Meet The Child Soldier Forced To Kill | Ishmael Beah Ep. 622

Ishmael Beah is a former child soldier, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and Radiance of Tomorrow: A Novel. His latest book is Little Family: A Novel.

Full show notes can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/622

What We Discuss with Ishmael:
0:00 - Intro
0:49 - First time seeing violence
2:25 - As a child did Ishmael understand civil war?
8:40 - Everyone thinks they’re the good guys
11:41 - It was impossible to be peaceful even if you wanted to
14:27 - How rap saved Ishmael’s life
23:45 - Kids with RUF carved into their chest and no fingers
31:37 - The intensity of PTSD
33:20 - The drugs Ishmael used to be on
42:13 - Why it’s impossible to opt out of crime
43:03 - The worst brutalities Ishmael saw.
55:42 - Trying to find family after the war
58:46 - Forced to fight again after the war ends
1:04:06 - What child soldier training is like
1:08:54 - The first time Ishmael went into combat himself
1:19:03 - Getting out of Sierra Leone and flying to NYC
1:26:39 - Living in Sierra Leone with his family (present day)

Currently, an estimated 300,000 child soldiers are exploited as pawns in over 50 conflicts across the world. And before becoming a New York Times bestselling author, our guest Ishmael Beah spent almost three years of his early adolescence conscripted into service by the government army against the rebels during the Sierra Leone Civil War in the ’90s. He witnessed unfathomable atrocities while committing a number of his own before escaping and finding his way to a foster family in New York, where he was given a second chance at life.

On this episode, Ishmael joins us to discuss the events chronicled in his book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Here, we explore what surviving in a warzone looks like from a child’s eye view, how desperation can dispel any semblance of civility from otherwise rational human beings and compel them toward acts of shocking barbarity, and what it takes for someone to return to civilization after being forced to participate in such brutality beneath the ever-present shadow of death.

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