After his four-month voluntary stay in San Pedro, Rusty lived in Colombia for eight years. For four of these years he secretly worked for the US government in counter-terrorism. At the time, Colombia suffered the highest rate of kidnapping in the world (on average nine people per day). As a manager of the Anti-Kidnapping Program, Rusty lived part-time on a military base, drove a Level III armoured vehicle, communicated with colleagues via encrypted radio and changed houses a dozen times.
Through police and army contacts, Rusty was able to interview special forces soldiers, including snipers and undercover intelligence agents, about their work. He also interviewed former hostages, their families and a broad cross-section of people from communities affected by violence, including priests, teachers and rural farmers displaced from their homes.
By far the most heart-wrenching stories he heard came from child soldiers recruited by the two main terrorist organisations – FARC and Autodefensas. At the peak of the war, an estimated 11,000 to 14,000 children were involved in the conflict, a third of whom were girls. The former soldiers, some as young as eight when they joined, described in detail their reasons for enlisting, their hatred of the enemy, their gruelling military training, their political indoctrination and their horrific experiences in battle. Once Rusty had earned their trust, they also opened up to him about gruesome tortures they were forced to witness or participate in.
Since 2011, Rusty’s house has been the headquarters for a foundation that helps rehabilitate and resocialise former child soldiers. Ten per cent of his royalties from this book will go to assisting Colombian children affected by violence.
For more information about the author and how you can help, please visit www.rusty-young.com.
By the same author
MARCHING POWDER
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Version 1.0
Colombiano
ePub ISBN – 9780143781554
First published by Bantam in 2017
Copyright © Rusty Young, 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Bantam book
Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Young, Rusty, 1975– author
Colombiano / Rusty Young
ISBN 978 0 14378 155 4 (ebook)
Child soldiers – Fiction
Bildungsromans – Fiction
Colombia – Fiction
A823.4
Cover design by Jem Butcher Design
Cover images © Shutterstock.com and iStock.com
Internal design by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Map by Ice Cold Publishing
Ebook by Firstsource