7 of the youth in the first two countries was in the context of civil wars, involving massive internal disruption and destruction of communities: children and young people were dragged in by force of circumstances, although their individual motives for joining an armed group may have varied greatly, as suggested above. In Rwanda, there was a deliberate process of recruitment along ethnic lines, backed by a ferocious propaganda campaign to foster recruitment. Unfortunately few of the reports on Zimbabwe provide detailed enough information on the breakdown of the perpetrators by category other than gross political affiliation, and thus it is hard to determine trends in any statistical fashion. Regarding the identification of the perpetrators of organised violence and torture, virtually no reports show the changes over time in this, part from very gross indices. One report, relying wholly on medical examinations and affidavits, showed that “war veterans” and youth militia was a very significant proportion of the total (33%). This is shown in Table 1 below. Table 1. Perpetrators identified by victims. (Taken from Amani Trust, “Beating your opposition. Torture during The 2002 Presidential Election in Zimbabwe”, 25 June 2002) Perpetrator ZanuPF supporters Youth militia Zimbabwe Republic Police MDC War veterans Zimbabwe National Army Unknown Percentage 46% 29% 12% 5% 4% 2% 2% However, the assertion here is not that the youth militia were the organisers of the organised violence and torture rather that they were the “foot soldiers” under the control of other leaders (see above). In 2000, these were assumed to be “war veterans”, and this assumption seems to be held by a recent analysis of the worst perpetrators 12. As the analysis above indicated, relatively stable numbers of perpetrators were found per category – MP, police, “war veterans”, etc – between the two elections, but, interestingly, when the data was sorted according to frequency of mention, then “war veterans” and ZanuPF youth were much less frequently mentioned. “War veterans” however were a very high percentage of the top 50 worst offenders, and some “war veterans” were the most frequently mentioned of all. When ZanuPF MPs, many of whom make much of their “war veteran” credentials, are added to the “war veteran” category, then these two categories make up 15% of the total of the worst perpetrators mentioned by victims. It thus is not difficult to see a link between the youth militia and their likely leaders. In fact, given the 12 See Reeler, A P (2003), Who should be sanctioned? [www.zwnews.com].