The first American serviceman killed by hostile first in Afghanistan was a Green Beret, shot by a fourteen-year-old boy; just a few weeks after, a Special Forces medic was killed by a grenade thrown by a fifteen-year-old al Qaeda recruit later imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay; suspected militants detained by U.S. forces in Iraq included more than one hundred children under the age of seventeen; hundreds taken hostage in Thailand were held captive by the rebel “God’s Army,” led by twelve-year-old twin brothers. These are but examples within the more than 300,000 cases of children presently at war around the world today.
Children at War is the first comprehensive book to examine the growing and global use of children as soldiers. P.W. Singer, an internationally recognized expert in twenty-first-century warfare, explores how a new strategy of war, utilized by armies and warlords alike, has targeted children, seeking to turn them into soldiers and terrorists. Weaving in quotes from the children themselves, he lays out the underlying causes of child soldiering, the methods by which children are recruited and trained for war, and the dark implications for global security. With a fuller understanding of how the doctrine emerged, he then provides the answers for how this terrible practice can be defeated.
