Regular Armies Research Articles

Arming the People against Revolution: Royalist Popular Militias in Restoration Europe

Abstract During the Restoration era, a number of popular militias were created by monarchical regimes, in France, Spain, Portugal and various Italian states. These various experiences have not received the same attention from historians as the civic militias implemented by the Revolution and then by the liberal monarchies. Inspired by the latter but also by older precedents, these royalist popular militias were to demonstrate the ability of conservative regimes to mobilize the people and fight liberalism with its own weapons. Their importance was therefore both symbolic, as a demonstration of the loyalty and support of the popular masses, and practical, providing more extensive, cheaper and sometimes more reliable forces than regular armies to guarantee order and control the contesting oppositions. Their recruitment and manpower thus provide instruments for measuring active popular support for traditional monarchies.

ЗАХІДНОЄВРОПЕЙСЬКІ ВІЙСЬКОВІ ПРАКТИКИ І ТЕХНОЛОГІЇ В УКРАЇНІ XVIII СТОЛІТТЯ

The “Military Revolution”, which became a concentrated manifestation of Europe’s political leadership during the XVIIth – XVIIIth centuries, produced new realities in the military sphere: regular armies, subordinated and held by centralized states, unified arms and clothing, division into types of military forces, special drill and education for soldiers and officers. Leadership in military technology consisted of fortifications and artillery that developed in the direction of increasing technical capacity, unification and standardization of new weapons. New approaches to the organization of the armed forces changed the character of wars. If in the XVIIth century East and West of Europe had a kind of parity in their military achievements and technologies, then in the XVIIIth century it finally moved to the West. In this context, an important issue is how Western European achievements were spread in Ukraine, in particular the Cossack Hetmanate, whose military-political model was clearly structured for military purposes. The analysis of these influences and borrowings shows that they were heterogeneous in nature. In the Cossack army, elements of the regular troop duty and sentry service and even drill instructions were gradually being appeared. The Cossack starshyna (officials) faced with the practice of the regular army during the Russian imperial wars. However, all these influences were episodic and spontaneous, without changing the essence of the military institutions of the Hetmanate. In artillery, technical innovations were implemented more actively, but were hampered by lack of funding. In the fortification area, the control of which was completely transferred to imperial power, Western technologies and specialists, were used by metropolitan power in their own defensive projects. It is significant that the acquaintance and borrowing of any military innovations in the XVIIIth century occurred almost exclusively through Russian mediation. This tendency was fully in line with the gradual loss of the Hetmanate’s sovereignty, the destruction of its army.

II. Mahmud Devrinde İdari-Askeri Bir Üs: Rami Kışlası

Bu makalede; Osmanlı askeri sisteminde yeniçeri odalarından Batı’da modern talimli ordular için inşa edilen kışla yapılarına geçiş süreci, bu bağlamda Vak’a-i Hayriyye’nin ardından 1826’da yeni kurulan Asakir-i Mansure Ordusu için inşa edilen kışlalardan biri olan Rami Çiftliği Kışlası’nın yapım süreci ve özellikle Sultan II. Mahmud’un mülga yeniçeri ocağı bakiyesinin karşı darbe girişimlerinden korunmak, Rusya ile 1828’de patlak veren savaşta cephedeki ordunun ve galeyan halindeki halkın moralini yükseltmek için attığı adımlar ve öte yandan giriştiği radikal reformlara karşı statükocu-muhalif çevrelere karşı kendisini güvenceye alan hünkârın 617 gün boyunca ikamet ettiği kışladaki resmi ve gündelik faaliyetleri ele alınmış, keza Rami Kışlası’nın muvakkaten idari-askeri bir üs haline gelmesinde rol oynayan hususlar değerlendirilmiş ve II. Mahmud döneminden günümüze dek kışlanın tarihinde vuku bulan önemli gelişmelere değinilmiştir.

A cidade como espaço de batalha: de Gaza ao Rio de Janeiro

Este estudo enxerga a cidade não apenas como o lugar primordial de realização do capitalismo, mas também como palco das futuras guerras, uma vez que se observa que tem sido tomada e pensada como espaço de batalha nas guerras contemporâneas. Consideramos que a cidade vem sendo utilizada por grupos insurgentes, tais como terroristas, rebeldes e traficantes de drogas, que se escondem e utilizam a infraestrutura física da cidade no combate a exércitos regulares como uma forma de diminuir sua inferioridade em relação ao poderio militar. Por conta disso, a própria vida na cidade vem sendo afetada por conflitos em terreno urbano, que visam destruir não só o inimigo, mas também seu espaço de sobrevivência, negando-lhe a cidade. Essa destruição do espaço urbano como parte de uma estratégia de guerra é analisada primeiramente em Gaza, para, em seguida, questionarmos em que medida isso se dá na cidade do Rio de Janeiro.

