By Myriam Denov Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2010 ISBN 9780521693219 , 234 pp, £16.99 (pb ) This important book is based on a study of 76 children all of whom reported being abducted by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a notorious and brutal rebel force during the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2001). The children were 4–13 years old at the time they were taken into the RUF, and remained with the rebel forces from periods ranging from a few months to eight years. Most of the data were gathered by open-ended interviews and focus groups undertaken between May 2003 and February 2004, with a number of follow-up interviews in 2008. Denov points out that for a variety of reasons, the narratives cannot be generalised to all child soldiers in Sierra Leone, or even to all those who served with the RUF. First, the participants for the study were selected by researchers from two NGOs: Defense for Children International-Sierra Leone and Forum of Conscience, who were in regular contact with these children at the time of the research. It is unclear how these children might differ from other RUF recruits. Second, the fact that former child soldiers generally believed (albeit erroneously) that they were possibly liable for prosecution by the Special Court may have had a major impact on the way former soldiers tailored their narratives to stress their victimisation and underplay their participation in acts of violence. Having said this, however, it is hard to imagine any contemporary research among former child soldiers not having to deal with similar methodological challenges and Denov is careful to contextualise the results of the project. Using the collected narratives of the children, Denov develops a model of forced recruitment into the RUF. She describes an especially cruel threefold rite de passage whereby the children are separated from their former lives and incorporated and enculturated into the RUF’s culture of violence; they then have to learn to adapt to, participate in, and sometimes resist the intensely brutal and cruel world of the RUF fighters; and finally leave the RUF at war’s end, transformed by their experiences and uneasily reintroduced to the daunting challenges of post-war Sierra Leone. Within this framework, children were abducted, separated and isolated from their families and communities into RUF-controlled enclaves. They generally reported a period of training and ideological orientation similar to that found in most armed forces and groups. This included weapons and physical training, involving instruction in the care and use of small arms and the careful management of ammunition. Children were also schooled in a wide variety of battlefield tactics and killing techniques. There was a major ideological component that required recruits to attend meetings, listen to speeches and motivational lectures on the philosophy of the RUF and its social and political goals, and sing war songs. What set the RUF apart from other armed groups was the degree to which it was infused by an extreme culture of violence, designed to break down resistance, ensure obedience, and celebrate and routinise cruelty and terror. The RUF, Denov states, was ‘indiscriminate in its brutality’. It engaged in wholesale murder and terror throughout Sierra Leone and visited daily cruelties upon its own recruits, whether they were men or women, boys or girls. Yet at the same time the RUF seemed capable of generating intense loyalties. Male commanders were especially adept at creating strong patron–client relationships, with a host of rewards and promotions, especially among boys. They offered patronage and protection to children and young people in exchange for love, loyalty, labour and combat. Significantly, many of these relationships seemed to have survived the demobilisation of children in the post-war period. A major strength of this book is the degree to which the findings stress the limited agency of children, even under extreme circumstances over which they had little control. Denov points to the strength of peer relationships among recruits and the degree to which children and young people mentored one another, took on key leadership positions within the RUF, actively recruited other children into the ranks of the RUF and forged strong bonds of friendship. The data also point to the fluidity of roles which both boys and girls were able to take up in the RUF. Without minimising the treatment and suffering of many of these children, it is clear that their identities and experiences cannot be reduced to the simple categories of ‘victims’ and ‘sex slaves’ that are so prominent in many accounts of child soldiers. Equally important is the way children, both boys and girls, were able to resist, sometimes violently, the abusive behaviour of others. As Denov shows, both boys and girls were frequently able to challenge or evade the culture of violence within the RUF so as to preserve their own sense of personal identity and morality. Anyone interested in a nuanced and non-dogmatic view of the situation of child soldiers would be wise to read her book.
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David Rosen (2011) studied this question.