By Sue Montgomery, Postmedia News
They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers
By Roméo Dallaire
Random House Canada, $34.95
Let me say up front that Senator Roméo Dallaire is one of my heroes. And while I didn't name my children after him, as so many Rwandans did post-genocide, I admire his honesty, passion, commitment and humanity.
I've heard him speak many times, witnessed his testimony at Canada's first war-crimes trial and read his first book, Shake Hands with the Devil, the chilling story of his experience as commander of the disastrous United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. There are few Canadians as frank and outspoken, unperturbed by what others may think.
So you might think me a bit biased in my take on his latest work, They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers. But I encourage you to read it and discover for yourself the compassion that shines through in this book about the hundreds of thousands of children having their childhoods stolen as they are forced into armed conflict.
It is both heartbreaking and informative.
Dallaire, in his walk-the-talk way, also provides clear solutions to the problem.
Six years ago, he launched the Child Soldiers Initiative to stop the use of children in armed conflict. He has used a large portion of the royalties from Shake Hands with the Devil to fund the project (as well as his foundation, which helps orphans in Rwanda and children in Canada). He also donates funds from speaking engagements to help fund Child Soldiers Initiative.
What was shocking to learn in his latest book -- and maybe I missed this in all the reading I've done on the Rwandan genocide -- is that a large majority of soldiers fighting on the side of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front, as well those carrying out the slaughter on the side of the government, were children.
It was the same in Sierra Leone, Sudan, the Congo and Burundi.
Children, says Dallaire, are plentiful, inexpensive to maintain, loyal and have the capacity to be barbaric, which makes them a perfect weapons system. Some live in such abject poverty, it's easy for them to be lured away by an armed group that will feed and clothe them.
It's clear throughout his writing that Dallaire, who provides a glimpse into his own childhood with a strict and troubled father, truly believes all children have the right to fun and imagination.
Into his well-researched writing about the use of these soldiers and attempts to rehabilitate them once conflict has ended, Dallaire weaves a gripping fictional-composite account of how one child ends up going from a carefree life in an African village to being recruited into a rebel army, drugged, forced to hack her own brother to death and, eventually, fighting on the front lines. In the end, this child, just entering puberty, is shot by a UN peacekeeper.
Later in the book, we get the fictional account of the UN peacekeeper who shot the child soldier. The UN soldier returns home when his tour is over, but finds it difficult to come to terms with what he has done.
"In that village, in that moment, my life had changed inexorably, and most of the time, I believed that I would never really make it back," Dallaire quotes his fictional soldier, but one wonders if he's writing about himself. He suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome for years after returning from Rwanda, where he witnessed the barbaric slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus by fanatical members of the Hutu majority.
"In Rwanda, I saw child soldiers in action and met the adults who directed them, and I was unable to engage and to stop them, leaving me with a rage that remains unabated nearly two decades after the fact," Dallaire writes.
The last chapter in the book is called "What you can do." In true Dallaire style, he challenges and encourages all of us to get involved, as he is, with the Child Soldiers Initiative, to eradicate what he calls this brutal crime against humanity.
He calls on Canadians between 18 and 30 to use their votes, which they seldom do, to influence the political path the country should take. Without their voices and leadership, there will be no political will to intervene in the world's hot spots, he says.
He calls on them to harness the social networking and Internet tools at their fingertips.
A global accountability process could be created, for example, that "would so overwhelm those in power that they would agree to the eradication of the use of child soldiers."
After all the horrors Dallaire has seen, his enthusiasm and optimism is a wonder. But it's also infectious and refreshing.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
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