I was watching Fareed Zacharia GPS this Sunday Morning and he had an American Guest on that had traveled as a journalist in Africa. He was reporting that there are many Kony like warlords roaming certain parts of Africa and he mentioned that the Pirates of Somalia also fall into this same kind of category of people without ideology other than basic survival. Kony and the Pirates of Somalia only exist because of either failed states or states that do not control all their territories. He said that his group kidnaps 7 and 8 year olds and turns them into soldiers by scaring them to death and through brainwashing. At some point these children will escape (some time between 15 and 30 years of age) usually if they don't die first. But he said that no adults usually join Kony because he has NO ideology other than traveling and brutalizing the countryside wherever he goes. The jungles are so thick where Kony is that it is difficult for he and his groups of young fighters to be tracked down and found.
Also, in regard to the Pirates of Somalia they have raided now as far away as the Maldives Islands off of India. But he said most of them would rather be doing something else. They only do it because there is nothing else they can find to make a living. So, they live as marauders and he said pirates he talked to say they don't want to do this because they often drown, don't have enough food or water on the seas and sometimes have arguments and people drown. So, there is this relatively new (for the 20th and 21st centuries) way of basically stateless people who are sort of like warlords or marauders of other times. So, basically because of the worldwide economics especially in places like Africa and other places we likely will see more of this from people just trying to survive any way they can sort of like animals in a completely survival of the fittest kind of state of mind.
I think the mistake people make in places like the U.S. , Canada, Europe, Australia and places where civilization is fairly well established all tend to have the mistaken impression that something else entirely is going on. However, the most useful way to look at Kony and others like him and the pirates of Somalia is of people just trying to survive ANY way that they can. Also, because of the awful situations they grew up in likely you or I might not consider them entirely sane at all. And unfortunately, the results are not civilized and don't make sense to people who live in more organized civilized countries where there are both jobs or some kind of fall back mechanism like food stamps or some kind of social relief from death and starvation. Because where Somalia and where Kony is there are NO jobs or Social Welfare. Besides, likely someone like Kony is likely too crazy to find a normal job. So, likely he would be a "crazy like a fox" criminal wherever he was.
I can write about the following because this all took place over 20 years ago now:
From my own personal experience even in dealing with Juvenile Offenders from difficult backgrounds. One boy from Oakland, California told me that one reason he was in the facility he was in in San Jose was that he would be shot on sight if he went back to Oakland. Then when an Ayrian Nation Boy who was white was transferred into the facility he tried to kill the African American kid. So, the African American kid called his cousin to come kill the Ayrian Nation Boy (these are all teenagers between 15 and 17 years of age). So, as counselors we had to move the Ayrian Nation Boy to a different facility as responsible counselors before someone died. And both boys were okay with this because neither of them wanted to be murdered.
If you can imagine scenarios like this with no real civilized adults involved most of the time and people being maimed or murdered mostly without any really sane reason right and left then you might have an inkling of what the pirates of Somalia and the Konys of Africa survived every day while growing up. If this is all you know then often this kind of behavior extends into adulthood.
Even as a counselor I knew I had only a 25% chance of saving any of the 12 to 17 year old boys I counseled from a life of crime. But my job was to save those 25%. So, even here in the U.S. in ghettos you have in some ways a similar microcosm of hopelessness. But here in the U.S. you have food stamps and for some welfare so you know here is about 100 times better than what the Konys of Africa and the Pirates of Somalia experience every day of their lives.
This is not to excuse uncivilized behavior. Rather it is to be realistic about what is actually going on.
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