Children at War, by P.W. Singer.  New York: Pantheon, 2005.  $25, 269 pp. ISBN 0-375-42349-4

Iraq had Saddam's Lion Cubs; Sierra Leone, the West Side Boys; and Sri Lanka, the Birds of Freedom. What were these innocuous-sounding groups? Third-world boy bands? Not likely since the Birds of Freedom were young girls.

They and dozens of groups like them are soldiers -- some as young as six-years-old. Despite the long-held tradition that prohibits targeting of innocents or the use of children as warriors, the practice has become "a growing and global phenomenon." From Colombia to Sierra Leone, Sudan to Palestine, Kosovo to Burma, an estimated 300,000 children are currently at war -- approximately 10% of all combatants worldwide. In the last decade alone, over 2 million children have been killed in conflicts.

P.W. Singer, a Fellow at the Brookings Institute and author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, seeks to explain this tragic phenomenon in Children at War. Relying on "an extensive body of primary and secondary literature" and interviews with former child soldiers and international aid workers, he lays out the magnitude of the problem, analyses the possible causes, and suggests some answers.

The problem is concentrated in a familiar arc of instability that stretches from Latin America across Africa, the Middle East, and into Southwest Asia. Most of these countries are wracked by poverty, ethnic strife, disease, authoritarian/kleptocractic rule, and civil unrest. And all too often, the age-old taboo against child soldiers has become another victim to the ubiquitous violence.

Singer's commentary on the scope and nature of the problem makes for compelling and sad reading. His analysis of the causes, however, falls back on old, familiar (convenient) bogeymen: globalization, poverty, the international arms trade. This, of course, shifts the onus to the West which is the architect and putative chief beneficiary of globalization. And, who better to fix the problem than the responsible party? Again, Singer sings a familiar refrain: "greater amounts of aid" are needed. Billions of dollars in aid have disappeared without a trace in Africa over the past few decades. Why assume that future aid will be any different? Maybe something other than money is needed.

Singer also presses the United Nations to actively prosecute leaders who recruit child soldiers through the International Criminal Court. This, of course, is the same U.N. that turned its back on evil in Rwanda and continues to ignore the genocide in Sudan. Good luck. And, with the U.S. military stretched thin by the Global War on Terror, there's not much enthusiasm -- or resources -- for humanitarian interventions.

In his most ambitious prescription, Singer calls for widespread, long-term programs of counseling, education, and training to rehabilitate child soldiers. In a world of donor fatigue, how likely is this?

Singer should be applauded for tackling an important subject. Unfortunately, he looks in the wrong places for the causes of and the solutions to the problem. The poverty, disease, lawlessness, overcrowding, etc., that he identifies with globalization are more likely local than global in nature. Therefore, the answer must be more local than global as well. Now, that's a novel idea and one that just might work.