The Sierra Leone Civil War

Improved Essays
In 1991, Abu and 30 other young men were kidnapped from their homes in Kuiva, a village in eastern Sierra Leone. Hundreds of children including Abu were forced by the Liberian mastermind Charles Taylor to fight with the rebels. With all of the drugs and alcohol that they are forced to take, Abu can’t remembered the first time that he killed. Charles Taylor, then President of Liberia, was charged with 11 counts of war offenses and crimes against civilization for the help to launch the Sierra Leone decade long civil war. Taylor is known for hypnotizing these child soldiers into preparing, arming, and supporting these children which caused the start of the blood-diamond engagement. Abu was about 13 when the invasions or attacks on Sierra Leone

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Ishmael Beah Quotes

    • 476 Words
    • 2 Pages

    As an innocent boy in Mogbwemo, he was going to school and striving to get an education. He never really understood the war, as he said in Chapter One, “There were all kinds of stories told that made it sound as if it was happening in a faraway and different land.” (page 18, line 1) When he, his older brother Junior, and their friend…

    • 476 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Long Way Gone Analysis

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Death, loss, grief, and pain: These are the agonies of life in Sierra Leone. Two authors chronical their experiences in Sierra Leone to enlighten the world about the tragedies taking place there. A major component in Ishmael Beah’s, A Long Way Gone, is describing how difficult his rehabilitation was from being a child soldier while The Bite of the Mango, by Mariatu Kamara, highlights her resiliency as a victim of various violent crimes. Given the physical and mental components of Mariatu Kamara’s life in Sierra Leone before and during the war, it is clear that her experience was far more negative than Beah’s.…

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Imagine sleeping in your warm bed after a great home cooked meal, and out of nowhere there is a loud scream. Then there is another scream, which both sound all too familiar to you. You get up to see what all the noise is about and upon walking into your living room you realize that your only son has just been kidnapped. You can hear his screams getting more and more distant as you frantically run outside hoping that it is only a sick joke. As you stand there you realize that he is gone.…

    • 1498 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Long Way Gone (Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) by Ishmael Beah was not very appealing at first, but I eventually fell for it. I thought of choosing King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild but I thought my fiction book was somewhat similar to it, thus, I wanted to opt for something different. When I first read the summary of A Long Way Gone, I was truly not quite interested, however, once I read the reviews, I began to change my mind. Its critics seemed astonished and devastated at the same time because the book delivered such a horrendous, but definitely a very true reality that we are not very aware of.…

    • 1038 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Ugandan warlord abducts children and forces them to join the military. Invisible Children, a US organization, created a YouTube video called Kony 2012 opposing the actions of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army. John Naughton wrote an editorial praising Kony 2012 in the Observer in March 2012. Children from other countries are compelled to enlist in the military as well. Ishmael Beah became a soldier when he was young.…

    • 681 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Long Way Gone Essay The effects of the Civil War were very traumatic; people would be captured and sent back to their villages with arms or legs cut off. Ishmael Beah wrote a book called “A Long Way Gone” which is a memoir about his memories from the war because he was forced to be a boy soldier. The civil war in Sierra Leone was a very cruel war that took place from 1991 to 2002. The R.U.F. was a rebel group from the war and they would capture little boys, train them to kill people, and drug them to not feel sympathy and make them have a lot of energy.…

    • 628 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lost Boys Research Paper

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages

    This overwhelmingly long period of fighting displaced tens of thousands of young children across the Sudan. It forced them to walk through dangerous wilderness and deserts in search of safety, their families, and food to keep them alive. All of this fighting stemming from the South Sudanese people wanting their independence from the enforcement of harsh new rules from northern elites. Before the South Sudanese people were able to gain their independence from the north, the George W. Bush administration created a network of support the help the South gain their much needed independence. “President Bush appointed former Senator John Danforth as the first of the US special envoys for this region and Danforth played a major role in helping bring about the CPA and South Sudan’s right of self-determination” (“The United States and South Sudan” 4).…

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    1984 Analytical Essay

    • 457 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Exactly as it is in 1984, many children in africa are being taken and controlled by Kony. Kony is using these children as his puppets just like The Party used the children. One uses the children for spies and the other uses the children as soldier but that does not…

