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“I Didn't Want to Die So I Joined Them”: Structuration and the Process of Becoming Boy Soldiers in Sierra Leone

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 18; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09546550500384801

1556-1836

Richard Maclure, Myriam Denov,

Health and Conflict Studies

ABSTRACT Child soldiers are generally portrayed either as victims of structural forces that are beyond their control and comprehension or as knowing agents of mayhem in search of revolutionary change or personal gain. Yet these singular perspectives are bedevilled by their dialectical limitations, the one overlooking capacities of individual will, the other prone to discounting historical and socioeconomic contexts. In this paper, through the lens of structuration theory that postulates the interconnectedness of structure and agency, we examine how boys were transformed into armed and organized combatants in Sierra Leone's recent civil war. Drawing from a series of interviews with a cohort of boys who fought with the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), we map out their experiences and perspectives in a way that highlights the juxtaposition of profound social forces and the capacity for personal agency that underlay the process of becoming child soldiers. We conclude by ruminating on the challenges of rehabilitating and reintegrating former child soldiers in the impoverished circumstances of post-war Sierra Leone. The authors wish to thank the boys who granted us interviews and spoke with us at length, our colleagues at DCI-SL for their marvelous collaboration, and to the Child Protection Branch of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) which provided a grant for this study. We are also grateful to Barry Riddell at Queen's University and to the two anonymous reviewers whose comments contributed substantially to revisions of the manuscript. Notes 1. Rachel Brett and Margaret McCallin, Children: The Invisible Soldiers (Stockholm: Radda Barnen, 1998); Julia Freedson, "The Impact of Conflict on Children: The Role of Small Arms," Disarmament Forum 3 (2002) 37–44; Gary W. Ladd and Ed Cairns, "Children: Ethnic and Political Violence," Child Development 67, no. 1 (1996): 14–18. 2. Susan McKay and Dyan Mazurana, Where are the Girls? Girls in Fighting Forces in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone and Mozambique: Their Lives During and After War (Montreal: Rights and Democracy, 2004). In this paper we adhere to the definition of a child as "every human being below eighteen years" as stated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 1). 3. E.g., Human Rights Watch, "We'll Kill You if You Cry: Sexual Violence in the Sierra Leone Conflict" 15, no. 1 (2003): "Special Report: Boy Soldiers," Newsweek, 7 Aug. 1995. 4. Krijn Peters and Paul Richards, "Why We Fight: Voices of Youth Combatants in Sierra Leone," Africa 68, no. 2 (1998): 183–199; Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone (Oxford: James Currey, 1996). 5. Ibrahim Abdullah, Yusuf Bangura, Cecil Blake, Lansana Gberie, Lemuel Johnson, Kelfala Kallon, Safa Kemokai, Patrick Muana, Ishmail Rashid, and Alfred Zack-Willams, "Lumpen Youth Culture and Political Violence: Sierra Leoneans Debate the RUF and the Civil War," Africa Development 22, nos. 3 & 4 (1997): 171–214. 6. James Garbarino, Kathleen Kostelny, and Nancy Dubrow, No Place to Be a Child: Growing Up in a War Zone (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1991); Julia Maxted, "Children and Armed Conflict in Africa," Social Identities 9, no. 1 (2003): 50–72; William P. Murphy, "Military Patrimonialism and Child Soldier Clientalism in the Liberian and Sierra Leonean Civil Wars," African Studies Review 46, no. 2 (2003): 61–87. 7. William Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Alfred B. Zack-Williams, "Sierra Leone: The Political Economy of Civil War, 1991–98," Third World Quarterly 20, no. 1 (1999): 143–162. 8. Barry Riddell, "Urban Bias, Redistribution, and State Collapse: The Lessons of Sierra Leone," in Reginald Cline-Cole and Elsbeth Robson, eds., West African Worlds: Local and Regional Paths through "Development," Modernity and Globalisation (Toronto: Pearson Education, 2003). 9. Abdullah, et al., "Lumpen Youth Culture"; Angela MacIntyre, Emanuel Kwesi Aning, and Prosper Nii Nortey, "Politics, War and Youth Culture in Sierra Leone: An Alternative Interpretation," African Security Review 11, no. 3 (2002): 213–228. 10. Murphy, "Military Patrimonialism." 11. Yusuf Bangura, "Understanding the Political and Cultural Dynamics of the Sierra Leone War: A Critique of Paul Richards's Fighting for the Rainforest," Africa Development 22, nos. 3 & 4 (1997): 33–34; Ed Cairns, Children and Political Violence (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); Peters and Richards, "Why We Fight." 12. Graca Machel, "The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children: Report of the Expert of the Secretary-General, submitted pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 48/157, A/51/306, 26" (New York: United Nations, Aug. 1996). 13. Eileen Green, Wendy Mitchell, and Robin Bunton, "Conceptualizing Risk and Danger: An Analysis of Young People's Perceptions of Risk," Journal of Youth Studies 3 (2000): 109–126; M. Luisa Pombeni, Erich Kirchler, and Augusto Palmonari, "Identification with Peers as a Strategy to Muddle through the Troubles of the Adolescent Years," Journal of Adolescence 13 (1990): 351–369. 