I guess this is part of what it means when they say children are paying for the sins of their father, as the enemies are trying to punish themselves. Being an orphan from a very early stage of a child's life is quite a brutal punishment as the child is at the mercy of people who will maltreat them simply because they've got no one to protect them. There's no one that can protect a child the way his or her parents would. So the war is on them.