Sri Lanka

While twenty five years of civil war must have hardened attitudes in Sri Lanka, the shelling of a hospital is a despicable act. As the Sri Lankan government and Army are preventing foreign journalist in, it is impossible to determine if it was the Sri Lankan Army or the Tamil Tiger Rebels were responsible, it will be discovered once the fighting is over. Human rights abuses will always be found out in the end.

There have been atrocities on both sides, and while the Sri Lankan army are set to defeat the Tamil Tigers, I doubt that this will end the fighting and that a guerrilla war will now follow, as there has to be a political settlement to obtain real peace. As for the Tamil Tigers, like so many rebellions in the name of the people, they have bullied the population. Anyone wanting to leave the area controlled by the (So Called) freedom fighters had to leave a relative in the area as a hostage to ensure they returned.

As any civil war happens as the result of prejudice or oppression then the Sri Lankan government needs to treat the Tamil people with respect, dignity and justice.
I hope that whoever shelled the hospital is punished in a fair and legal way, either by the government or by international courts.

Child Soldiers

During the Cold war the west and the Soviet Union had their hot wars but they were wars by proxy. Where each side armed and supported different factions in what were predominantly civil wars. Frequently these were based upon the idea that your enemies, enemy is your friend, this lead to the west supporting some rather despicable regimes. Both of the wars that are happening in Iraq and Afghanistan would not have happened if we in the west had not supported these earlier conflicts.

Often wars stem from an injustice regarding the use, control and sale of natural resources. This injustice enables people with an Ideological bee in their bonnet, to influence peoples, and often in the guise of a freedom movement. While these leaders may start out with good intentions, as power corrupts, in war or any other form of armed conflict, people who are given respect because of their use of violence, then are corrupted and damaged by this. In Northern Ireland there are a small number of people that will always want to continue the fight as they only have status though the killings and violence. Even members of a convention and disciplined army will be shaped by going to war and some are damaged too.

Therefore, the use of children in war has to be abhorrent. It is rare for a conventional Army to use child solders, in Germany in the closing days of the Second World War, in Russia when the Russians were facing genocide. Even then it was desperate act by desperate peoples. Yet no matter how hard I look, I cannot find an example of child solders being used by a legitimate regime where the leadership was not a dictatorship.

The worst examples of the exploitation of children during war though have been in Africa. All of my life there has been an almost constant war in one part of Africa or another. While there were some of these wars that initially had justifiable reasons, if war can ever be justified, frequently these conflicts became more about control of natural resources and the money that this generated.

In Sierra Leone the brutal civil war was funded and prolonged by “Blood Diamonds”. In Democratic Republic of Congo it copper, Gold, Diamonds that has kept the warring factions fighting. However, the population, the people are sick of the constant war. Therefore to maintain the brutal bulling control by these warlords, so called rebel leaders, they terrorise the local people by rape, torture and killing of the very civilians they claim to be fighting for.

One of the most damaging aspects of this control is the use of child soldiers. These so called freedom fighters will kidnap children to act as soldiers. They will force them to commit atrocities so that they cannot return home to their villages, thus leaving these children with no choice, fight or die.

In The Hague, at the International Criminal Court the first ever case of a warlord being charged with using child soldiers started. The defendant, Thomas Lubanga entered a plea of not guilty. From the news reports and pictures taken at the time of these offenses, I have no doubt that he will be found guilty. While there are plenty of other charges that he could have been charged with, and he is not facing charges related to the Rapes, Torture and Murders, at least he will receive the punishment the law allows and he deserves.

This is as much a symbol that the world will not tolerate the damaging effect this has on Africa. It will take many years of work and support prevent these damaged from becoming the next generation of people that can only resolve problems via violence. Also the rest of the world needs to stop exploiting these conflicts to grab resources and fund these wars. If DRC had been able to use the income from its mineral wealth to develop rather than destroy, then all the people of that nation could have benefited.

While some companies and individuals have financially benefited from these wars, it is all of us that have to pay the financial price. But the greatest price is paid by the populations of these countries, via damaged and traumatised lives.