Young people are the major participants in most wars. In the African civil wars of the last twenty years combatants have become increasingly youthful. Some forces are made up largely of young teenagers; combatants may sometimes be as young as 8 or 10, and girl fighters are increasingly common. The trend to more youthful combatants also reflects the discovery that children—their social support disrupted by war—make brave and loyal fighters; the company of comrades in arms becomes a family substitute. There are two main adult reactions. The first is to stigmatise youth combatants as evil (‘bandits’, ‘vermin’). The other (regularly espoused by agencies working with children) is to see young fighters as victims, as tools of undemocratic military regimes or brutally unscrupulous ‘warlords’. But many under-age combatants choose with their eyes open to fight, and defend their choice, sometimes proudly. Set against a background of destroyed families and failed educational systems, militia activity offers young people a chance to make their way in the world. The purpose of this article is to let young combatants explain themselves. The reader is left to decide whether they are the dupes and demons sometimes supposed.
In the South‐eastern USA many species of estuarine‐dependent fishes spawn offshore and their larvae are transported into estuaries. The present study combined physical measurements and zooplankton sampling at the Beaufort Inlet (North Carolina) to determine: (i) whether fish larvae enter the estuary inlet in different horizontal sections of the tidal stream and (ii) whether larvae use selective tidal stream transport (STST) for ingress through the inlet and for movements up the estuary. Larvae of Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus), spot (Leistomus xanthurus), pinfish (Lagodon rhomboides), Atlantic croaker (Micropogonias undulatus), gulf flounder (Paralichthys albigutta), summer flounder (P. dentatus), and southern flounder (P. lethostigma) were sampled over two 25‐h periods (13–14 March, 25–26 March 1996) at three locations across the Beaufort Inlet and in the three main channels receiving water from different locations in the inlet. All species, except Atlantic croaker, primarily entered the inlet on the east side with up to an order of magnitude difference in abundance across the inlet from East to West. The gradient continued in the corresponding channels in the estuary. In most cases equal sizes of larvae were caught in the East and West channels of the estuary. Most larvae were caught at night. A pattern of abundance relative to tide was least evident in the inlet, but STST was evident in the estuary. At the location of greatest larval abundance (Shackleford Channel), the greatest numbers of all species of larvae were caught during rising tides at night. This relationship was not due to passive suspension, since abundance was higher during the faster nocturnal flood tide currents than during to ebb tide currents of equal magnitude. In the Shackleford Channel, southern/gulf flounder and pinfish were distributed throughout the water column during STST, but primarily at the surface. Atlantic menhaden, spot and Atlantic croaker were distributed throughout the water column, and summer flounder were near the surface.
The armed conflict in Sierra Leone and the extreme violence of the main rebel faction - the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) - have challenged scholars and members of the international community to come up with explanations. Up to this point, though, conclusions about the nature of the war are mainly drawn from accounts of civilian victims and commentators who had access to only one side of the war. The present study addresses this currently incomplete understanding of the conflict by focusing on the direct experiences and interpretations of protagonists, paying special attention to the hitherto neglected, and often underage, cadres of the RUF. The data presented challenges the widely canvassed notion of the Sierra Leone conflict as a war motivated by 'greed, not grievance'. Rather, it points to a rural crisis expressed in terms of unresolved tensions between landowners and marginalized rural youth, further reinforced and triggered by a collapsing patrimonial state.
This paper assesses the extent to which customary governance in Sierra Leone can be held responsible for an increasingly unstable two-class agrarian society. A case is made for regarding the civil war (1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002) Keywords: agriculture, land tenure, youth, civil wars, Sierra Leone RURAL SOCIETY BEFORE AND DURING BRITISH COLONIALISMTensions between chiefs and subjects -and in particular youths -in Sierra Leone are endemic to an agrarian order that emerged from the West African social world shaped by the Atlantic slave trade. To fully appreciate this, one must understand how the chieftaincy institution developed in the nineteenth century. Broadly speaking, there were two kinds of chiefs. Those who could be termed 'warlords' lived mainly from controlling, protecting or raiding the major trade routes from the Upper Niger to the Atlantic. These warlords were supported by bands of young men skilled in the arts of bush warfare. In communities around the Gola Forest in the early nineteenth century, prospects for young men were limited. One option was the life of a fighter. Another was a kind of farm serfdom, in villages often vulnerable to raiding or kidnap. Captives would be sold into the Atlantic slave trade to Cuba, a thriving business in the Gallinas estuary (Pujehun District) and at Cape Mount (Liberia) until mid-century (Jones 1983).Elsewhere, the slave trade was in decline, and in these districts agrarian chiefs diversified from supplying food to slave vessels into meeting the food needs of the infant colony at Sierra Leone. In particular, Susu, Mandinka and Fula overlords maintained large rice plantations in the littoral zone north of Freetown. William Cooper Thomson, an emissary from Freetown to Futa Jallon in the 1840s, passed through this area and commented on the organization of rural social life (Thomson 1846).The slaves lived semi-independently in farm villages, and worked at least two days a week in their own interest. Relations between slaves and owners were relatively cordial. Thomson passed through in a period of dearth -the result of successive years of locust attack -and notes that the overlords had relocated from their trade-route towns, temporarily, to live with their better-supplied slaves.
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