Political Education and It’s Improvement in the World

With the advent of the Roman domination in the 19th century, the police, the most important institution of this civilization, also started to withdraw from the stage of history. Even with the different perspectives of Plato and Aristotle, the great philosophers of ancient Greece, it is not in vain that they seek to uplift the police, to preserve it. Likewise, the average policeman was able to give his elite free time to deal with philosophy and art because he had a lower population than the great empires that had millions of people in his land, and therefore did not need a big bureaucracy. But the police, which allowed this great civilization to be born, left the great central empire order that the order came in the face of the great and regular armies of Rome and included many nations into its place. VII. Towards the end of the century, the city of Rome, which is located about 20 miles from the mouth of the Tiber River and composed of elements of Latin and Sabin, was first organized as kingdom, then republic, and finally empire. Rome, which emerged as a republican city state from the 5th century BC, had a diffuse policy different from Greek police.

ARMY AND SOCIETY IN ISRAEL: PAST, PRESENT AND VECTORS OF THE FUTURE

Israel is largely considered to be a nation greatly marked by the vital role of the military that ensures the very existence of the state whose independence is something that most of the neighboring nations in the Middle East region still cannot accept. Naturally, the Israeli political elite is traditionally believed to be made up of mostly retired high-ranking military personnel. However, that view has nothing to do with the actual strategic and political reality. Over the last forty years, the Israel Defense Forces have not been involved in any war against foreign states and their regular armies, and due to various circumstances, one in two Israeli citizens does not actually serve in the military. Currently, the Israeli government officials maintain unprecedentedly stable and cooperative ties both with their American and Russian counterparts. The main threat to the national security is no longer a full-scale war but rather the terrorist activity perpetrated by illegal, mostly (but not exclusively) Islamist armed guerilla groups. High-ranking military personnel are still highly regarded in the Israeli society, though their social status has lowered dramatically in the recent years. Only one of the ten incumbent members of the Security Cabinet turns out to be a retired General Staff member who still happens to hold a civilian office within the government; moreover, none of the possible candidates for prime minister has an advanced military background.

Миротворчество ООН: обновление принципов, реформирование практики

The article describes and debates main points and recommendations of the Report-2015 of the Independent High Level Group on the UN Peace Operations. The author analyses doctrinal innovations and practical guidelines suggested by the Group and debates consequences of the recommended “politicizing” of the UN operations (assuring the leading role for the UN in any political peace process supported by UN peacekeepers, and avoiding operations where the UN role is limited to passive disengagement of conflict sides). Necessity for and limits of reconsidering traditional principles of peacekeeping, such as impartiality, consent of conflict parties, and use of force for self-defence are questioned. Trends in UN operations are compared with trends in operations related to conflicts in the Post-Soviet space (South Ossetia/Georgia, Abkhazia/Georgia, Tajikistan, Transnistria/Moldova, etc.). The author advocates timeliness for an extended interpretation of the “defence of the mandate” formula instead of the classical “self-defence of the contingent”. It is suggested to practically erase the dividing line between operations of the “peacekeeping” type under the UN DPKO, and “political missions” under the UN Political Department. The arsenal of the UN instruments for conflict resolution must be widened from non-intrusive observation missions, conflict prevention and mediation, through support of ceasefire agreements and implementation of peace accords, down to coercive peace enforcement, offensive elements, and UN Charter Chapter VII-based collective operations against aggressive regimes and states. Poorly defined functions and insufficiently clarified use of force limits for the SC-mandated “UN Intervention Brigade” in Democratic Republic of Congo lead to unnecessary involvement of the UN into coercive actions. The experience of the UN “infrastructural hubs” establishing, like the one in Entebbe (Uganda) used for supplying eight African UN operations, is described. New technology for peacekeeping, like the use of unpiloted flying drones, opens new opportunities, but creates legal and practical problems. A distinction of functions between “blue helmets” (specially trained multinational UN contingents) and “green helmets” (regular national armies used by states in foreign conflicts) is recommended, including avoidance of counter-terrorism tasks and strong coercive tasks for the UN peacekeepers. Parallel and interfaced “partnerships” between the limited UN operations and more forceful national/coalition operations in the same areas are suggested instead.

