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14 January 2009
Interview with VOA’s Shaka Ssali on Problem of Child Soldiers
Ssali discusses personal experiences, rehabilitation efforts
(begin transcript)
Introduction
Narrator:
Around the world today, hundreds of thousands of children are being forced to serve in armed conflicts. The problem of child soldiers is one of the most serious human right issues facing the international community. But awareness of the problem through programs and communications is a large step toward a solution.
We’re joined today by Voice of America radio host Shaka Ssali. A seasoned journalist with more than 20 years of experience, Ssali knows well the experiences of child soldiers. He was just 16 when he began a five-year stint in the army of his homeland of Uganda. He’ll share his own experiences and discuss how children can overcome the trauma of conflict and lead successful lives.
Part 1: Child soldiers and the International Criminal Court
Narrator:
The use of child soldiers is condemned by most countries in the world. In the United States, for example, President Bush recently signed into law the Child Soldiers Accountability Act. The law was approved unanimously by both houses of the U.S. Congress, and makes it a federal crime to recruit or use soldiers under the age of 15. Any violation of the law permits the United States to prosecute any individual on U.S. soil for the offense, even if the children were recruited or served as soldiers outside the United States.
The diplomatic fight against the use of child soldiers has, in the last 10 years, directly concerned the role of the International Criminal Court, located in The Hague in the Netherlands. The court was created as a permanent tribunal to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
We asked Ssali if American participation would have an impact.
Shaka Ssali:
It surely would because, let’s face it, the United States in the only superpower on this planet Earth. And therefore it really carries a lot of weight. I think that if it were to ratify the ICC treaty, which is the Rome treaty, it would make a significant difference because of its stature.
Narrator:
In 1998, the ICC recognized the recruitment and use of children as soldiers as a war crime. In 2007, four former military commanders from Sierra Leone were convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone for recruiting and using children as soldiers. Rebel and military commanders from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda have also been charged with recruiting and using child soldiers.
The United States has supported certain International Criminal Court investigations, such as those conducted in the Darfur region of Sudan. And America remains strongly committed to international accountability for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. The U.S. strongly opposes the Rome Statute as flawed, but will work together with other nations on these serious issues. Other mechanisms either already exist or may be established to ensure international accountability, the most fundamental being domestic state accountability. In the absence of such accountability, America believes the International Community should act to assist the state and in dire circumstances, the UN Security Council may be required to establish mechanisms for specific situations. Such action is consistent with the UN Charter.
Part 2: Social impacts of using children as soldiers
Narrator:
In armed conflicts, not only are children killed and injured, they are deprived of the social structures that provide reference points for right and wrong. Child soldiers are deprived of their families, schools, health systems and religious institutions that help provide moral direction.
Shaka Ssali:
Well, first of all, it provides what you would call a negative role model to society because as kids, one grows up looking at those who are a little bit older than him or her, and depending on the activities, on the sort of things they involve themselves in, it can have a long term negative impact because it can make the difference between a kid growing up looking forward to becoming a teacher, looking forward to becoming a doctor, a nurse; in other words, looking forward really to becoming a useful member of society as opposed to someone frankly that doesn’t have any inspirations at all and therefore doesn’t aspire to anything meaningful.
Narrator:
Children are very impressionable – and the use of ideological indoctrination or brainwashing on youth can have disastrous consequences. It is important to note that in some cases, children can identify with social causes and fight for their self-determination, national liberation or political freedom. But in the end, the children themselves are not in a good position to judge a just cause from one leading simply to their own destruction.
Shaka Ssali:
I grew up watching movies, we call it cinema, and it was when I was I think about 8 years old that I immediately started interacting with characters such as John Wayne, Gene Autry, Clint Eastwood. And I started imagining myself as someone that one day wouldn’t mind really being a cowboy. Having unfettered access to a pistol, which looked like a source of pride, a tool of power, something that would give me the sort of independence, the sort of power, the sort of clout that would help me to somehow look at myself as someone that had made it. So you can imagine how many other kids look at life that way. And where you have civil wars, it almost automatically translates into kids losing their parents or one of their parents, and in some cases families becoming impoverished. In that event of course, you find that kids are extremely vulnerable.
Part 3: Recruitment of child soldiers
Narrator:
Both governments and opposition or rebel groups are responsible for using children as soldiers. Aid groups that work on the issue focus much of their work on preventing the recruitment of child soldiers. How they approach the problem depends on how the children are being recruited – often either by force or seduction.
