Outside Reading 4: War

The book They Poured Fire on us from the Sky all revolves and is written because of the war that goes on in Sudan. This war was against the government trying to make their country Islamic and the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army). What the government would do is find areas that are not Islamic or that they believed had any interaction with SPLA and destroy that village or area. Sudan's government would come in and take the women and children in the village and lock them in their houses and burn the houses to the ground. The Sudan government would then take the men and kill them and throw them into rivers or ditches. The government did not care if a person was apart of the SPLA or just a civilian, if someone was not apart of their side they were to be killed. Unlike most wars nowadays, people will not just kill someone in war off of a hunch because they are rules to war. One example of this could be the Afghanistan war because the US army gets bombed by civilians often yet they are not allowed to just go around killing civilians just because they may be associated with a terrorist association. One of the Lost Boys describes how he felt the government thought about him and people his age. He says "Thousands die a hundred are born a day. Who cares about your life at your age? Our lives seemed no consequence to them." The government gave no regard to the young people that would be effected by this and how horrible their massacres were. The government would even bomb schools and other community areas. One Lost Boy said that the SPLA wanted to continue education and protect those in danger from the government. It is not right that the side opposing the government is looking out for the civilians education and rights. A government is in place to maintain order and to help its people yet the government is not doing this. War is primitive and is used when people are not able to come to an agreement. War should be something of the past, killing people brutally is not the way solutions should be found. What the government of Sudan was doing was also immoral. They were killing innocent people, destroying villages and schools. It is wrong for war to happen in the first place but it is even worse that when it happens innocent people are put in harms way and in this war, they were some of the largest targets. Stop the needless killing and this will stop the war.