Russian

The article is devoted to the evolution of Eastern European irregular troops in the XVIII century, when they were forced to compete with the regular armies of the Western European model. In it are analyzed shortcomings and advantages of irregular system of the organization which became actual in this century. The author comes to a conclusion that the elimination of the most part of the East European irregular troops was made possible only when regular armies start using their tactics and weapons. Similar influence was mutual, and preserved irregular troops adopted more and more elements of the organization of a regular army.

The Arab Military Force in Palestine Prior to the Invasion of the Arab Armies, 1945–1948

The article examines the size, structure, composition and modi operandi of the Arab military forces which fought the Jews in the 1948 war, before the invasion of the Arab regular armies, based first and foremost on the Arab sources themselves. An attempt is made to assess the substantial reasons behind the Arab defeat in the first ‘civil war’ phase of the campaign, including a comparison of the number of combatants, which also explains the outcome.

Terror in Galilee: British-Jewish Collaboration and the Special Night Squads in Palestine during the Arab Revolt, 1938–39

In 1938 in British Mandate Palestine, British army officer Orde Wingate organised and led a joint British-Jewish military unit, the Special Night Squads (SNSs), to defeat Palestinian rebels fighting against British rule and Jewish immigration to Palestine during the Arab revolt, 1936–39. The SNSs operated in Galilee in northern Palestine. While biographies of Wingate cover his service in Palestine with the squads, this article extends the existing literature with an empirical examination of the operations of the SNSs based on a deep mining of British and Hebrew-language archival sources. This study argues that joint intelligence gathering operations introduced the British army to Jewish agents and the possibilities of collaboration—Wingate was an intelligence officer—before detailing combined military operations in the field with the irregular SNSs. The originality of this article comes from its dissection of how British soldiers brutalised Jewish troops by training them in well-established British counterinsurgency methods that targeted civilians and villages close to rebel attacks. Away from the control of established British military chains of command, the SNSs were especially tough in their war with Palestinians and they fought a ‘dirty war', an operational method absorbed and normalised by Jewish soldiers serving under British command. This article is a military and imperial history that details the quotidian brutality of pacification, opens up wider debates on how imperial powers collaborated with loyalist colonial minorities, shows how regular armies used irregular forces in pacification campaigns and suggests that post-colonial regimes such as Israel carried over such methods of control.

استراتيجيات حرب العصابات:, دراسة نظرية

It is the subject of guerrilla warfare of the most important issues addressed in the strategic thought. Especially after the shifts in the balance of world powers and the global war on Terrorism. Guerrilla warfare is a relatively small group in the military potential. Against regular armies, including the largest states in military capabilities, economic and technological. This research aims to clarify this war unconventional behavior and study and find out the reasons that push to take it. To understand the idea and its laws and strategic tactics, we reached the conclusion: that the guerrilla warfare is a tool of conflict between groups is limited in its military capabilities. Believes ideology and ready to defend it in various military non-traditional ways, such as ambushes and suicide bombings against the major powers possess qualifications , military capabilities , technological and economic. That superiority at all levels. To find a state of balance of Terrorism in the battle meant to achieve political goals.