Shaka Ssali:
I think it is a combination of both and also it’s a question of whether you’re looking at a society that lacks some reasonable sense or degree of stability, because in a lot of these cases, where kids have actually been forcibly recruited into the ranks of rebels or governments and what have you, it’s countries frankly where there is a long history of civil wars.
Narrator:
When families and communities are torn apart by conflict, becoming part of an armed group can seem like the best option for many children.
Shaka Ssali:
I’m not surprised that kids end up becoming part of these armed groups because, again, I think they sort of get a false sense of security in that they are associated with a group which appears to care for them, perhaps in some cases provides some kind of shelter, in some cases creates an environment whereby these kids meet other kids and therefore they can interact, they can play with them, they can share those types of experiences even though of course those experiences in the long term do not really have what you would call positive dividends.
I have seen some cases kids actually who were even 5 years old – can you believe that? If you look at a kid anywhere between 5 and up to 18, for the most part really, they are not in a position to make decisions based on a lot of knowledge. They are not mature enough to figure out what is best for them. They are basically very highly impressionable by something that might make them look like a sort of cowboy character, you know.
Part 4: Child soldiers’ roles and the impact of conflict
Narrator:
Because they are physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically make obedient soldiers, making them attractive to armed groups willing to use them. From the children’s perspective, the combination of guns and inexperience leads them down a dangerous path.
Shaka Ssali:
You had power. You were able to assert yourself. And you felt good about it. You got those kinds of feedbacks from some of your peers. In this particular case of course, you’re talking about a situation where kids find themselves very, very close to losing their lives. Because it’s really the difference between life and death. Whereas watching a cinema and what have you, even though I would look at characters who appear to die in one scene and then later somehow they seem to have reincarnated or something, it always puzzled me. It was like death was not permanent – it was temporary.
Narrator:
Children are uniquely vulnerable because of their emotional immaturity. They are easy to manipulate into doing just about anything asked of them, and can be drawn into violence that they are too young to resist or understand.
Thanks to the many technological advances in weaponry, lightweight automatic weapons are simple to operate, often easy to find and can be used by children just as easily as adults.
Shaka Ssali:
When kids in armed groups, of course they are used for example to carry luggage belonging to rebels or armed forces. In some cases they are used to do some cooking. They are used to do even some more dangerous assignments like spying, for example. Because for a kid, spying is a very easy thing, because a lot of times the enemy are not conscious of the fact that these young kids who are 10 years old, 13 years old can actually be very dangerous, very devastating. In other cases they are even deployed in the front line, they actually become what some might characterize as cannon fodder, you know.
Kids go through a lot, really, and they are able to do a lot of those things because unlike adults, they don’t seem to really understand what fear is, or even to experience fear sometimes, by the way. You don’t weigh the consequences, for example. You don’t have that luxury and so for some reason you tend to think that you are invincible really. Nothing can happen to you. These kids sometimes also can access drugs, alcohol. If a kid is on drugs like marijuana, what do you expect? I mean, they can follow anything they are asked to do.
Part 5: Efforts at rehabilitation of child soldiers
Narrator:
Many aid groups and human rights organizations have taken on the challenge of helping former child soldiers lead normal lives. The process presents many challenges.
Shaka Ssali:
I think first of all, they need what you would call social, psychological counseling. In a lot of cases, a lot of these kids, most of these kids don’t have parents. So they pretty much don’t have really a home. So they look at the government or the army as a sort of, I guess the moral equivalent of their home.
Narrator:
Some child soldiers have been forced to commit atrocities against their own family or neighbors. When the conflict is over, they are outcasts in their own communities.
In some countries, former child soldiers have access to rehabilitation programs to help them locate their families, go to school or receive job training. But there are many children with no access to such programs – and with no way to support themselves. Without resources and assistance, they remain vulnerable to the lure of armed groups.
For those fortunate enough to start on the road to rehabilitation, programs provide a place to start. But beyond the efforts delivered through institutions, there is the emotional and psychological element of reintegration. The process of reintegration must recognize that each child is different with individual abilities. For this, human interaction, leadership and the establishment of trust is the foundation for success. Ssali explains the importance of role models and how programs can help promote emotional and psychological healing.
