Ishmael.

This is coolbert:

"Call me Ishmael!"

The former boy soldier Ishmael Beah was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning edition this Sunday.

A young man now [26 years old], who was forced to fight, along with so many of his peers, in the civil war that raged for many years in Sierra Leone.

A civil war that Charles Taylor helped instigate.

Ishmael has written a book about his experiences. The book gets high marks. This young man is now popular on the lecture circuit?

Boy soldiers, under the age of eighteen, recruited and forced to fight for the military of the "central government" Recruitment carried out using the most draconian means:

"'One day they just said, you know if you're in this village, you're gonna have to fight, otherwise you can leave,' he said. 'That may seem like a choice to someone who doesn't know the situation. Some people tried to leave, but they were shot.'"

The basic kit for a boy soldier such as Ishmael consisted of the ubiquitous AK and drugs. The latter consisting of either marijuana, cocaine, or a mix of cocaine and gun powder, called brown-brown!!

Watch a couple of Rambo movies, and off to the "front". And that is that.

"'First, you know, you get your own weapon and everything and the magazines and the bullets, and then they give you drugs,' he said."

"They would take cocaine, marijuana and sometimes cocaine mixed with gun powder, known as brown-brown. The kids would watch 'Rambo,' then head to the killing fields."

As I have said, the nation-state model just does not seem to work in Africa? Is not the way to organize the African continent.

What does exist is a mix of resources, drugs, guns, and evil men who lack any moral virtue whatsoever!!

So much of that land is degenerating into chaos and anarchy. Resources valuable to the outside world are being plundered by warlords and "military" forces of BOYS!!??

coolbert.