The Difficulty and Sometimes Violence of Evacuations

een terrorizing villages in the countryside for several years. They burned houses, forced children to watch as their parents and siblings were raped and murdered in front of them. Some kids were forced to hold machetes that were used to kill their own family members. If family members were not killed, they were severely injured by machete chops that cut off hands, arms, legs, ears or noses. Victims were asked, "Do you want a long sleeve or short sleeve?" And accordingly, RUF terrorists would chop off the arm at the wrist or above the elbow.

The RUF kidnapped many of the children, forced them to take drugs and to become part of the RUF's child soldiers. Many kids carried/dragged rifles as tall as they were. Drugs were taken orally or rubbed into open cuts with gunpowder added "to increase" the effectiveness of the drugs. This method was a form of poisoning that had further negative mental consequences for the children. After the fall of the coup government a year later, these mental issues had to be addressed by the organizations that tried to deprogram the brigade of child soldiers who were taken from the RUF.

Like in Sierra Leone, in Afghanistan drug usage was a major problem. There are reports of some of the Taliban at checkpoints appearing to be high on drugs and the Afghan national army had problems with drug usage within the ranks. Despite the U.S. spending almost $9 billion on drug eradication in the nineteen years since 2002, poppy production increased each year the U.S. was in Afghanistan. According to the 2018 Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium -- with annual exports of between $1.5 and $3 billion each year.

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