Bloody Hungry Century

The last year of the last millennium ended like it started. Senseless armed conflicts, many of them fought by children. More than 300,000 children – some as young as seven – were fighting in 41 countries at the dawn of the 21st century, according to a report published by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. Children are recruited because of “their very qualities as children – they can be cheap, expendable and easier to condition into fearless killing and unthinkable obedience," the report said.

The U.S. and British military recruit 17-year-olds voluntarily into their armies. Many child soldiers are recruited unwittingly and die unnecessarily. Not just as soldiers, but innocent victims of heartless regimes that sacrifice their young innocent lives in the name of “the cause”.

Mohammed al Durra, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy killed in the arms of his father while cowering behind a cement block in 2000, is one such vivid example that was beamed globally. A commercial on Palestinian television shows an actor playing Mohammed in heaven flying a kite in a lush meadow, frolicking on a beach and riding a Ferris wheel in an amusement park. He then calls on the Palestinian children, saying: “I am not waving goodbye, I am waving to tell you to follow in my footsteps.”

The inscription on Mohammed’s grave calls him a martyr – the term the Palestinian Authority used to describe the other 192 children killed in one year during the Intifada in the opening year of the 21st century.

Mahmoud Masleh is a principal at a Hamas-funded school that teaches children to become martyrs. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Masleh asked Mohmen Din, 5, whose father, a Hamas member, had been killed. “I want to be just like him,” the child answered. That earned him a hug and a kiss from the principal.

The use of child suicide bombers by the Palestinians was highlighted when an unwitting 10-year old boy was stopped at an Israeli checkpoint laden with a bomb. The boy’s life had been saved only because a booby-trapped cell phone inside his bag failed to explode.

The chief of security in the West Bank, Jibril Rajoub, described these teachings and practices as “dangerous things about Islam”. He added, “No one has a right to dictate their crazy vision to our children.”

Children wanting to follow in the footsteps of their fathers are not limited to Palestine. Children in Afghanistan know no other way of life. The United Nations estimates that half of the 23 million Afghans are under 18. Almost all of the children are living in poverty. Some are psychologically scarred and most have few role models other than soldiers. “This is a problem of the center of the Afghan situation,” said Olara Otunnu, the U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict. “You are talking about two generations of children and youth who have been exposed to war nonstop.”

The closing century of the millennium was the bloodiest in history. More than 160 million human beings were killed in various conflicts. It is a dark history, but unless We The Maids look carefully into the dark corners of the White House that create war and shine the bright light of peace in the 21st century, it will only get darker in the 21st century.

David Reiff in his book A Bed for the Night; Humanitarianism in Crisis, with disconsolate satisfaction quotes Alberto Navarro, former director of the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office, as correctly saying, “Mankind is slowly but in a very determined way going back to barbarism.”