Shaka Ssali:
The best way to do it of course is generally bringing what I would call positive role models. Bringing someone for example who was a kid soldier at one point or another; someone with whom they can identify with. Someone that can help to walk them through the journey that he went through up to the point when he became sufficiently rehabilitated and came to a point where he acquired skills and the tools of life, and combined together that helped to somehow liberate him from the previous problems. The fact that that person had a certain degree of discipline, was passionate and committed about changing his life into a more useful member of society, has been able to do it … like some people say, if you want to write a book, who really would be the best teacher? I guess it would have to be someone who has already written a book. One of the ways to do that is to set up certain workshops, really. Where kids and adults and what have you can participate and debate, they can express different perspectives and all that kind of stuff and in the process, kids can begin to get a sense as to what it is to be different from what they were doing previously.
Part 6: The role of governments in rehabilitation of child soldiers
Narrator:
A number of countries in Africa — where the problem of child soldiers is greatest — have made the effort to reintegrate former child soldiers into society.
Shaka Ssali:
And so governments in some countries like Uganda, for example, like Sierra Leone, like Liberia, they have tried to integrate them into society. For those that have grown a little bit older, they have given them opportunities to join the regular armies in order to become useful members of those institutions. But they have also, on the other hand, opened up or built schools, actually, so that they can begin to pick up the ABCD’s of life, go through primary schooling and move on to advanced levels, junior high school, and high school. And there are kids I have met actually, former child soldiers, who have actually been able to go up to university – became lawyers, became teachers, others became businesspeople.
Narrator:
Education, especially primary schooling, is crucial for former child soldiers. Education leads not only to employment. It helps them to create a normal life, with structure and routine, where they can develop an identity other than that of the soldier. One difficulty is that former combatants may have fallen far behind in their schooling, and may be placed in classes with much younger children. Specific measures may be required to address these situations. For older children, effective education requires training in life-skills and vocational opportunity, helping to provide them with a sense of meaning and identity.
Shaka Ssali:
I remember one day I was interviewing Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni. We were talking about some of the kids who had now become soldiers in his army. He was complaining about how they had become very irresponsible, how they took too much to drinking, and as a result they were not able to be disciplined enough. So I asked him, I said Mr. President, you realize that these guys when they were in the bush with you, they were very, very young kids. So I asked him, I said did you have some kind of mechanism when you took power, a mechanism that was in place that would be in a position of helping some of these young kids who eventually have now become part of your traditional military establishment. And he said no, we did not have it. Then I said you shouldn’t be surprised. The only thing they knew at one time when they were in the bush, the rules were that – what is demanded of you is to kill the enemy. And now you come back, you’re part of a new arrangement, and now you are being told what was right yesterday, today, is wrong. Human beings are not like a computer keyboard where you just press, if want someone to kill, it kills, and then you press, you stop. It doesn’t work like that.
Narrator:
The challenge for governments and civil society is to channel the energy, ideas and experience of youth into contributing to the creation of their new, post-conflict society. Some child soldiers find it difficult to relinquish the idea that violence is a legitimate means of achieving objectives. This is particularly true where poverty and injustice remain after the fighting has stopped. But the impact of war on youth is not only a phenomenon in poor countries. Ssali reminds us that America has had its own experience.
Shaka Ssali:
I went to school in the United States with some guys who had actually been very, very young, had been drafted and gone to fight in Vietnam, had come back to America and had some of them ended up in fact sleeping on the streets. Some people actually being affected very severely.
Part 7: Shaka Ssali – the importance of education
Narrator:
Former child soldiers require above all the opportunity for education. Shaka Ssali is living proof of the transformational power of knowledge. Through education, Ssali has himself become a positive role model for others. Born in Uganda, Ssali was enlisted in the army when he 16 years old as a cadet officer. After almost five years he had risen to the rank of lieutenant. But even as a young child, he says, he had a burning desire for knowledge.
Shaka Ssali:
I was a news hound, and from the time I was a kid interacting with the cinema I developed an interest in reading magazines. I would about humor, you know, about Vietnam, and that kind of stuff.
Narrator:
The 1960s in Africa were times of political and social change. Through magazines, Ssali was able to become an observer of this change and develop understanding. He learned about events and issues such as apartheid in South Africa and the role of Nelson Mandela, the revolution in Rhodesia and Ian Smith, and the other key players and struggles of the time.
