a long way gone : Memoirs Of a Boy Soldier
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
Sarah Crichton Books
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
New York
On March 23, 1991, The RUF, led by Foday Sankoh and backed by Charles Taylor, crossed from Liberia and attacked villages in the Kailahun District, in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone government was unable to put up significant resistance. Within a month, the RUF controlled much of the Eastern Province. The rebels were quick to demonstrate their brutality against the civilian population; the forced recruitment of child soldiers was also an early feature of the rebels.
Ishmael Beah was twelve years old when his village was attacked. Separated from his family he joined up with a few young friends who were also separated from their families and tried their best to flee the war.
The war won the race. The village they were in was surrounded and Beah was recruited into the regular army to defend it. The army proved to be no better for a child than the RUF and Ishmael soon became a violent and murderous thirteen year old soldier.
To read his story, you often wonder why we send our 19 and 20 year old men to war.
One day UNICEF came to the camp and the commander turned the drug addicted children over to them. Beah was taken to Freetown where he was helped off the drugs. He was selected to speak at the U.N. in New York. Afterwards, he was returned to his uncles house in Freetown.
The war came to Freetown.
Ishmael Beah, of course, escaped the fighting. He went on to graduate from the United Nations International High School and then Oberlin College in 2004. He is the one to tell the story of all the children still trapped.
This story is not over. The Darfur region is undoubtedly much the same.