experience of being abducted by the rebel army. “I was abducted while my mother and I were going to the field . . . . One of the other abducted girls tried to escape but she was caught. The rebels told us that she had tried to escape and must be killed. They made the new children kill her. They told us that if we escaped, they would kill our families. They made us walk for a week . . . . Some of the smaller children could not keep up, as we were walking so far without resting, and they were killed . . . . Some of the children died of hunger. I felt lifeless seeing so many children dying and being killed. I thought I would be killed.”
Children who are fighting in the armies and committing crimes unwillingly are facing tragedy day after day and thus when they retell stories about what they have experienced as soldiers, they often appear numb to the trauma. After experiencing such fear and tragedy, reality becomes blurred and distorted.

http://www.hrw.org/reports97/uganda/

Effects of war on children

Imagine a life where you are accustomed to seeing tragedy at any moment of the day. Children who are exposed to war are becoming desensitized to massacres and deaths. This lack of emotion makes the children more vulnerable to being influenced into carrying out the goals of the rebel armies. Many times children are forced to commit violence on their own countrymen or families. Thus, children become stigmatized to witnessing and committing violence. When children are abducted or forced into serving the rebel armies they are often made to act as spies, serve in the front lines, partake in suicide attacks, or hold equipment. Many armies are even obtaining lighter tools so they are easier for children to carry. In Uganda, a third or more of the child soldiers are young girls. Girls are not only forced to fight in the army but they are also raped, forced to become sex slaves and the wives of the military commanders. The impact that war has on children is life altering and will remain with them forever. Aside from the fact that these children are extremely young, they are ultimately denied a childhood. During war, societies decline and weaken, thus children are left with no schooling, sometimes no families and therefore their only source of mentors or an education is through the army. The only lessons they learn concern mass murders of their families and friends and the neccessity of killing others in order to save themselves from their own deaths. War does not only have an emotional impact on children but it also affects their health and wellbeing. Exposured to the army and the poor living conditions leads to severe wounds, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and drug addictions. The most crucial recommendations to help children recover from the effects of the war and violence are education, health care, rehabilitation, and government interference.

http://www.worldvision.org/worldvision/wvususfo.nsf/stable/globalissues_childprotection_conflict?open&lid=childsoldiers&lpos=day:txt:soldiers_feature_title

Who are the targets?

Why do some cultures see their children as expendable? In over twenty countries around the world, over 250,000 children are part of the fighting machine. The difference between the war in Uganda and the Iraq war is that the crisis in Uganda is being fought with innocent children. Children, even as young as five, make up 80 percent of the LRA army. This rebel group is responsible for kidnapping, enslaving, raping, tormenting, and assassinating their children. Not only is the concept of forcing innocent children to kill others outrageous, but the idea is also alien to us when we live in a country where the age to enter the army is 18. We also have institutions for people who want to volunteer their serves like the army reserves. Child soldiers usually are not given the option to refuse fight. They are recruited, abducted, or forced into armies by fear of death unto themselves or their families. While many children find themselves following orders to fight under the threat of death, many other children join the army because it appears to be the only chance for survival. Because war separated families and often displaces groups from their homes, children can be left without parents and living on the streets. Thus, joining these rebel groups appears to offer children a group that they can be apart of when they have lost every other support and security system. The emotional and physical effects of living in a war zone and being subjected to violence and hate make children more vulnerable and easier to influence and control. Jan Egeland runs the United Nations disaster relief. He has experienced every violation of civil rights but what he saw what was happening to children in Uganda, it concerned him the most. He describes the effects of Kony’s violent methods for abducting children into his army, “He knows how to instill utter fear, but he also knows how to make them believe that he has some kind of a mission.” Patrick is an escapee of the army and also a night commuter. The lesson instilled in him, as a child soldier was “kill or be killed.” He states that many children kill “for fear, you must kill. If you refuse, you are going to be killed.” It is difficult to imagine the tragedy that these children endure and, unfortunately, create onto others. But, because of the forceful tactics used to bring these children into the army and their innocent and vulnerable state, the killing of others becomes an everyday practice for these children that they must become desensitized to.


http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/sudan98/testim/house-07.htm#TopOfPage
http://www.worldvision.org/worldvision/wvususfo.nsf/stable/globalissues_childprotection_conflict?open&lid=childsoldiers&lpos=day:txt:soldiers_feature_title
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9006024/

The Civil War in Uganda

Northern Uganda has been in a civil war for the past twenty years. The country has been under the power of the Museveni government since 1986. President Yoweri Museveni protects the country through a group known as the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) against one of the most threatening rebel groups, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). This rebel group has been resisting the Ugandan government from its inception, making the country a war zone. The leader of the LRA is Joseph Kony, who believes he is the re-embodiment of Jesus Christ. His goal is to set up a government in Uganda based on the Bible and the Ten Commandments. Kony’s greatest crime has been abducting innocent children to fight in his army. The LRA has abducted over 30,000 helpless children. The most affected part of Uganda is Gulu and Kitgum. Ever since the LRA movement has been resisting, the government of Uganda has been persuading people who live in these highly affected areas to move into camps that will protect them. Currently, however, after peace agreements have been made between the Government of Uganda and the LRA, families were told that they are able to move into camps closer to their homes. The most affected victims of the LRA are the Acholi people. Notwithstanding the supposed peace agreement, village people continue to be terrorized by the LRA. Not only do the people of Northern Uganda suffer from the attacks, especially the children, but the environment and economy are disadvantaged as well. The government expends millions of dollars on the military which could be used to provide basic human services and when families leave their homes and move to the protected camps, they are forced to leave behind their work and crops. This dislocation results in widespread famine. Uganda is not as economically prosperous as the United States, however, both countries are involved in a war. Why is it that in certain societies in times of war, the institutions of government are more stable and in other places they completely fall apart resulting in economic instability, famine, dislocation of a population and using children as resources in a time when they are not yet adults?
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/uganda.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9006024/
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/sudan98/testim/house-02.htm

Why study a culture of war?

With the Iraq war currently going on, our American culture has been exposed to and experienced the effects of war for the last four years. I personally do not know anyone fighting in Iraq, nor have I witnessed the consequences of war on my own friends or family. Even though I hear about the war from reading newspapers and watching the news, I find myself unaware and unaffected by the actual realities of warfare. I am interested in studying the effects of war on society but more specifically the effects that war has on children. A year ago I had seen a preview for a film called War Dance, which documented the lives of three children from Uganda who were forced into becoming child soldiers. For the last twenty years, Uganda has been involved in a war against a rebel force known as the Lord’s Resistance Army. The movie shows children being abducted from their homes and families, subjected to violence and often forced under the threat of death to fight against their own country and even their family. When I compare the treatment of children in countries like Uganda to those in the United States and Western Europe, I am shocked to learn the difference in value that diverse societies have of children. I hope to better understand how a culture of war effects the local environment, how the war in Uganda came about and how and why children are forced into becoming child soldiers. Hopefully, through this cultural encounter, I can better understand why different cultures value war and the lives involved in fighting those battles so differently.