Insights from the Army's Drawdowns

Abstract: This article provides five insights extracted from discussions concerning the Army's long history of drawdowns. Perhaps the most important take-away is the Army can, and should, use the current drawdown constructively. ********** With the termination of the recent campaign in Iraq and the winnowing of forces in Afghanistan, the US military faces a drawdown of standing force structure and capabilities. The policy debate concerning how best to carry out this force reduction, however, lacks proper historical perspective. Twenty-four civilian historians and military professionals recently offered such a perspective by focusing on previous drawdowns over the span of American history. Beginning with a consideration of the cyclical nature of drawdowns and whether a crisis mentality is warranted in such periods, three major questions emerged. Was the attempt to preserve military effectiveness during drawdowns contradictory to traditional American values? Given the reoccurrence of force reductions in American history, how did the military best preserve combat capabilities? What was the relationship between the regular standing Army and militia/National Guard forces, and how did these reflect broader attitudes towards the military? Insights from the discussions follow. (1) 1. The drawdown of American forces has been a cyclical part of the nation's military experience. Whether they allowed colonial forts to fall into disrepair or furloughed hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened Union troops after the US Civil War, Americans historically have tightened their financial belts at the conclusion of major conflicts. This attitude reflects traditional Anglo-American values dating back to the late-Middle Ages in England. Latent fears of regular armies surfaced before the Revolutionary War with both the Quartering Act and the Boston Massacre. Americans carried these attitudes forward into the twenty-first century. The debate over the US military establishment has never been a purely rational one with biases inherent in the American cultural framework. Concerns over previous drawdowns have not run counter to traditional American values, and have not always been justified even by initial combat effectiveness. For example, the Kennedy/Johnson administrations reversed conventional drawdowns of the Eisenhower era in time to create the most competent US Army ever to engage in the initial battle of any war up to 1965. American forces also met with initial successes in 2001 and 2003 after a decade of drawdowns, paralleling the US experience nearly forty years earlier. However, American forces have not always reconstituted effectively for battle. Significant drawdowns left the Army unprepared for initial campaigns in the early 1790s against Native Americans, the War of 1812, the US Civil War, the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and the Korean War. Significantly, these wars ended in American military victory, indicating the initial risk of fielding forces based on reduced military infrastructure, though costly in first battles, has often been acceptable in terms of overall strategic costs. Put differently, US foreign policy and national strategy objectives often exceeded military means. There was unanimous agreement among conference participants on this point. 2. Competition between the Regular Army and National Guard (militia) has always been part of the American military discourse. A number of scholars highlighted the historical importance of this competition. This debate is both rational and irrational as it stems from Anglo-Americans' historic preference for virtuous militia over suspect standing armies, while overlooking the sometimes poor initial military performance of militia/National Guard forces. A serving officer's presentation detailed how the relationship between active and reserve components works best in a complementary (but not interchangeable) arrangement. …

Potencjał militarny Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów w okresie polskiej wojny sukcesyjnej 1733–1735. Wybrane aspekty

In the paper I have presented military potential of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 1730s. The army consisted of: Polish and Lithuanian regular troops of approximately 17–18 thousands soldiers with 300 cannons (cost annual ca 8 640 000 zl = 1 075 000 thalers); royal guards – 1200 soldiers; militia maintained by local government, cities, churches or even private person and the great myth – general levy. All of this troops were mobilized between 1733 and 1735 which resulted in 50 thousands (possibly even 100 thousands) soldiers under arms. It had a little military value due to lack of experience, poor equipment and low morale. In the results Polish and Lithuanian army were no match for regular armies of Russia and Saxony, which succeeded in plan of enthronement of August III Wettin.

The Problem of Child Soldiers

Today, child soldiers fight in a lot of armed conflicts around the world. They are often recruited through force or deception, and exposed to horrific violence. They may begin as messengers or porters, but too often end up on the front lines of combat. Some are forced to commit atrocities, and many girls are sexually exploited. They are denied an education and robbed of their childhood. Many do not survive. I will deal with the question of child soldiers in my essay, looking into what causes can lead children to become members of regular or irregular armies and what kind of international regulations, actions may help to solve this problem.

Once a Soldier, Always a Soldier: A Typological Analysis of Military Delinquency Based on the Military-cum-Social Problem of Soldiers/Bandits in China, 1890s to Early 1950s

