Understanding the child soldiers - PART 1

Understanding the child soldiers – PART 1

Jun 20, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

We do not need a sociological study to explain the emergence of child soldiers in Guyana. We need a political study.

If we continue to ignore the fact that Guyana’s descent into this maelstrom of criminal violence which has always proclaimed a political agenda, then we recall that these child soldiers were always part of the criminal network since 2001 elections.

It may have been an oversight, a miscalculation, an extremely poor judgment call, that these children of death were not seriously considered before as a prime suspect group. After all it was long known and written about that the prison escapees who had found safe haven in Buxton had recruited children and teenagers to act as lookouts as well as to commit acts of violence against the citizens of this country.

Let us not therefore pretend that we were not aware of the tender age of some of these recruits. Stories upon stories were carried in the media about young boys holding up buses and robbing the occupants.

There are many incidents, too many, of armed attacks in which the perpetrators were described as young boys. Let us also recall that those that carried out the murderous attacks at Agricola and at Bagotstown and Eccles in 2006 were described as teenie boppers.

Perhaps the authorities presumed that the real hardened criminals had simply thrust guns into the hands of these youths and ordered them to go out and rob. Perhaps, the security forces may have misjudged the extent of the involvement of these youths in these gangs.

Perhaps at one time they performed peripheral tasks for the main gang members. Perhaps after the prison escapees were neutralized, these child recruits filled the breach. This would certainly account for those captured or killed recently in the hunt for ‘Fine Man’.

Let us not also pretend that child recruitment by criminal networks is a countrywide phenomenon. It is not. What the evidence suggests is that child operatives are used in support of the Buxton and Agricola gangs which the police say are related. What we therefore have is an isolated phenomenon which admittedly requires study.

However, not a sociological study because I do not believe that the economic, social or familial conditions in either of the two areas are any different from other parts of the country and therefore I do not source the emergence of child soldiers to the lack of social and economic opportunities. I believe we need to study this problem with child soldiers where it first emerged and from a political perspective.

We cannot isolate the formation of criminal gangs and the safe havens they were provided in Buxton from the ongoing political process in Guyana. After all by their own mouths, the prison escapees indicated that they were freedom fighters, fighting whose cause no one yet is certain.

Politics provided a cover for these gangs. It had long been argued that it was only because these men were seen in a certain political light that they could have enjoyed safe haven.

Yet, despite their alleged proclaimed mission as freedom fighters, prior to the murder of Satyadeow Sawh, all of the victims of these so-called freedom fighters were non-political citizens, the vast majority of whom were poor people and police officers.

In 2001, violence broke out in Buxton. Many have argued that this violence was precipitated by the murder of Tshaka Blair. However, by that time Buxton had already become a hotspot.

It all began following the 2001 elections and the pretext for the violence was when GECOM officials went to remove their property from one of the polling centres. Even though this act had nothing to do with the already determined outcome of the elections— in fact it occurred on the very day that GECOM announced the final results, there was an outbreak of unrest with barricades being strewn across the roadway.

The Buxton unrest and its eventual descent into criminal madness therefore started within a political context.

There is also something that is generally ignored in Guyana. On that very day when the protests started, it was not restricted to Buxton. It went as far as West Coast Berbice. For such protests to spread over such an extended period in a matter of hours could only have occurred through political machinations behind the scene.

So what were the political forces that were behind this unrest throughout the East Coast and could it be that after that effort could not be sustained, the political masterminds decided that criminal violence was the better option to make Guyana ungovernable?

For these reasons therefore, instead of just having a sociological study of the child soldiers, would a political study not be better?