They Fight Like Soldiers They Die Like Children by Roméo Dallaire

I had been wanting to read this book ever since I attended Dallaire's presentation on the issue of child soldiers at the University of Waterloo three years ago.

This is not a work of fiction, so I do not have the same criteria for evaluating it as I have for the other books I have read.

This book is an intensely research exploration of the causes and effects of using children as weapons of war. Dallaire covers social, political, and economic pitfalls, both local and widespread, which contribute to the ongoing use of children in armed conflict. He then examines the shortcomings of current efforts to prevent and cease this practice, and provides an academic basis for ongoing development of programs at all levels.

One thing I found especially surprising was the impact that fighting against children has had on the author directly. Allow me to trouble you with an excerpt:

Do such circumstances [ie: kill or be killed] eliminate or at least reduce soldiers' sense of humanity in order that they can employ destructive force? In the heat of the moment, cna they still hear the orders, can they still understand the rules of engagement, can they objectively process ethical, moral, and legal dilemmas? Is there still a track in their brains that permits some overriding constraints or limitations to what a human can do in combat? Can they still see the enemy as human or has the enemy become a target made of metal, wood, fabric, and flesh, all of equal value and posing an equal threat? Is the enemy still human and are you still human too?

These questions arise from combat between equals. Here's another. Can you kill a child if that child is dressed and armed as a warrior? If so, how many times can you do that deliberately before revulsion and disgust and self-doubt fry your brain?

This short passage communicates something I think has had a profound effect on Dallaire since he was involved in the UN peace-keeping force in Rwanda (where all armed groups had combatants under 14 years of age). I have read extensively on child soldiers and was not particularly shocked (but I was greatly saddened) by much of the information. One issue that is not often dealt with by charities and governments who rehabilitate these children is the issue of meeting force with force - when the aggressors may be as young as 6 years old. As instability and conflict spread across many nations, more and more trained peacekeepers will find kids with machine guns when they look through their scopes. How does an individual soldier deal with that situation and how can we prepare soldiers to make decisions that minimize the continued abuse and exploitation of these children?

There are a lot of questions that Dallaire asks in this book, but I think the final one in the quote above (how many times...) he has had to answer for himself. What a wretched answer to possess.

In the discussion that Dallaire presents of ongoing efforts to eradicate child soldiers, I noted his repeated insistence that better control of light automatic weapons and their associated ammo could be a huge help to keeping children out of direct confrontations (although they would likely still be vulnerable to exploitation as spies, carriers, or sexual slaves). This is, I think, the meeting point between the grand design and the ordinary people. This is how we hobbits can defeat Mordor. We can encourage our government to prioritize a decrease in small automatic weapons from both Canadian and international sources.

I won't say that you should all read this book, but I will say I found it encouraging and inspiring for a book that draws material from the most extreme examples of human brutality. Dallaire makes a convincing (and exhaustively researched) case for righting the wrongs, no matter how inconvenient it may be for us personally.

Up next: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (which should be more cheerful than this last one, oddly).