14. Human Rights Watch, "We'll Kill You If You Cry"; Peters and Richards, "Why We Fight." 15. Thandika Mkandawire, "The Terrible Toll of Post-Colonial Rebel Movements in Africa: Towards an Explanation of the Violence against the Peasantry," Journal of Modern African Studies, 40, no. 2 (2002): 181–215. 16. Anthony Giddens, "Comments on the Theory of Structuration," Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 13 (1983): 75–80; see also Vernon Gayle, "Structural and Cultural Approaches to Youth: Structuration Theory and Bridging the Gap," Youth and Policy 61, no. 1 (1998): 59–72. Closely intertwined with structuration theory is the notion of structured individualization that likewise encapsulates the idea of individual action integrally connected to broader structural forces. See Richard Maclure and Melvin Sotelo, "Youth Gangs in Nicaragua: Gang Membership as Structured Individualisation," Journal of Youth Studies, 7, no. 4 (2004): 417–432. 17. Sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the study has been conducted by the authors, who work at the University of Ottawa, in collaboration with colleagues who are affiliated with Defence for Children International, Sierra Leone (DCI-SL), a Sierra Leonean NGO. 18. Other publications will focus on the experiences and perspectives of girl child soldiers in Sierra Leone: Myriam Denov and Richard Maclure (forthcoming), "Engaging the Voices of Girls in the Aftermath of Sierra Leone's Conflict: Experiences and Perspectives in the Culture of Violence," Anthropologica; Myriam Denov and Richard Maclure (forthcoming) "Girls and Small Arms in Sierra Leone: Victimization, Participation and Resistance," in Vanessa Farr and Albrecht Schnabel, eds., Gender Perspectives on Small Arms and Light Weapons (Tokyo: United Nations University Press). 19. The notion of "coercive persuasion" has been normally referred to the technique of controlling POWs through means of rewards and punishments. See Andrew J. Pavlos, The Cult Experience (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 51–52. Since many boys who were abducted by the RUF were subjected to a similar reward-and-punishment pattern of control, we find the term to be particularly apt in describing this process. 20. Mkandawire, "Post-Colonial Rebel Movements"; Peters and Richards, "Why We Fight." 21. Our interviewees nonetheless indicated that other children known to them did join the RUF of their own volition, some who were motivated by revolutionary ideals, others who hoped for material gain. This is similar to accounts in Krijn Peters, "Re-examining Voluntarism: Youth Combatants in Sierra Leone," Monograph no. 100 (London: Institute of Security Studies, 2004). 22. Rachel Brett and Irma Specht, Young Soldiers: Why They Choose to Fight (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2004). 23. Ian Smillie, Lansana Gberie, and Ralph Hazleton, The Heart of the Matter: Sierra Leone, Diamonds, and Human Security (Partnership Africa Canada: http://www.sierra-leone.org/heartmatter, 2000). 24. Christopher Clapham, Sierra Leone: The Political Economy of Internal Conflict (Netherlands Institute of International Relations: Conflict Research Unit, 2003); Peters and Richards, "Why We Fight." 25. In this respect, child soldiery was strikingly similar to urban youth gang membership; See Scott H. Decker and Barrik van Winkle, Life in the Gang: Family, Friends, and Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 75. 26. The kamajors were local game hunters who were used as scouts during government army patrols as early as 1991. From 1993, in response to continued attacks of the RUF and the inadequate protection of the rapidly expanded and undisciplined government army (the SLA), local communities began to organize civil defense groups to protect their villages. Drawn from the hunter tradition known in the South and East as kamajo and in the North as tamaboro and kapra, the kamajor movement was more or less organized as a guild to fight against the RUF; See Patrick Muana, "The Kamajoi Militia: Civil War, Internal Displacement and the Politics of Counter-Insurgency," Africa Development 22, nos. 3 & 4 (1997): 77–100. ECOMOG (the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group) was the Nigerian-led West-African intervention force that defended the Freetown peninsula against an RUF incursion and fought to reclaim major provincial centres from the RUF. 27. Giddens, "Theory of Structuration." 28. Abdullah, et al., "Lumpen Youth Culture"; Mkandawire, "Post-Colonial Rebel Movements"; Murphy, "Military Patrimonialism." 29. While the RUF was renowned for its wanton cruelty, the forces that it opposed—the kamajors, ECOMOG, and government troops—by no means eschewed similar forms of brutality against children. 30. Pavlos, Cult Experience; See also Marc Galanter, Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 31. Giddens, "Theory of Structuration." Additional informationNotes on contributorsRichard Maclure Richard Maclure is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa (Canada), and specializes in youth rights and education in Africa and Latin America. Myriam Denov is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her research and teaching interests centre on war and political violence, war–affected children, post–conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding, and gender and security.