Fairly holy innocents

摘要

Children are no strangers to war. Unicef, the UN children's fund, reckons armed conflict has killed over 2m of them in the past decade, and left 6m injured. Not all are merely victims, however. Maybe 300,000 today serve as fighters, porters and runners in 30 or so conflicts around the world. Some units of the Tamil rebels in today's civil war in Sri Lanka are largely made up of what others would see as children; young boys have committed some of the vilest brutality in Sierra Leone. Some of these young fighters are forced to fight. Many choose to, like the young Palestinians risking death this autumn to sling stones at the occupying Goliaths of Israel. Huge numbers of teenagers took part when Iran fought Iraq in the 1980s. Yet, the numbers apart, that is nothing new. Adolescents defended Berlin against the Russians in 1945, ships' boys were long a feature of the British navy, and drummer boys thronged in the American civil war. But whole armies of children, led by children? Yes, it's happened: in the "children's crusade" of 1212 against the Saracen rulers of Jerusalem.