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Child soldiers learn to play
21/10/2003 10:10 - (SA)
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| Moses Watson plays with friends at the Don Bosco youth rehabilitation centre in Monrovia. (Ben Curtis, AP) |
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Monrovia, Liberia - In his dream, 14-year-old Moses Watson is running from the front lines in Liberia when a bullet hits him in the guts.
"All my intestines come out," said Moses, his voice quiet as he sat on a wooden bench, looking at the floor. "I have died. I ask God please forgive me."
Moses, like thousands of child soldiers here, is haunted by what he did and saw during the years when grown government soldiers doped him up with marijuana and crack cocaine and forced him into battle holding a machine gun that dwarfed his body.
The United Nations says as many as 10 000 children fought in this West African country's last, three-year civil war, a closing burst of carnage in 14 years of conflict that killed more than 200 000 people.
Liberians are looking ahead toward patching their country back together now that warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor is exiled in Nigeria, Gyude Bryant is Liberia's new leader until elections in 2005, and the UN peacekeeping force here will soon become the world's largest, at 15 000 troops.
And child soldiers are but one item on a long list of things to fix.
School - restarting on November 3, as soon as classrooms that housed refugees are stocked with pencils and paper and cleansed of blood - will take in many of the youngest fighters.
Some are very young indeed: Taylor took children as young as five into his notorious Small Boys Units.
Commanders on all sides quickly learned to prize the tiny fighters for their unquestioning obedience and viciousness born of a child's lack of comprehension of right and wrong.
"Some have been armed forces so long they'll need special attention," acknowledges Cyrille Niameogo of the UN Children's Fund.
But the fact is, in the specialised field of counselling school-age battle veterans, there are few who can help, Niameogo says.
For now, Moses lives in a group home on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia's war-beaten seaside capital.
The boys who live there - 22 former child soldiers and 15 children found on the streets, all age 11 to 18 - eat regular meals and study reading and writing.
"They are not difficult children, they are children with difficulties and they need help," said Allen Lincoln, a Liberian official with the aid group that runs the home.
In addition to providing food, shelter, and basic classes, aid workers help the boys find training in carpentry, auto mechanics or masonry.
But before the boys can hope for normal lives, they must come to terms with crippling memories.
Moses, who is from Sierra Leone and was captured by Liberian forces from across the porous border when he was 10, said adult soldiers made the boys sing to calm their fears as they piled into trucks for the front line.
Once, said Moses, heavy fighting forced him and his friends to retreat.
"But the commander fired at our feet to make us go back," he said.
- AP
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