In traditional or Old China, (especially from the 1890s through 1940s), soldiers seemed to enjoy “unlimited” opportunities to engage in bandit activities (e.g., looting villages, setting civilian houses on fire, extorting landlords, abducting and trafficking children, gang raping women, etc.). One important factor that allowed these armed personnel to commit various criminal acts was that China did not have an integrated military system before the 1950s. Therefore, state managers usually could not supervise (let along regulate) the behavior of soldiers. Given that an institutionalized system that could put soldiers under state control was missing, it was not surprising that when soldiers were sent to a certain battlefield that villages, rural towns, and cities surrounding that combat zone were always raided and looted by soldiers turned bandits. Unlike those “wicked” soldiers who became involved in various social evils related to banditry, hundreds of thousands of “good” bandits in Old China joined regular troops. This “righteous act” basically was connected with the fact that almost all bandits, as desperados, lived in a “Darwinian” world. Since this world is governed entirely by the law of competition (i.e., only the “strongest” and the “smartest” could survive), leaders of bandit gangs usually could not ascertain whether they can continue doing those “businesses” that do require investment in the foreseeable future. As a result of this uncertainty, joining regular armies (if this “application” was officially approved by the authorities) was normally the “best choice” for armed bandits (whether they were core members or followers). In other words, becoming a part of government troops usually allowed chiefs and adherents of bandit gangs to enjoy miscellaneous benefits (such as formal military rank, social position, and state-controlled resources like stipend, ammunition, and weapons). As these benefits include the elements of legitimacy and economic security, “big brothers” of bandit blocs generally wished that their personal troops could be transformed into part of the formal troops in order that the marginalized and illicit status of such private troops be terminated. In this paper, the issue of military delinquency will be explored; by using the interactive relationship between Chinese soldiers and Chinese bandits during the period of late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries as an example, the goal of this article is to examine those socioeconomic contexts that provide military personnel with opportunities to perpetrate antisocial or criminal behaviors. Four “Big Jobs” will be performed in this paper: first, the structural factors which, before the 1950s, gave Chinese soldiers opportunities to commit bandit acts will be addressed; then, the environmental causes that motivated marginalized populations (chiefly males) to join bandit gangs will be listed. After these two issues have been inspected, the connection between soldier-bandits and bandit-soldiers will be analyzed. The implications of this relationship will be summarized in the final section.

Palestine 1948: the cryptography of the Arab volunteers

The Army of Sacred Jihad and the Rescue Army were the two main forces which fought for the Arab side in the 1948 Palestine war, prior to the invasion of the Arab regular armies. It is the purpose of this article to examine the cryptography of these two militias and show how their attempt to develop reliable ciphers failed, which was both a symptom and a factor in their general failure in the Palestine war against the Jews.

Walki o Wilno w styczniu 1919 roku – początek wojny polsko-sowieckiej

Neither in the Polish nor in the Russian (Soviet) historiography it is possible to find a definite answer to the question concerning the beginning of the Polish-Soviet war, which ended with signing of the peace treaty in Riga on March 18, 1921. Since the 1980s there have been many supporters of the thesis, that the war started in the middle of February 1919. Although some researchers mention Polish-Soviet fights in the Vilnius region at the beginning of January 1990, they diminish their importance, claiming that they constituted merely a “Vilnius incident.” However it was not an “incident” but the commencement of the Polish-Soviet war. In order to prove this, the author of this article examines events, which took place in the Vilnius region in the second half of 1918 and on the first days of January 1919. At the end of December, 1918 the most part of the German garrison left Vilnius. On January 1, the detachments of the Polish Armed Forces, started to take the city. On the afternoon of January 2 the whole Vilnius was occupied by Polish forces. Soviet commandment reacted quickly, sending parts of Divisions to dislodge forces from Vilnius. On the morning of January 4, 1919 the 1st Psków Rifle Regiment of the Red Army approached Naujoji Vilnia rail station. It turned out that the station was occupied by soldiers from the 1st Vilnius Uhlan’s Regiment of the Polish Armed Forces. A short fighting broke out and as the result the Poles retreated in the direction of Vilnius. One Polish soldier was taken prisoner. He was the first prisoner of war in the Polish-Soviet conflict. The battle, which took place on the morning of January 4, 1919 in the vicinity of Naujoji Vilnia, engaged soldiers from two regular armies – the Polish Armed Forces and the Red Army. It means that the Polish-Soviet war began at that moment.

Small Wars in the Age of Clausewitz: The Watershed Between Partisan War and People's War

Around the time of Clausewitz’s writing, a new element was introduced into partisan warfare: ideology. Previously, under the ancien régime, partisans were what today we would call special forces, light infantry or cavalry, almost always mercenaries, carrying out special operations, while the main action in war took place between regular armies. Clausewitz lectured his students on such ‘small wars’. In the American War of Independence and the resistance against Napoleon and his allies, operations carried out by such partisans merged with counter-revolutionary, nationalist insurgencies, but these Clausewitz analysed in a distinct category, ‘people's war’. Small wars, people's war, etc. should thus not be thought of as monopoly of either the political Right or the Left.

Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (review)

Reviewed by: Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare Raymond Callahan Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare. Edited by Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84603-281-3. Maps. Bibliograpy. Index. Pp. 304. $27.95. This collection is both important and timely. Insurgency (or guerrilla warfare or low-intensity operations or whatever label du jour is applied) is the oldest form of warfare on the planet – the natural response of those who cannot, for whatever reason, directly confront the forces of their enemies. Despite this fact, regular armies have rarely been prepared to deal with irregular foes and usually begin by first stigmatizing them as outlaws, bandits, and/or terrorists and then making the fateful assumption that soldiers prepared to fight and win conventional battles will have little difficulty in defeating such opponents. Only after applying inappropriate tactics and, all too often, inflicting self-defeating brutalities on circumambient civilians, have a few armies realized that new approaches are needed. Even fewer have actually succeeded after years of effort in eradicating or reducing to nuisance level the insurgencies they had so blithely assumed would be easily crushed. A more common dénouement is bloody and expensive failure. The sequence has repeated itself so often that it raises the question of whether there is something in the DNA of regular armies that predisposes them to fail repeatedly in the face of the irregular – and poses as well the related question of whether and how the cycle can be broken. Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian, who have both studied insurgencies as scholars and advised British and American units on counterinsurgency issues, have taken an historical approach, assembling a team of contributors to profile counterinsurgency campaigns from the U.S. effort in the Philippines after we had assumed the "White Man's Burden" in 1898 (analyzed by Anthony Joes) to the on-going struggles in Iraq (Malkasian) and Afghanistan (Marston). It is common in works with multiple authors – and this has thirteen – to note some (and often quite considerable) variability between chapters . This collection, however, is both individually strong and quite consistent, doubtless because of careful work by the editors, and thus allows certain themes to be followed for a century and more. As case study succeeds case study, those themes are continually underlined: [End Page 331] the almost universal initial failure to understand the nature of the problem, which is that firepower may be necessary but is never sufficient; if willingness to shoot was the sole criteria for success, the German counterinsurgency effort in Russia (Peter Lieb), would have been a dazzling triumph. Far more important are two other recurring themes: the inescapable political dimension to counterinsurgency and the central role played by police work and intelligence gathering. All of this makes the management of such a campaign both very complex and exceedingly difficult – perhaps that is why there have been so few successes. It is worth being reminded that the two British campaigns that did end successfully – Malaya (Richard Stubbs) and the thirty- year war in Ireland recently,one hopes, concluded (Richard Iron) – both involved a great deal of trial and error before a winning formula was found, and that success in one counterinsurgency campaign does not mean that an army (or a nation) will win the next. It was less than a decade after the end of the Malayan Emergency – the classic victory over insurgents – that the British had a complete failure in Aden (Jonathan Walker). Another key theme illustrated over and over in this collection – and one that answers both the question about the repetition of failure and that about how to break the cycle – is that political and military institutions never remember unless they carefully arrange to remember. Even well-crafted manuals will not necessarily prevail against the forces of institutional inertia – or self-interested amnesia. This fine collection, handsomely produced by a publisher who understands that to study military history one needs maps, ought to be widely read by students of war, soldiers, politicians – and the pontificators of the op-ed page and Sunday morning television. [End Page 332] Raymond Callahan Emeritus, University of Delaware Newark, Delaware Copyright © 2009 The Society for Military History

Child Soldiers in the East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

According to the academic literature, the most widely used estimate is that approximately 300,000 children are part of regular and irregular armies worldwide, either as combatants or as support personnel. Moreover, most scholars believe that their numbers are growing. However, the truth is that no one really knows the actual number of child soldiers fighting in some seventy-two government or rebel forces in about twenty countries. This is simply because field work on this subject is notoriously difficult. And as it is in breach of international humanitarian law to engage a child under the age of 18 years, regular armies and guerrilla forces are hardly going to publicize the number of child soldiers in their ranks. Whatever the true number of child soldiers may be, the fact remains that child soldiers have become a principal component of military forces across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For Africa alone, estimates suggest that there are 120,000 children, 40 per cent of all child soldiers. Moreover, not only has Africa experienced the fastest growth in the use of child soldiers, but the average age of the children enlisted in some African countries is declining as well. And this is despite the fact that there are a number of international treaties and principles that prohibit the use of child soldiers. Successfully bringing peace, security, and the rule of law in the Kivu provinces, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), will be a massive challenge that will require domestic and regional measures implemented over probably several years. This will necessitate the continued active political and financial support of the international community.