Word: combatting
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...Roger Rosenblatt explored the attitudes of youngsters growing up in the shadow of combat. His TIME cover story "Children of War" portrayed the resilience of war's most innocent victims. By looking at children who actually do the fighting, TIME now examines the innocent perpetrators, child warriors, whose efforts often make little difference to the outcome of a battle but whose participation crystallizes all that is terrible about...
History suggests that there is nothing new about child warriors, partly because in centuries past youngsters were looked upon as small adults, and thus the sight of them in combat was less horrifying. But there is a difference between being trained to fight and being used to make a symbolic point. In the Children's Crusade of the 13th century, the thousands of boys and girls who were dispatched from Europe to the Holy Land went off unarmed and undefended; their very youth was meant to awe the enemy. Most died of disease or starvation along the way; many...
...Afghanistan all boys are urged to fight, even by their parents. Death on the battlefield is not just an honor, it is also the Muslim's guarantee of eternal life. In Burma, where Karen rebels have been fighting for independence for 41 years, combat has become the family business. Northern Ireland is not officially at war, but a state of siege between two religions has made violence the expected. As Alexander Lyons, a Belfast psychologist, dryly says, "It's the children who don't throw stones that are abnormal...
...there is Los Angeles. Gang violence doesn't fit the Geneva Convention standard of war: there has been no invasion, no mass uprising against an oppressor, no minefields, aerial bombings or refugee camps. Instead, there are small armies of youths fighting one another and the police. Gang violence is combat stripped of all the familiar rationales. It is the closest thing the U.S. has to battle within its borders, and many of the children emerge from the streets of Los Angeles more psychologically scarred than the young mujahedin who patrol the mountain passes of Afghanistan...
Gangs have existed in Los Angeles since the turn of the century, but they have been turned into small armies by drugs and money and the violence that goes with them. Combat has changed from bare knuckles and knives to random shots at an enemy who is tracked from a distance, is usually faceless and is therefore all the easier to gun down without remorse. Not all gang members deal drugs, just as not all drug dealers belong to gangs, but the flow of drug money has infiltrated every crevice, creating a hyperinflation of shooting...