This is my third book by Lt. General (Ret’d) Roméo Dallaire, the UN commander during the Rwandan Genocide in 1993-1994. Though suffering from significant PTSD from his experiences there, Dallaire has pushed forward with multiple volumes based on current research that are against genocide or against the use of children as soldiers. In They Fight Like Soldiers he puts forth the unique idea that children are a ‘weapons system’ rather than mere soldiers. They are a commodity of nearly endless supply that can be used to kill; to provide transport drugs and small arms; to sweep areas where mines are potentially buried as they are heavy enough to set off the mines, but are disposable; and in the case of girls, they can cook, clean, serve as sex slaves and bush wives, and literally give birth to the next generation of child soldiers.
Initially, Dallaire speaks to his own childhood and how he moved into the military. Then he shows, through a fictional compilation of many boy soldiers’ stories, how a child is stolen or bought, and then radicalized. Later, he shows another fictional story, a UN soldier killing a child soldier, a girl, and the long-term effects on the soldier’s emotional state after that act.
This is a thought-provoking book that forces readers to look at the role of children through history and how they have often been marginalized, ill-treated, and considered disposable. Though we Americans claim to have risen above such demeanor, we nonetheless refuse to pass gun control laws to protect our own children, much less deal with gun control when those weapons are used by children in foreign lands. induced rituals and murder to being trained to become a killing machine. I applaud Dallaire and his continuing and consistent efforts to prevent genocide and the use of child soldiers.
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They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers (Vintage Canada, September 13, 2011) is available through:
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You can find my review of Dallaire’s Waiting for First Light here.
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