    • 457 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Long Way Gone Analysis

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Many Underdeveloped countries in Africa face many struggles since eradicating European imperialism from their countries. Sierra Leone a country of despair, that had gone down in hill in many ways after becoming a country. Sadly, Sierra Leone has faced economic, social, and political influences that have negatively impact the country in many ways. Such ways that have destroyed the country is a civil war, dividing the country with two different group of people who are out to kill. Many people have been affected, even children who were used as child soldiers.…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Long Way Gone

    • 1070 Words
    • 5 Pages

    There are many forms of media that inform us of the disturbing practice of recruiting and exploiting Child Soldiers, but the most prominent and moving of them are the book “A Long Way Gone” (A LONG WAY GONE) written by Ishmael Beah and the documentary, “War Dance” (WAR DANCE) directed by Sean Fine. “A Long Way Gone” follows the true story of the writer, Ishmael Beah during the time when he was a child soldier in Sierra Leone, on the North West coast of Africa. “War Dance” documents the stories of three children living in Patongo, a camp for displaced war refugees in Northern Uganda. Both texts tell the tragic and gory events the subjects experienced as children of war.…

    • 1070 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    El Salvador Civil War

    • 671 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The United States had a great fear for communism during the time of El Salvador’s civil war. Ronald Reagan said this in regard to why the United States decided to support the government of El Salvador "to halt the infiltration into the Americas, by terrorists and by outside interference, and those who aren't just aiming at El Salvador but, I think, are aiming at the whole of Central and possibly later South America and, I'm sure, eventually North America. "(Blum). Keep in mind the Soviet Union was America's biggest threat at the time.…

    • 671 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Darfur Genocide Logan Mcfadden 2/29/16 3rd hour Attacks have caused Darfur to be almost just smoke in the sky. There have been many racial targetings in the area of Darfur, Sudan and there seems to be no end to them in sight .The Darfur Genocide is turning Darfur into just a big pile of ashes and smoke clouds. People are getting exterminated in darfur and some of them are just (as some people would say) “A deer caught in the headlights”. Women at all ages are getting raped and killed while the culprits make their family watch in terror.…

    • 1044 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Child Slavery In Uganda

    • 817 Words
    • 4 Pages

    They threatened that they’ll kill more people if I don’t come back.” Another boy who had been abducted by the LRA said, “Sometimes in the bush, the rebels would beat us without mercy whether you made a mistake or not. We would also be made to carry heavy loads on our heads for long distances and made to assemble out in the cold each day as early as 5am.” Child soldiers and slaves experience atrocities like this everyday. In order to prevent child slavery we must write articles for newspapers, e-mails, journals, web-sites, reports and magazines to raise awareness, sponsor and discuss these issues on televisions, and radios, fundraise local resources to support anti-slavery programs or campaigns and lastly, promote a zero tolerance policy against child trafficking at all levels.…

    • 817 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Sierra Leonean Civil War from 1991 to 2001 affected every citizen of Sierra Leone, including children. Ishmael Beah is a man who was caught in the war as a child, and forced to both witness and commit acts of violence as a child soldier, as expressed in his memoir. The role of violence in the memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is to portray the theme of loss of innocence through the comparisons and contrasts of violent acts while Ishmael was running from the rebels, during his time as a child soldier, and after his experience in the Sierra Leonean army. The role of violence is first shown through the comparison of Ishmael as he is running from the rebels to the families who are trying to escape the war and stopping in the mining area…

    • 1183 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Although the emotional effects the terrifying events Ishmael Beah experienced may have been real, some of the actual circumstances were clearly exaggerated, including amplifying the severity of the situation after the rebels attacked Freetown, and the amount of time he spent as a soldier (that is, if he spent any time at all.) Muctaru Wurie, the author of “Ishmael Beah’s Memoirs of Sierra Leone War – A Long Way From The Truth,” lived in Freetown during the same time, and described the situation much differently than what is depicted in A Long Way Gone. Wurie says the day after the May 25 coup, everyone had gone to the center of town to look at what had happened the previous day. (1) Wurie even talked to a student who was taking exams during…

    • 334 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays