A.) Beasts of No Nation is a quintessential war movie in regards to children in conflict. The film is centered around a child soldier named Agu. The movie begins by portraying the seemingly normal life of Agu and and his family despite the ongoing war in the region. The actual geographical location of the movie is unspecified most likely to show the ubiquitous nature of the film – meaning, similar circumstances could have, and probably did/do occur in any conflict zones across Africa. As the story progresses, Agu’s family is forced to split up due to the proximity of the fighting between the rebel and government forces getting closer to their town. Agu’s mother and younger sister flee for safety but Agu remains in his village with the other male members of his family. Unfortunately, not long after his mother and sister’s departure, Agu loses the rest of his family as the government forces mistaken them for rebels and thereby, executing them.
Now a lone survivor, young Agu rummages through the forest for safety during which he is discovered by a rebel group that refer to themselves as the NDF. The battalion’s leader, the ‘Commandant’, takes Agu under his leadership and recruits him as a child soldier. As the movie progresses, Agu transitions from a young, innocent boy to a savage soldier engaging in fighting, murder, looting, and drugs. The more brutal Agu became, the more the Commandant favored him. After a series of victorious battles, Agu’s battalion is summoned to the NDF headquarter with promises of promotion for the Commandant. However, upon their arrival, the battalion learns that the Supreme Commandant is actually demoting the Commandant and he is ordered to pass his position on to Two-IC, another high-ranking soldier in the battalion. Enraged by the order, the Commandant rounds up his troops and declares his disaffiliation to the higher powers of NDF. The Commandant then takes his most trusted soldiers out to a brothel for an intimate night of celebration. During the visit, Two-IC is shot by one of the workers who was ordered by the Commandant to do so. This was the Commandant’s way of securing his position as the leader by getting rid of a potential threat to the throne. After the death of Two-IC, the battalion re-engages in bloody skirmishes but due the detachment from the NDF, Agu’s battalion suffers continuous loss of soldiers, rations, and funds.
Finally, the remaining men of the battalion settle down on a gold mine in hopes of discovering gold. Months go by, still with no sightings of gold, the soldiers rise up against the Commandant declaring their desires to abandon the NDF and surrender to the United Nations/government forces. Despite the Commandant’s speech of fervor persuading them to stay, the remaining men of the battalion leave to surrender, abandoning the steadfast Commandant. The film then fast forwards to Agu and a couple of his fellow soldiers adapting to life outside of war. Agu has a hard time adjusting to school and is often seen alone and detached from his classmates. In a powerful scene that follows, Agu confides in his teacher that he is both a beast and a devil for the things he committed as a child soldier. After his admission, Agu finds himself liberated and the final scene shows him joining the other kids who are playing in the ocean.
Agu, the protagonist of the film, undergoes a great deal of change as a result of being a child in conflict. In the beginning, Agu is shown as a naive boy who likes to play pretend with his friends, bicker with his older brother, and perhaps in the most kiddish scene of the film, he breaks down after being separated from his mother when she flees for refuge. Unlike his much older brother, Agu cries and throws a fit when he forced to watch his mother leave him behind. This was probably the scene that most honestly depicted Agu’s age. However, Agu is forced to mature quickly once he joins the NDF. The task of being a child soldier is shown to be both physically and mentally overbearing on Agu. Soon after he joins the NDF, Agu is ordered to murder a man (who is seemingly innocent and of no affiliation). Seeing young Agu hesitating, the Commandant urges him on by spreading propaganda that it was people like this man that had killed Agu’s father. After his first murder, Agu is visibly shaken by his act and vomits. In a narrated voice, Agu prays about the man that he has become. However, as time progresses, Agu grows to become a more brutal character who is fueled up on drugs and propaganda and becomes one of the intimate confidantes of the Commandant.
Children often model themselves after the adults in their lives which explains the shifting nature of Agu’s characteristic during the time of conflict. Children are also easily persuaded by the adults in their life especially if they are feeding them propaganda. Agu was susceptible to the Commandant’s propaganda that these were the men that had killed their families, sabotaged their villages, and destroyed their country. Such acts of brainwashing became the catalyst for child soldiers like Agu and his friend Strika. The adolescent fighters truly believed in the words of rebel forces and thought that they had to partake in the conflict for justice. The conflict had made Agu and his fellow child soldiers perform gruesome acts of adults. The fighting left them feeling as if they were devils and beasts for the sins they committed; leaving a scar that makes them disabled to return to normalcy and in extreme cases, an outcast from the society.
