Children at War: Child Soldiers around the globe.

The recent massacre at Qana of 37 children has brought the worlds attention to the devastating price of war that civilians and in particular kids, pay when the grownups just can't get their shit together. It is tragic and heartbreaking. Many may not know, or care to know, how many children are affected by war and the horrific consequenses they face due to the failure of the worlds leaders to maintain peaceful relations amongst themselves. Besides being killed and then excused by the disgusting phrasing of "collateral damage", children are being forced to fight in wars around the globe. This diary is about bringing awareness to the plight of these children, some as youngs as six or seven years old, that are stolen from their homes and made to fight. This is not playing war like many of us did as kids, this is the real deal.
More below.

In northern Uganda, as many as 30,000 children have been kidnapped and forced to serve as soldiers in a nightmarish civil war that the world has largely ignored. These innocent children are brutalized and mutilated, forced to commit atrocities, and given as sex slaves to military commanders. This targeted abuse of children is unacceptable.

In Uganda:
An Overview:

In 1987, Joseph Kony started a movement to overthrow the government of Uganda. The movement is now known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).  Civilians are terrorized by the LRA. If individuals are suspected of sympathizing with the government, the LRA uses brutal tactics such as cutting off of hands, ears or lips, to intimidate them. Children are abducted and forced to serve as child soldiers. Kony creates his army primarily through the violent abduction and forced enlistment of children. Children are forced to be soldiers, laborers and, in the case of girls, sexual slaves. More than 30,000 children have been kidnapped by the LRA. These rebels, based in southern Sudan, are reportedly being sheltered and armed by extremists in Sudan's government.

Source

Lokeria Aciro recovers at a hospital in northern Uganda. She had her lips and ears cut off by an 11-year-old soldier of the LRA when she and other women left a refugee camp to gather firewood. The other women were taken by the rebels.

Some of the horrors they have participated in are hard to even imagine,

When he was 6, Sam was kidnapped.  He spent the next six years as a captive of a rebel army, where he was forced to kill other children sometimes by biting the skin off a screaming victim who would slowly bleed to death.

With new weapons that are lightweight and easy to fire, children are more easily armed, with less training than ever before. Worldwide, more than half a million children under-18 have been recruited into government armed forces, paramilitaries, civil militia and a wide variety of non-state armed groups in more than 85 countries. No one knows for certain the actual number but research suggests that 300,000 child soldiers are exploited in over 30 conflicts around the world.

From Stolen Childhood

"I've seen people get their hands cut off, a ten-year-old girl raped and then die, and so many men and women burned alive... So many times I just cried inside my heart because I didn't dare cry out loud."

Please sign the following

"Children Should Never Be Soldiers" Declaration at WorldVision

Denied a childhood and often subjected to horrific violence, these young combatants participate in all aspects of contemporary warfare. They wield AK-47s and M-16s on the front lines of combat, serve as human mine detectors, participate in suicide missions, carry supplies, and act as spies, messengers or lookouts. Human Rights Watch has interviewed child soldiers from countries including Angola, Colombia, Lebanon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Uganda. In Sierra Leone, thousands of children abducted by rebel forces witnessed and participated in horrible atrocities against civilians, including beheadings, amputations, rape, and burning people alive. Children forced to take part in atrocities were often given drugs to overcome their fear or reluctance to fight.

Human Rights Watch

In Sri Lanka a rebel group known as the LTTE or Tamil Tigers has been using children in their fight against government forces for two decades. They specialize in getting kids to blow themselves up and many prefer suicide to being captured. While they currently have a "cease fire" with the Sri Lankan government since 2002, their reign of terror continues.

LTTE Tamil Tiger Terrorists continue to assassinate civilians, members of the rival political parties and security personnel under the banner of cease-fire agreement (CFA). Politically motivated killings, arbitrary arrests, harassments, abductions, detentions, torture, extortions, intimidations, use of children as child soldiers, disappearances and conscriptions are some of the many fundamental right violations of the LTTE (so-called Liberation Tigers of Tamil eelam). The Tamil People who had been enjoying all the democratic and human rights in those areas have now been deprived of many of their basic rights and hardly one day passes without at least one person getting killed in these areas. The terrorist outfit is continuing its terror campaign freely by eliminating their opponents including Tamils with the intension of carving out a separate fascist state.

Source</ <br> Update-The other side of the Tamil story:

Canadian Tamils observed 4 February 1999 as a day of prayer and fasting and called upon the Canadian government to intervene to bring about a just and peaceful end to the conflict in the island of Sri Lanka. The Federation of Tamil Associations of Canada issued a statement on 27 January 1999: "Over a half century, the Tamil nation has been subjected to severe oppression by the Sri Lankan Sinhalese State. Systematic discriminatory legislation and violent atrocities against the Tamil people have continued since independence from the British. For over 30 years, democratically elected Tamil leaders protested against such oppression through non-violent, democratic and peaceful means. The just demands of the Tamil people were answered with military repression and state terrorism. Promises were made, but never fulfilled; the agreements and pacts entered into became dead letters. The friction between the two peoples (the Sinhalese nation and the Tamil Eelam nation) finally emerged as a major conflict leading to the demand for secession at the 1977, Parliamentary elections. The Tamils overwhelmingly voted a mandate to create the state of Tamil Eelam. The Sri Lankan Government, however, continued its repression, state terrorism and flagrant violations of human rights. It is this brutalisation that led the Tamils to take up arms to defend themselves. The Sri Lanka government has banned both domestic and foreign media from visiting the war zone and reporting independently. The world at large is kept in the dark with only the news put out by the Government, which is one sided and biased. This war is a war without witness. 70,000 innocent Tamils have been killed and a million Tamils became refugees, of which 200,000 have sought political asylum in Canada. We call upon the Government of Canada to intervene to end the genocidal war launched by the Sri Lanka government against the Tamil people and bring a just and peaceful solution to the conflict. To remember this Black Day, the Tamils will observe Thursday, 4 February 1999 as a Day of Prayer and Fasting.

Source
I could probably spend a lot more time digging up information to share and make this diary epic in size, God knows the subject is worthy, but I will end with this.
Killing innocent people is wrong. Killing innocent children is an unbounded evil on a level beyond the scope of reason or justification.  It matters not who the aggressor is, it's irrelevant and it is wrong. Morally, spiritually, cosmically WRONG. Forcing children to do your killing for you is something I don't even have words for.