Children in War Zones

If you saw a street, particularly in Beirut, and there were no children playing on it you didn’t go down that street because there were snipers. And the kids knew this and they’d help you. The kids also knew that, you know, we were good for candy, you know, chewing gum or whatever the case may be, but the kids could not help but be implicated. In some cases, for example, to use the sniper bit, we know that kids were forced out into the streets to play to try and get us to go down those streets. You just knew it by the way the kids were playing. A child, shall we say you’re fifteen, you’re sixteen years old. You’ve got nothing. You’ve had nothing for sixteen years. You’re living in a tin hut. You’ve got an outdoor sewer. You’ve watched your family grow up and you’ve got no hope and you’re very, very intelligent. What do you do? You end up joining one of the groups. You end up getting a weapon and you think this is the way you live. Firstly, it’s very scary because kids that age don’t believe they’re gonna die. Secondly, kids that age with the background, etc., etc., won’t even hesitate to take you out. They’ll kill you. But on the other side of it, you just wanted to take them all and... They were good kids. They were bright kids. I think that’s the one thing that really bothered me, is that we couldn’t do anything for them in the long run.