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Modern is what some of us think we are, others of us wish desperately to be, yet others despair of being, regret, or oppose, or fear, or, now, desire somehow to transcend. It is our universal adjective.… But though it is, originally, a Western word and a Western notion… the idea of modernity has become the common property of all the world, even more prized and puzzled over in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where it is considered to be just now, perhaps, at last arriving, or, for various sorts of dark reasons, still not doing so, than in Europe and North America, where it is regarded as being, for better or worse, largely in place. Whatever it is, it is pervasive, as either a presence or a lack, an achievement or a failure, a liberation or burden. Whatever it is (Geertz, 1995: 136).

As in numerous other African conflicts, the participation of large numbers of adolescent as combatants was crucial to the emergence and development …