Child Soldiers: The Ultimate Natural Resource (F)

The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was a group of rebels that wanted to use children as soldiers. Child soldiers were very useful to the RUF for a few reasons. Children could perform tasks that others could not. Since they were small, they could sneak around and remain unnoticed to those around them. Soldiers that were 25 years or older may not have been small enough to sneak around as easily as children did, and elderly people who may have been the same size were not as agile as children. Also, children were naive. There were not as exposed to life as older people. They would listen to the RUF because they were scared and feared death. They did not think there was anything they could do, or any reason to try to gain freedom. However, during that time period, people thought of children as innocent souls. Children could be seen as innocent to the enemy, and then deceive them. The final and most important reason for using children as soldiers is that children had little or no idea of what the war was about. They did not know if they were fighting for good or bad, so it did not bother them as much if they were doing something that was injust. That ignorance of the motives of both sides was very key to the childrens' usefulness. The RUF wanted child soldiers not only because of their size, but because of what they did not know.