Children at War
Singer, Peter W. (2005).
Pantheon Books; 288 pages. $25.00. ISBN 0375423494.
Children at War includes chapters devoted to causes and processes of child recruitment, the nature of training, the employment of children in terrorist activities, and the prevention and rehabilitation of child soldiers. There is also a discussion (Chapter Nine) about the challenges—in both tactical and public relations terms—for the U.S. army in fighting child soldiers.
Running through the book is the argument that child recruitment is a new phenomenon: “From its very beginning, human warfare has been an almost exclusively adult male domain” (p. 9). This thesis is betrayed by lack of evidence. The statement that “…a general norm held against child soldiers across the last four millennia of warfare” (p. 15) is backed-up by only a small selection of cases, each of which is subjected to very limited scrutiny. The U.S. Civil War is one such case. Here the author argues that the combat role famously played by 15-year old John Cook was an exception, ignoring the body of evidence that contradicts this view. David Rosen in his recent book Armies of the Young (2005) confounds the “newness” thesis. In relation to the U.S. Civil War, he cites a number of scholarly sources to suggest large-scale involvement of children as combatants (p. 5). Rosen’s account extends to other conflicts as well. His views are better argued and better supported than those of Singer and leave the central thesis of Children at War in tatters.
Moreover, for the purposes of Singer’s cross-cultural and trans-historical comparison, the division between “child” and “adult” must remain stable. This assumption, however, has been thoroughly discredited by historians and anthropologists. Despite fleeting acceptance of the critique, Singer places himself firmly in the essentialist camp. As he explains, “…every culture withholds powers and responsibilities from youngsters and places them under the care and control of guardians” (p. 7). Yet, his own evidence undermines this basic point. He alludes to the 13th century “Children’s Crusade,” arguing that the 30,000 children involved were in no sense soldiers. While he may be correct in that interpretation, he misses the vital point that their ability to leave their families and attempt the journey to Jerusalem suggests a measure of autonomy that confounds his claims. Clearly it is not only in our present age that children have engaged in life and death struggles far outside the bounds of a “childhood” that Singer assumes to be universal.
Subsequent claims made by Singer are similarly ill-supported. For example, the assertion that “…former girl child soldiers are 52 percent more likely to commit suicide than their boy child soldier equivalents” (p. 195) is apparently based upon findings from a single study conducted in a specific area of Uganda. Similarly, the statement that “many children often emerge from [military training] programs with weakened senses of remorse and obsessions with violence” relies upon one person’s commentary about a single military group (p. 72).
The author’s use of children’s testimony is also misleading. Their experiences are principally conveyed through brief quotations that cite only the young speaker’s initial and age, thereby denuding him or her of gender, culture and history. The result is a generic child victim whose experience is constant regardless of location on the planet. The reasons why children become involved with military groups, the nature of that involvement, and the challenges they face can only be understood in a very superficial manner when the actual context of their lives are ignored to this extent.
Singer’s lack of expertise on many of the issues he discusses is most apparent in the penultimate chapter on the rehabilitation of former child combatants or, as he puts it, “turning a soldier back into a child.” Here he offers a series of recommendations that are assumed to have general applicability. With a nod in the direction of “the healing and cleansing ceremonies” of “traditional communities,” (p. 203) he prescribes a set of interventions based upon assumptions about mental health that are entirely western in origin, seemingly unaware of the extensive debates about the appropriateness of applying such approaches across diverse socio-cultural settings. Here again, Singer displays a lamentable lack of familiarity with the literature, such as the work of Bracken, Summerfield and a growing number of others who have seriously challenged the worth of a “PTSD-based” approach to rehabilitation.
As poorly researched and weakly argued as it is, the aspect of this book that troubled me most was its author’s moral maneuvering. For him, child recruitment stands out as a particular violation of the rules of war—“its rawest and most troubling form” (p. 6). He seems to indicate that the “high technology and clean, distant precision used by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq”(p. 6) is far preferable. Thus the recent actions of the U.S., U.K. and other powerful governments are exempt from Singer’s sermon about the morality of current warfare. While some military authorities are vilified as “those foes who send children out to their dirty work” (p. 181), the actions of the U.S. military are considered “moral and popular” (p. 170). This book left me longing for a discussion of children’s well-being that considered the impacts of child recruitment alongside the consequences of, for example, uranium-tipped bombs and cluster munitions. If we are to build a popular consensus for the protection of children in war, as Singer seems to wish, then we shall need a far greater willingness to reflect on the brutalization of children by all military authorities than is demonstrated in this unfortunate book.
Reference
Rosen, David (2005). Armies of the Young. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press
Reviewer Information
Jason Hart is a research officer at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford and also currently holds a research fellowship in the Anthropology Department of Johns Hopkins University. His work as an anthropologist focuses on adolescents living amidst the conditions of armed conflict and displacement.