The four boys from Makeni, Sierra Leone, won’t be among child delegates joining more than 60 heads of state at United Nations headquarters in New York this week. They’ve barely thought about one of the main issues involved in the U.N. Special Session on Children–how the international community can roll back the growing exploitation of children in war. Experts say soldiers under the age of 15 have fought in more than half of the world’s 55 ongoing or just-ended wars. Children are easy to recruit, low cost and malleable. From the “little bees” of Colombia to the “baby brigades” of Sri Lanka, they have become the cannon fodder of choice.
In a world absorbed with the “war on terror,” with headlines blaring about terrified Americans and terrorized Israelis or Palestinians, the atrocities committed against some of these children almost demand a new language to encompass a further extreme of horror. The kids of the Mideast get more attention, either as disciples of terror or as victims of occupation. But nobody has been more exploited than the kids of Sierra Leone. They may not come from a strategically important country, or a place that, for now anyway, represents a danger to the world’s rich nations. But the growing use of children has changed the dynamics of warfare, and must be treated as a new security threat. The question before the United Nations this week will be how to muster the will to enforce longstanding international conventions and three new resolutions on children and armed conflict. The latest protocols on children’s rights took force in February, and condemned the use of child soldiers and their sexual exploitation.
Some may dismiss teenage ex-combatants as war criminals who don’t have much to contribute to a debate on human rights. Indeed, these boys say they can now look only to God for forgiveness. Yet they are, in a very intimate way, the world’s leading experts on child warfare. And their eyewitness accounts–shocking as they are–convey the unthinkable inhumanity of those who coerced them into combat. To that end, NEWSWEEK recently spent three days debriefing these four young veterans, selected from among 25 ex-combatants who attend the 1,023-student primary school in Makeni, a rundown market town 90 miles northeast of the capital, Freetown. All lost close relatives in the war; two stammer uncontrollably. Abdul Rahman Kamera, 15, still lives with the rebel commander who nicknamed him “Go Easy”; he can find no living relative. Zakaria Turay, 14, whose war name was “Ranger,” and Abbas Fofanah, 16, who went by “G-Pox,” live with aunts. Only Alieu Bangura, 14, called “Major” by his fellow warriors, has been reunited with his mother. All are destitute, barely getting enough to eat. Their stories:
Before the War
Abbas: In the morning my mother would ask me to sweep and clean. My father drove a big truck. When the moon was full I would play with my companions. We would bounce a ball and play hide-and-seek in the moonlight. We lived in Bo, near where the Makeni vehicles used to park. My grandmother sent word from Burkina Faso that she had no child to play with. I was sent to Burkina. I used to sell for my grandmother. She gave me palm oil and onions to go and sell.
Alieu: In the morning I would sweep under our mango tree, then wash my face and go to school. At night we used to tell stories in the moonlight. My father was the superintendent of our district [in Makeni]. On weekends I would go with my father to his farm. I carried water for him.
Forced Into Service
jaja
Abdul Rahman: I was in class, second grade. I was 8 years old. They threatened to kill us. In front of us, they brought a grown-up man, going gray. They put his hand on a stump and amputated it. They gave me a gun and I refused it. They fired between my feet. I took the gun.
Abbas: I was on my way to the market when a rebel demanded I come with him. The commander said to move ahead with him. My grandmother argued with him. He shot her twice. I said he should kill me, too. They tied my elbows behind my back. At the base, they locked me in the toilet for two days. When they let me out, they carved the letters RUF across my chest. They tied me so I wouldn’t rub it until it was healed.
Zakaria: I was captured in Freetown on May 25, 1997. I was carrying pans in the street. A rebel told me, “Put your pans down and come carry our load.” We walked all the way to Makeni.
The Drug Factor
jambaa
Zakaria: My missions included diamond mining near Kono, drug purchasing, collecting ammunition in Liberia, looting villages and capturing civilians. I used to buy drugs at the Liberian border from a man called Papi. They forced us to take them. This is where they would cut and put the “brown-brown” [heroin]. [He shows a raised welt on his left pectoral.] We would then inhale cocaine. During operations, I sometimes would take it two or three times a day. I felt strong and powerful. I felt no fear. When I was demobilized I felt weak and cold and had no appetite for three weeks.
Abbas: They gave me injections in the leg [shows track marks] and cut the back of my head to put in cocaine [shows scar]. The smaller ones are the ones who stand in front, the elder ones behind. So they give the boys the injections. It happened any time we were going on the attack–more than 25 times.
Atrocities Up Close
Abbas: When we caught kamajors [pro-government militiamen] we would mutilate them by parts and display them in the streets. When villagers refused to clear out of an area we would strip them naked and burn them to death. Sometimes we used plastic and sometimes a tire. Sometimes they would partially sever a person’s neck, then leave him on the road to die slowly. I saw a pregnant woman split open to see what the baby’s sex was. We had met her on the streets of Kabala. Two officers, “O5” and “Savage,” argued over it and made a bet. Savage’s boys opened the woman. It was a girl. The baby lived.
