The Silence of Compliance: Child Soldier Trauma Narratives in Contemporary African War Novels

The victimhood of child soldiers is without any argument, a fact. In many wars, the illegitimate conscription of children under the age of eighteen has resulted in severe repercussions in the mental health of the child soldiers even after the war. Child soldier trauma depicted through many literary artifacts shows the intensity and gravity of the situation. The novels by Uzodinma Iweala, Chris Abani, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie viz Beasts of No Nation, Song for Night and Half of a Yellow Sun address the issue of child soldier conscription, the resultant trauma, and the slim chances of the betterment of the children even after the war is over. The paper moves toward acknowledging the victimhood of these children but at the same raising concerns about the agency of the trauma. The role of the child soldiers as perpetrators beyond their status of being victims and the necessity to provide proper psychosocio care to avert trauma and impending disorder in the society. A new approach concerning the grey area of in-betweenness in the victim/victimiser binary is needed while analysing desperate times like that of the Biafran civil war.

Congolese Child Soldier Narratives for Global and Local Audiences

The article examines narratives by and about former child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a hitherto neglected corpus despite the topicality of child soldiering in African literatures after 2000. Critical readings of three testimonial texts that have been published in France are juxtaposed with the analysis of one testimonial narrative and one youth novel that have been published in Kinshasa. The editorial framing and narrative strategies that speak to different audiences located in different literary fields are identified. The popularity of testimonial narratives in the West relies on the depiction of violence and the iconic function of the child soldier in medial and human rights discourses. By contrast, narratives about the reconciliation and the reintegration of child soldiers prevail in the DRC. Thus, the different functions of global and local narratives on the sensitive issue of children at war are exposed.

Naming and Shaming Violence and Corruption

How literary attempts at shaming unacceptable practices and attitudes can reinforce broader negative stereotypes of Africa, primarily narratives of violence and corruption. The topic of violence is examined through child soldier narratives, focusing on Allah n’est pas obligé by Ahmadou Kourouma and Johnny chien méchant by Emmanuel Dongola, although others are mentioned as well. The issue of corruption is then addressed more generally.

“Body of a Lion, Head of a Soldier”: The Grotesque in Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation

Beasts of No Nation (2005) is a novel that invites attention to the plight of child soldiers. The protagonist of the novel, Agu, enjoyed an ideal life as a child with his family and always wished to go through traditional initiation as well as formal education before he was forcibly enlisted as a child soldier. At the battlefront, Agu engages in different types of violence and suffers various forms of abuse, which do not only cause him to lose his childhood but also his humanity, depictions of which draw the narrative into the mode of the grotesque. This article looks at how Uzodinma Iweala creates the picture of the child soldier through animal and bodily images to bring out the ambivalent nature of the child soldier as one caught between life and death, human and beast as well as between child and adult, through the grotesque, which brings up new concepts that are between life and death, fantasy and reality. The paper argues that the grotesque is of central importance to Iweala’s treatment of his central subject, namely, distorted personal development as a result of war. That is, the grotesque is not a chosen mode, but it is the inhuman depiction of the child soldier that draws the narrative into the grotesque mode.

Child soldier realty in Uganda: International law and reintegration

The use of children who have been most exposed to the destructive effects of wars for various military activities has been seen throughout history. Child soldiers are involved in civil wars and conflicts in many countries, especially in Africa, without discrimination. Even if the participation of 15-year-olds in the Army is accepted as a war crime by the United Nations, some 300,000 children are actively involved in wars today. The key to child soldiers is the reintroduction and retraining of these children. However, what should be mentioned here is that these children are guilty? Or a victim? In this article, the child soldier problem will be discussed from two angles. First, the effectiveness of the decisions taken to prevent criminal organisations and states from committing this crime to recruit child soldiers within the framework of international law rules will be discussed. Secondly, based on the example of Uganda, the programs prepared by the international community for the reintegration of former child warriors to society will be analysed.

The Grotesque and Obscene in post-Cold War Africa: Mbembe and the Child Soldier Novel

This article applies Achille Mbembe's formulations of the grotesque and the obscene to Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma's widely-read child soldier novel Allah n'est pas obligé (2000), highlighting under-examined aspects of Kourouma's prose style and political commentary. While critics have focused on the novel as a fictionalized description of a child soldier's experience in 1990s West Africa, a close reading of the text reveals Kourouma's preoccupation with the origins and composition of post-Cold War African political organization. The article reads Kourouma's use of obscenity and grotesque imagery through a Mbembian lens, revealing a continuity between the Cold-War era power structures that Mbembe describes in his essays and the post-Cold War political landscape in which the plot of Kourouma's novel plays out. By applying Mbembe's idea of 'illicit cohabitation' to Kourouma, the article reveals the transnational applicability of Mbembe's writing on the 'postcolony', while also highlighting the previously unexamined ways in which Kourouma satirizes his Western readership. Ultimately, the ability of Mbembe's terminology to reveal previously unexamined depths of a much-discussed and celebrated novel such as Allah n'est pas obligé shows the continued relevance of his thought to our understanding of contemporary Africa and the icons which mediate its image both within the continent and beyond.