Die Kindersoldaten von Mali

In der aktuellen Debatte um die Situation in Mali kommt jetzt auch das Schicksal der Kindersoldaten zur Sprache, die es nicht nur in diesem Land gibt. In einem Artikel der Presseagentur AP heißt es unter anderem:

France, which now has around 2,500 troops on the ground, plunged headfirst into the conflict in Mali two weeks ago, after the Islamist groups that have controlled the nation's northern half since last year began an aggressive push southward. The French soldiers are equipped with night vision goggles, anti-tank mines and laser-guided bombs. However, their enemy includes the hundreds of children, some as young as 11, who have been conscripted into the rebel army.

Among those the French will have to fight are boys like Adama, the uneducated, eldest child of a poor family of rice growers, who until recently spent his days plowing fields with oxen near the village of N'Denbougou. Living just 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the central Malian town of Niono, which has become one of the frontlines in the recent war, Adama fits the profile of the types of children the Islamists have successfully recruited. His village has a single mosque, and unlike the moderate form of Islam practiced in much of Mali, the one he and his family attended preached Wahabism.

(...) The United Nations children's agency said late last year that it had been able to corroborate at least 175 reported cases of child soldiers in northern Mali, bought from their impoverished parents for between $1,000 and $1,200 per child. Malian human rights officials put the total number of children recruited by the Islamists considerably higher at 1,000 — and that was before the French intervention.

(...) Child soldiers have been part of the fabric of African conflicts for decades now. In Liberia's civil war more than 10 years ago, drugged 12- and 13-year-olds were famously photographed toting automatic weapons and teddy bears. However, the standoff this time is between a Western army bound by the Geneva Convention and Western values on human rights, and an enemy that includes hundreds of children. One of the most active groups in northern Mali is al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the terror network's affiliate in Africa, which originated in Algeria. In 2008, the group released a video showing a cheerful 15-year-old in Algeria who was suffering from a terminal illness, Atallah says. The Islamists convinced the boy that the best thing he could do with what remained of his life was to die for Allah, according to Atallah, who saw the recording.

Das Thema "Kindersoldaten" wäre natürlich auch eines für eine globale Männerrechtsbewegung (sobald sie sich entsprechend formieren und an politischem Einfluss gewinnen könnte). Ich warne allerdings vor der stillschweigenden Annahme, dass zwar das Wort "Kindersoldaten" verwendet, aber fast durchgehend Jungen gemeint sind. Der Literatur zu diesem Thema zufolge gibt es in dieser Gruppe überraschend viele Mädchen (manche Zahlen gehen hinauf bis zu 35 Prozent), auch weil diese aus zynischen Sicht der Täter, die sie rekrutieren, sozusagen "multifunktionell" sind: in den Kampf ziehen am Tag, vergewaltigt werden in der Nacht. In der allgemeinen Wahrnehmung vor allem nicht-betroffener Länder bleiben weibliche Kindersoldaten allerdings womöglich noch ähnlich unsichtbar wie umgekehrt männliche Opfer in vielen anderen Bereichen.

Das alles wäre jedoch kein Hindernis, auch Kindersoldaten zum Thema von Männerpolitik zu machen. Die Mehrheit von ihnen ist männlich, und die Männerrechtsbewegung beackert etliche Felder, wo sich eine vernünftigere Geschlechterpolitik im Endeffekt auch zum Vorteil vieler Frauen auswirken sollte.