By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 8, 2000; Page A01
KENEMA, Sierra Leone When Revolutionary United Front rebels abducted
10-year-old Ernest Vanboi from his home three years ago and burned his house to the
ground, they used razors to carve the initials RUF into his thin chest.
Then they gave him an AK-47 rifle and forced him to join them on raids, first against his
own village and family, later wreaking havoc in other parts of the country. He was given
cocaine, amphetamines and other drugs to prepare him for combat. The carving ensured he
could not run away without the likelihood of being killed by government troops.
Since demobilizing in December as part of a tenuous peace accord that ended Sierra Leone's
eight-year civil war, Vanboi and thousands of other children who were forced to become
killers are emerging as one of the nation's most tragic and potentially dangerous
legacies.
The civil war, begun in 1991, was one of modern Africa's most brutal. While the use of
child combatants was well known, only now is the scope of the phenomenon and the range of
the brutality inflicted on children as young as 7 beginning to emerge. A peace agreement
was signed July 7, granting the RUF a share of power in the government and amnesty for all
atrocities it committed in exchange for disarming.
Although the U.N. Children's Fund estimates that some 250,000 children under 18 are
engaged in combat in 16 conflicts around the world, in few places have children faced the
level of abuse or committed such a large number of atrocities as here, according to
humanitarian aid workers. Human rights groups now estimate that the rebels forcibly
abducted 4,500 to 10,000 children under 16 during the war.
In Sierra Leone, said social workers and the child combatants, taking drugs--especially
amphetamines and cocaine--was a regular part of "military training."
Human Rights Watch found in a 1999 report that "child combatants armed with pistols,
rifles and machetes actively participated in killings and massacres, [and] severed the
arms of other children. . . . Often under the influence of drugs, they were known and
feared for their impetuosity, lack of control and brutality."
Because the children often attacked their own villages, many communities and families
don't want them back. Many children cannot find any surviving relatives. And no one knows
how deep the psychological scars run in children who no longer have any sense of what a
family is or how to survive in a world without war and drugs.
The International Rescue Committee and a handful of other organizations are working with
the demobilized children. Because of funding limitations, most children receive only 30 to
90 days of rehabilitation before they are forced to find jobs and fend for themselves.
"The question is how do we effectively reintegrate the children," said Kelly
MacDonald, the Rescue Committee's director for Sierra Leone. "If not in their home
communities, what is the alternative and what does that mean? Those are the questions we
are wrestling with now."
So far 1,504 children have turned in their weapons at U.N.-supervised demobilization
camps, and most of the children who have come out of the camps say the RUF is preventing
many more from demobilizing.
The immediate demobilization of children was part of the peace agreement. But so far the
RUF and other armed groups have missed numerous disarmament deadlines. According to
government figures, only about 4,000 of the RUF's estimated 16,000 fighters have
demobilized. Of the estimated 8,000 Armed Forces Revolutionary Council combatants, 4,000
have turned in their weapons. Relief workers and psychologists say that because most of
the children have demobilized in the past two months, it is much too early to assess the
war's long-term impact on them accurately.
"It is not the fault of the children. A child is a child," said Musu Burah, who
runs a community-based child-care center here that has taken in child combatants.
"But whoever led the children astray is responsible and is a monster."
Psychologists and relief workers said child combatants are always traumatized by war and
often suffer nightmares, alienation, outbursts of anger and the inability to function
socially. Here, they said, the trauma was probably even greater.
"Deliberately or not, witnessing at least once such events as torture, execution,
amputations, people being burnt in their houses and public rape often results in traumatic
stress or even post-traumatic stress disorder," Doctors Without Borders said in a
report issued in January.
RUF leader Foday Sankoh, now in the government, has publicly apologized for some of the
abuses committed by his troops. But diplomats and U.N. officials who deal with him say
that he denies the RUF abducted minors or is holding any children now.
Those statements contradict the testimony of more than a dozen child combatants as well as
social workers who have spent months working with them.
