https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_nightclub_shooting
This mass shooting event compares to the loss of innocence in A Long Way Gone. On page 65 it states, “Twelve of them ran after the seven of us, wrestling us to the sand. They tied our hands. In truth, realizing that i would eventually be caught, i stopped running and offered my hands.” We can relate this to how both of these events were unexpected killings so they had no time to escape. In the shooting, people had no where to turn to because he entered through the main door just like the boys knew they couldn’t outrun the strong men so they eventually gave up hope and surrendered.

On January 12, 2010, an earthquake with a  7.0 magnitude hit Haiti. Before the earthquake, Haiti was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and had already been suffering from many political and economic problems. The earthquake affected approximately 3 million people and killed 316,000 people. The earthquake also caused many buildings to disintegrate, killing and trapping many. Around 1 million people were left homeless after the earthquake. Of these, many were orphans who had lost their family during the earthquake. Children were left vulnerable, and many were expedited by foreign officials before their families were looked for. This took away any chance of the children being reunited with their families. 

 https://www.britannica.com/event/Haiti-earthquake-of-2010 

This relates to the theme of the importance of family in ALWG. In ALWG, Ishmael is separated from all of his family early on in the war. He attempts to reunite with him when the war first comes to their part of the country, but he does not succeed. Whenever he comes to a village where he has been told his family is staying, he is beyond excited to see them. However, when the village is burned before he gets to, he is devastated, describing the feeling as “I felt as though something had literally been placed on my head, heavier than I could ever imagine.” Even once he is in rehab and is starting to find new friends who take the role of his family in life, he continues to be haunted by this loss. On page 164 of the book, Ishmael says, “I had a nightmare that was different from the ones I had been having.” He goes on to say, “I went outside with the blood all over me and saw my mother, father, older and younger brother. They were all smiling as if nothing had happened, as if we had been together all this time.” The fact that even as Ismael starts his life over, he continues to remember and miss his family relates the children in Haiti. Even though many of them were taken out of the country or put into orphanages, they still had gone through the loss of their families, and they would never be able to forget this. 

Similarly in A Long Way Gone, the war left Ishmael to recover in a rehabilitation center as LRA child soldiers did. Both events demonstrate the theme, damages of war.  Due to the violence the children grew immune to during their fighting, upon reaching the rehabilitation center, they acted more like soldiers than children. For example, p. 136 states, “They had their guns pointed at us, but we laughed at them and walked outside to where military vehicles waited to transport us somewhere. We were so happy to have dealt with the rebel boys that we didn’t think of attacking the MPs”.  After murdering other children at the center because they were rebels, the soldier boys are able to laugh at guns being pointed at their faces. This shows how the war has damaged the boys by desensitizing them into thinking violence is acceptable and not something to fear. Rehabilitating child soldiers of the LRA probably had similar mindsets as they were also coming from a past where they were desensitized to use violence. In addition, Ishmael experienced migraines including ones “wherein the image of a burning village flashed in my mind, followed by wailings of many voices” (p. 184). Even after rehabilitation, the war brought pain to Ishmael and damaged his mind with migraines and vivid war memories. As the LRA soldiers also committed murder and violence, similar memories likely caused trauma for the child soldiers as well.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/syrian-civil-war-guide-isis/410746/ 

This connects to the theme of the damages of war. In ALWG, Ishmael experiences many of the damages of the war, whether it’s the death of his family, injuries, or having to move constantly. Ishmael says, “If we hadn’t stopped to rest on that hill, if we hadn’t run into Gasemu, I would have seen my family, I thought. . .. I got up, walked behind Gasemu, and locked his neck under my arms” (96). Just like the people in Syria, Ishmael had to deal with the many deaths that came with the war. Ishmael particularly took the death of his family so poorly that he was willing to injure an innocent person. Ishmael also had to leave his home when the war reached Mattru Jong, similar to how over eleven million people in Syria had to leave their homes due to the civil war. These examples reveal the many damages of war caused by both the Sierra Leone Civil War and the Syrian Civil War.