In Kabala I was forced to do amputations. We had a cutlass, an ax and a big log. We called the villagers out and let them stand in line. You ask [the victims] whether they want a long hand or a short hand [the amputation at the wrist or elbow]. The long hand you put in a different bag from the short hand. If you have a large number of amputated hands in the bag, the promotion will be automatic, to various ranks.
We gang-raped women, sometimes six people at a time. I didn’t feel much because I was drugged and I was just there for sex. One of my friends was having sex with a girl when she complained she was tired. He took out his pistol and shot into her vagina. But usually we would let them stagger and go.
I remember one tough operation. We were dressed all in black, we were the ones they called the cobras. We killed people, we cooked them, we ate them and then we broke their pots.
Zakaria: I remember when I was manning the heavy machine gun. No one dared stand in front of me. I killed when I said, “You! If you leave I will kill you!” We were the men who amputated hands and used the same cut hand to slap the victim. We beat and killed people, not even afraid of the consequences. We were ready to commit any crimes. We were the rough ones.
Abdul Rahman: My schoolmates and I met our old teacher, and we knocked him down. We killed the teacher and we took his books and burned them, and then we took some of the papers to the toilet to wipe ourselves.
Zakaria: They [older rebels] would [impale people] when the drugs had taken hold and they wanted to play wicked games. They want to see blood. Some of them drink blood. Especially on the war fronts, where there’s no food, no water, when we killed civilians we would cut a hole on the top of the arm, above the wrist, and press on the arm, and drink.
And Now, the Aftershocks
Alieu: If someone offends me, I think back: if I had been in the bush, how I would have dealt with him. I feel ashamed of myself… I dream about what happened. Sometimes I feel scared, because I’ve killed, I’ve drunk blood, I’ve smoked jambaa–I worry that these things will take over, that they’ll lead me to do bad things again. The drugs we took made me feel very light. I worry that I’m not as intelligent as I was before.
Zakaria: Most times I dream, I have a gun, I’m firing, I’m killing, cutting, amputating. I feel afraid, thinking perhaps that these things will happen to me again. Sometimes I cry… When I see a woman I’m afraid of her. I’ve been bad with women; now I fear that if I go near one she’ll hit me. Perhaps she will kill me.
Facing the Future
Abbas: Right now I want to be a doctor or teacher. I want to go to America to learn a very powerful job. Let me be able to do something for my people.
Alieu: After I have finished my university I want to be a doctor or a teacher. Father God, I have a future plan for this country that will make this country develop. I thank God that I have survived, they did not kill me in the bush. They used to punish me, do all kinds of bad things to me, but they did not kill me… Please support us. Right now we don’t have books, we don’t have pens, we don’t even have uniforms. Let them send some things for us.
Zakaria: I am praying for forgiveness so that more fruitful things can come our way, praying that God will help us to become good people.
Protecting Others
Alieu: The guilty can be prosecuted. They should be taken to court, and let them explain what happened. Thinking about the part I’ve played, I’m thinking I may be liable to appear in court.
Zakaria: Right now, the war is over, but what happened to us should not repeat itself with our children. With only small things to compensate us for what we’ve been through, we will be able to pick ourselves up.
The task of prosecuting those who exploited such children is monumental. In West Africa, Liberia’s Charles Taylor pioneered the use of “small-boy units” during his drive for power in the 1990s. Security analysts estimate that he and others used 15,000 children as combatants in that war, and now Taylor is Liberia’s president–and fending off a new rebellion. Neighboring Sierra Leone’s war was an extension of Liberia’s brutal conflict. The RUF gained control of the country’s rich diamond fields, selling through Liberia. Sierra Leonean commanders who had served under Taylor took an estimated 10,000 children as combatants during the decadelong conflict, which the United Nations officially declared finished only this year.
At least the world will try to punish the boys’ bosses. Last month U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed a U.S. Defense Department lawyer as chief prosecutor for the U.N.’s Sierra Leone War Crimes Tribunal. David Crane will head prosecutions at a court charged with trying violations of Sierra Leonean and international humanitarian law since Nov. 30, 1996–the date when rebels signed a peace accord that later collapsed. RUF rebel leader Foday Sankoh will be among the first to go to trial. He has been jailed since May 2000.
But many of the big fish may wriggle free. The rebels didn’t keep good records. Unlike the Balkans, where war-crimes cases are succeeding, none of Sierra Leone’s neighbors supports prosecutions; these countries are all implicated. The biggest fish of all is Taylor, who has no interest in cooperating. If the West hopes to extract pledges of support from other countries in the region, it will have to condition aid on their compliance. Finally, the victimized societies need to look inward, to ask themselves hard questions about what they have done to encourage the treatment of people as commodities. A nation like Sierra Leone will cheat itself if it expects foreigners alone to deliver a cure. Child warriors everywhere need elders to look up to.