Personally, I presume that Agu will never be able to fully adjust to the everyday life of children his age. Agu was recruited to the NDF at an age that is young enough to be vulnerable to propaganda, but old enough to understand the repercussions of his actions. Had Agu been a couple of years younger, he might have had the chance to reformat himself to forget the gruesome murders that he committed. Unfortunately, this was not the case and the traumatizing ordeals of the conflict will most likely be embedded within him as he grows older. Agu’s hesitates to communicate and associate himself with the students and teachers at his new school after abandoning the NDF. Agu explains that the hesitation is rooted in his fear that the acts he committed as a child soldier are unforgivable; that people would think he was a “beast” and a “devil.” The most important societal factor for Agu in the future would be forgiveness and understanding from the community that child soldiers were innocent pawns of their rebel leaders who were coerced to carry out bloody operations. Agu must also endure the challenge of discrimination that he will experience once he is labeled as a child soldier in the society. People, especially those directly effected by the conflict will want to persecute those involved in the war, including child soldiers like Agu. The ability for Agu to shift away from the memories of the killings and bloodshed would depend largely on the community’s acceptance rate. With child soldiers like Agu, the ability to internalize problems has been linked to inclusion from the community and destroying post-war stigmas (Betancourt, 2010).
B.) The Sierra Leone Civil War began in 1991 and lasted for a duration of 11 years (The Human Rights Watch, 2012). The conflict began as a spillover effect from the neighboring country of Liberia. The National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) in conjunction with the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone (RUF) initiated conflicts in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh administration (McHugh, 2016). The NPFL and RUF engaged in horrendous fighting with the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the Sierra Leone Armed Forces. The conflict grew worse as factors like diamond and gold mining became an added interest of war. In an attempt at peace, the United Nations and the British army intervened in the chaos of the region. Such international actors were stimulants in bringing the war to an end (McHugh, 2016).
To understand the workings of RUF, it is important to consider the characteristic of its leader Foday Saybana Sankoh. In the 1970’s, Sankoh became a student activist after being inspired by the socialist leadership of Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi (Boyd, 2007). Wanting to do the parallel Qaddafi’s control of Libya in Sierra Leone, Sankoh forms the RUF and begins his ambitious movement to overthrow the government. When its resources began to bottom out, the RUF began to recruit child soldiers; a trait they became notorious for (Boyd, 2007). The children were ideal assets to the RUF as their naivety led them to be susceptible to propaganda. Their innocence made it easy for the rebel groups to mold them into the dedicated soldiers that the RUF needed. Child soldiers were consistently brainwashed and drugged into following fighting bloody battles without ever questioning their orders. They were pawns in the adult-orchestrated bloodshed.
Ishmael Beah, an actual child soldier during the Sierra Leone Civil War, talks about his experience before, during, and after the war in his text A Long Way Gone. Beah explains that many of the challenges he faced during his time as a child soldier were largely mental issues. He talks about how he could not contemplate for long periods of time or fall asleep at night because such moments of reflection would force him to mentally accept the horrifying condition that he was living in and the abominable crimes he had committed. Such periods of ponder would also make him reminisce about the time before the war in which he was a young boy living happily with his family. When asked how he survived these challenges, Beah states that he reminded himself of the words of his father that “the reason we are still alive is because there is something greater in our destiny.” Such words of motivation and the hope that there is a better life waiting for him beyond the fighting, helped Beah survive the cruel day-to-day violence of the child soldier life.
After learning of Beah’s experience, I was taken aback by the parallel between him and Agu in Beasts of No Nations. It was as if the character of Agu was modeled after Beah’s journey as a child soldier. As someone who has read the book A Long Way Gone, I think that the book was more dramatized than Beasts of No Nations. Agu’s account as a child soldier seems to be realistic in a sense that it is in sync with recollections from other child soldiers. Contrastingly, Ishmael Beah’s novel has been largely scrutinized for exaggeration by experts who believe that although the atrocities mentioned in the book are possible, it is difficult to believe one child had experience all of them during their time as a child soldier (Boyd, 2007). Perhaps, Beah had added elements of dramatization so that the overall message of the book could have a stronger impact on the audience.