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A Long Way Gone - Memoirs of A Boy Soldier: Ishmael Beah

This document provides a book review of the memoir "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah. The memoir describes Beah's experiences as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. The review argues that the memoir has relevance for a military journal because it highlights the horrific reality of child soldiers, which impacts national foreign policy and military engagements in Africa. It also challenges perceptions and provides context about conflicts in Africa. The review analyzes how Beah describes his own actions as a child soldier in a detached, non-agentive way, reflecting how disturbing the realities were. It concludes that Beah's account could provide an important part of the information given to South African soldiers being deployed for peace operations

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278 views

A Long Way Gone - Memoirs of A Boy Soldier: Ishmael Beah

This document provides a book review of the memoir "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah. The memoir describes Beah's experiences as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. The review argues that the memoir has relevance for a military journal because it highlights the horrific reality of child soldiers, which impacts national foreign policy and military engagements in Africa. It also challenges perceptions and provides context about conflicts in Africa. The review analyzes how Beah describes his own actions as a child soldier in a detached, non-agentive way, reflecting how disturbing the realities were. It concludes that Beah's account could provide an important part of the information given to South African soldiers being deployed for peace operations

Uploaded by

siddharth
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies, Vol 38, Nr 1, 2010. doi: 10.

5787/38-1-85

140
A LONG WAY GONE – MEMOIRS OF A BOY
SOLDIER

Ishmael Beah

Sarah Crighton Books, New York: 2007

226 pages

Hardcover; $22.00

ISBN 13: 978-0-374-10523-5

ISBN 10: 0-374-10523-5

“This is how wars are fought now: by children, traumatized, hopped-up on drugs and
wielding AK-47s. Children have become the soldiers of choice. In the more than
fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child
soldiers”

The relevance of a book review of a fictional account of the life story of a


child soldier in Sierra Leone for a journal such as Scientia Militaria is twofold: a)
Truth (reality) remains stranger (more horrific) than fiction; b) Based on national
foreign policy, the truth (realities) of Sierra Leone is by continental affiliation a
South African reality, and by micro-affiliation an SANDF reality.

This book challenges contemporary society, which is continuously bombarded


and often jaded by faceless or nameless graphic news scenes. Those portions of
society that remain blinded by prejudice and self-centred socio-political gaze to the
severity of these scenes, are now confronted with a face and a name: Ishmael Beah.

Physical combat methods to end human-on-human atrocities are well-


documented. These methods, augmented by root-level resistance and general human
tenacity to overcome, often brought ends to what were at the height of their
existence perceived as endless oppressive reigns of varied proportions (World War
II, Apartheid, the Berlin Wall, Serbian rule, etc.).
Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies, Vol 38, Nr 1, 2010. doi: 10.5787/38-1-85

141
Fiction in its various forms (film, novel, drama, visual and creative art,
storytelling, etc.) as a method of mobilising comrades psychologically and
physically, and of influencing the minds and hearts of external participants in
conflicts of varied significance, are less well-recorded. The prevailing darkness
(Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad) of the human mind and hand is probably why
reality-based fictional and semi-fictional accounts of human-on-human atrocities in
Africa, like Amistad, Hotel Rwanda, So Long a Letter, Long Walk to Freedom,
among others, are “stories” that continue to reach mainstream audiences. Ishmael
Beah’s A Long Way Gone, memoirs of a boy soldier, is likely to achieve the same

This book review, however, seeks to target another audience: the military
professional or civilian associate involved in any capacity in the well-being or
suffering of people in general, and in Africa and Sierra Leone in particular.
Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm, describes A Long Way Gone as “one
of the most important war stories of our generation” that reveals one of the “greatest
evils” of our time, the “arming of children” to reach selfish socio-political
objectives. It challenges readers to soul-search their own ignorance of acts as
extreme as this in a country with which South Africa “established diplomatic
relations in August 1998, just prior to the NAM XII Summit” (DFA on-line, 2003).
It also challenges the military professional who romanticises deployment in Sub-
Saharan African states and who sees it as a means of stockpiling easy cash; of killing
boredom as a career soldier in a defence force with a non-aggressive or peace-
oriented objective; and, of taking time out from family and partner at home to
engage in unsupervised self-satisfying activities (as reported in national newspapers
in 2009). It challenges trainers and educators of these peace-operators to inform
them in width and depth of the complex socio-political realities of the native
inhabitants of the host nation, whether Sierra Leone or any other country visited by
our forces. It ultimately challenges the reader to ask the fundamental question: What
is the human currency of a child soldier in Sierra Leone versus one in the USA or
UK, and what is the currency of a child soldier “a long way gone” in the streets of
South Africa?

A feature of the memoirs is the extent to which the adult Ishmael Beah
engages in non-agentive descriptions of his own and other children's actions as
either victim or perpetrator while still a child soldier. He speaks of “daily activities”
(p. 121), “more soldierly things” (p. 121), “implement[ing] his techniques” (p. 121)
which, at close reading, reveals a reality too disturbing (strange?) to verbalise.

Criticism exists that Ishmael Beah's particular account of events has


chronological flaws and is thus irrelevant. If real events are indeed stranger (worse)
than Ishmael Beah’s fictional account, the reality of Sierra Leone and the South
Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies, Vol 38, Nr 1, 2010. doi: 10.5787/38-1-85

142
African National Defence Force's engagement in peace operations in Sub-Saharan
Africa will be felt for generations to come. This memoirs should thus form an
essential part of an information toolbox “issued” to South African soldiers prior to
peace mission deployment anywhere in Africa.

Bibliography

Department of International Relations and Cooperation, Sierra Leone (Republic of),


Available on the web at
<http://www.dfa.gov.za/foreign/bilateral/sierraleone.html.> Accessed on 13
May 2010.

Cdr (Dr) Gerhard van Zyl, Department of Languages and Culture, Faculty of
Military Science, Stellenbosch University

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