Shaka Ssali:
I sort of looked at them as if in fact they were like a bible. One of them was called Africa magazine; another was called Drum magazine. Drum was published out of Soetto in South Africa, and Africa magazine was published out of London. I would do anything in the world to make sure I had unfettered access to a copy. To know what was going on. Through that, my mind was able to be carried you know, throughout the continent basically. And in the process, I started developing an interest in some day becoming a journalist. I loved the idea of having a byline, by so and so…
Narrator:
After his time in the Ugandan Army, Ssali came to the United States in 1976, where he sought and received political asylum. He attended the State University of New York to pursue his studies.
Shaka Ssali:
Eventually, when I come to the United States, I have made up my mind. I really want to be a journalist. So I go to the State University of New York. They didn’t have a journalism major, but they had a communications and rhetoric major. Then I start studying about Africa. I developed a passion for Africa.
Narrator:
During his journalism studies, Ssali authored stories in a student magazine containing harsh criticism for the African leaders of time – such as Uganda’s Idi Amin, Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta and Mobutu of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Shaka Ssali:
So I found myself somehow associating myself with those forces frankly that were promoting change. And in the process, I realize that each time I wrote an article, I got very, very positive feedback from a lot of people, and that encouraged me enormously.
Narrator:
After a disappointing experience as an intern at Newsday in New York, Ssali went back to school, this time in Los Angeles at the University of California, or UCLA.
Shaka Ssali:
For me I was very ambitious in the sense that I looked at myself someday as someone that would be like a research reporter on Africa, analyzing Africa. I sort of reasoned that if I went to graduate school, picked up higher degrees and what have you, developed my writing skills, that New York Times or Time magazine would find me irresistible. I went into some classes of history and philosophy and I became extremely bored. So I went to go check out some of the courses in the film school. And they had some of the courses which they called non-Western films. And I started attending those courses because I thought that coming from where I do, you have very high rates of illiteracy. And therefore, the best really medium of communication for my people, I reasoned, would be using the moving picture. So I felt that yeah, this was going to be a great opportunity for me. I was going to do documentary film making, to empower those people that can neither write nor read – that’s how I looked at it.
Part 8: Shaka Ssali – thanks and contribution
Narrator:
Today, Ssali is a popular radio talk show host with Voice of America. His programs have loyal followings across Africa, Europe and the United States.
Shaka Ssali:
I have two programs that I host. One is called Straight Talk Africa, a weekly, live, international call-in talk show. It is a program that is really designed to empower the audience. It empowers the audience in the sense that the audience has the opportunity to call in, give their telephone number, especially from Africa where they do not have the collect facility, then the operator calls them back and they ask a question, they ask it live. That is one of the real opportunities for example that, even in Tanzania, one can actually call into the show and get the opportunity to interact with his President, something that is very rare. It is also live and therefore most of the interaction really is something close to being authentic, you know, it’s not predetermined and what have you, and so it really makes a lot of difference, especially with the latest technological developments of the cell phone. You can literally go anywhere, in the villages, you know.
Narrator:
Ssali’s contribution to understanding, by telling his own story through his writing and radio shows have given him a special place in many African communities. He himself tells us that the children in Africa, where he came from, have the potential to make great contributions themselves. He told us how he sees that potential through an example.
Shaka Ssali:
And then I was in Kenya, I went to visit former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi. And he’s a guy who used to tell me that – whenever I would ask him what is the single most important decision that you have made during your presidency, you know things like that, he would tell me education, education. How he has built many schools, he has contributed land for people to build schools in their communities, and so I took him on. I said: you know you used to tell me, Mr. President that you were the education president. I want to get the opportunity now to see some of those schools that you built. We went around – we went to one of his, a secondary school near the place where he was born – one of the remotest parts of Kenya. And I was talking to these kids, and it became immediately clear to me that a lot of these kids could one day actually go to places like MIT, CalTech. It was amazing to find that they were so familiar with my work. And I said “how?” They said: we listen to you on the radio. We never miss your program. Why? They said, well because of the things you do, you’re like a teacher, it’s like you’re teaching us about Africa. And it’s amazing, they would say, that you’ve stayed in the states for many years but you have never lost your accent, your intonation. We identify with you very easily. You never try to become what you are not, you know stuff like that. So, it’s amazing what it has really done for me and it’s incredible, it’s incredible…
Narrator:
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