Saddam Hussein, alarmed by his swift defeat in the first Gulf War, formed the Ashbal Saddam. Saddam’s “Lion Cubs” were his very own Hitler Jugend, boys ten to fifteen trained in weaponry, tactics, unthinking party loyalty, and cruelty. Doubtless many of them battle U.S. troops even today. This fact is little discussed by those who smirk at the assertion that Iraq’s was an “evil” regime. In P. W. Singer’s Children at War (Pantheon, 288 pages, $25), a dispassionate study of child armies, the Ashbal Saddam is one among many state and non-state armies identified that disregard the rules of warfare—and of the most basic morality.
Singer informs us that “[t]he generally accepted estimate is that well over 300,000 children are currently fighting in wars or have recently been demobilized . . . just under 10 percent of combatants” in today’s conflicts. Though child soldiers are usually associated with failed African states like Sierra Leone or Liberia, they are in use the world over. (The first U.S. serviceman killed in Afghanistan was shot by a fourteen-year-old sniper.)
Those who have fought them report children make the most vicious, fearless killers. Some practice cannibalism or are addicted to opiates. Of course, those responsible for turning children into monsters are adults—often adults accorded respect on the world stage as “freedom fighters.” It should be more difficult to dwell in that delusion when one finds the activities of “resistance” may include kidnapping children, forcing them to execute their siblings, giving them hashish and heroin, torturing or raping them, and arming them with Kalashnikovs, RPGs, and other “man-portable” weapons.
Is it possible to win wars against those who do not abide by war’s rules? If so, it will require an acknowledgment that arms do not make an army: If our enemies refuse to fight as we do, we must change the way we fight. Singer notes dryly, “Moral opprobrium is the only major risk to a group that uses child soldiers. However, any group that contemplates using children as fighters has already shown itself unwilling to be limited by prevailing moral codes.” “Dialogue,” that code word for “moral opprobrium,” has long been the only weapon in the UN arsenal. No wonder it falls on the U.S. to be The Consequences for enemies of peace and security—and with children in the crossfire and the crosshairs, no wonder it is such a thankless task.