The children's accounts paint a chilling picture of how the RUF and its AFRC allies
systematically abducted children, became the children's surrogate family and forced them,
under threat of death, to wreak havoc. Often the children, mostly boys, have scars on
their temples where, they said, cocaine and gunpowder were inserted in cuts that were then
covered with plaster or adhesive tape.
The children also talked of being given small blue pills and drug injections. The effect,
they said, was that they could go on murderous binges for days.
"That is what they would do when they wanted us to have mayhem days, so when we got
up we could go for up to three days without stopping, just to kill," said Siamba, 16,
who was abducted in 1992 and is now learning how to be a tailor. "The commander told
me when I was captured, 'Your father is gone. Now I am your father.' In the bush we
committed a lot of atrocities. We did many evil things."
Many children said they saw other children executed for balking at killing their own
relatives or village friends.
"After you are captured you cannot think about your family, that is out," said
Sahr Jimmy II, a 15-year-old abducted three years ago, sitting on a rusty tool chest at
the Sarve the Nation garage, where he is learning mechanics. "Sometimes, when I was
by myself, I would think about them. But when you are captured you have to change or you
are a dead man."
The interviews were conducted at IRC-run homes for the children in this city of 165,000,
175 miles east of Freetown. So far, 75 children have passed through these homes and
another 30 are undergoing counseling and vocational training. A tailor and a mechanic have
agreed to help train some of the children, and other local businesses are considering
similar programs.
While the families of some of the children have been traced, many do not even know their
real names. And many have lost all knowledge of what a family is.
At the home for younger children, a social worker used a chalkboard to outline family
relationships, explaining that the father's sister is "auntie," and that his
brother is "uncle."
"They have these terrible feelings that they did horrible things," said Samuel
Kamanda, 32, an IRC program supervisor. "They tell each other God cannot forgive them
for what they did."
At the Amputees and War Wounded camp in Freetown, Kadia Tu Fafanah, a 41-year-old mother
of nine, told the story of how two preteen boys used an ax to hack her legs off above the
knees.
"It was Wednesday, Jan. 20, 1999," she said as she fanned a small fire in front
of her tent in the camp, recalling the days when the RUF and AFRC stormed the capital in
one of the war's chapters. "They put us in a house, about 100 of us, and tried to set
the house on fire, but it wouldn't light. So they put the men in one line and shot them. I
tried to run away, but I fell in a gutter. The children caught me. They amputated five
others, but I was punished more for trying to run away. They were small boys, and they
held me down while one cut me off."
"They keep saying we should forgive them, they were only children," Fafanah
said. "Maybe I can forgive them. That is in the Lord's hands. But I will find it
very, very hard to forget. I cannot forget."
Mohamed Nyalay, 17, who fought for seven years, said he could not forget either.
"I want to see my family, that is what I dream of," he said. "I did many,
many bad things, but God let me go. There was a whole lot of fighting. But life is
different now. We are not doing evil. We want to go home."
CHILDREN AT WAR
Numbers of child soldiers are difficult to obtain, but the Save the Children group has
made some estimates for 1998:
Country: Afghanistan
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: n/a
Youngest age found: 10
Country: Angola
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: 7,000
Youngest age found: 8
Country: Burma
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: 50,000
Youngest age found: 7
Country: Burundi
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: 10,000
Youngest age found: 8
Country: Cambodia
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: n/a
Youngest age found: 8
Country: Colombia1
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: 9,000
Youngest age found: 8
Country: Congo
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: 6,000
Youngest age found: 7
Country: Israel*
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: n/a
Youngest age found: 12
Country: Peru
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: 2,100
Youngest age found: 9
Country: Rwanda
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: 20,000
Youngest age found: 7
Country: Sierra Leone
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: 5,000
Youngest age found: 6
Country: Somalia
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: n/a
Youngest age found: 11
Country: Sri Lanka
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: n/a
Youngest age found: 8
Country: Sudan
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: 28,000
Youngest age found: 7
Country: Turkey
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: 3,000
Youngest age found: n/a
Country: Uganda
Number of child soldiers 15 or younger: 8,000
Youngest age found: 5
* found among Hamas Islamic fighters
SOURCE: Save the Children