Children recount war woes in Liberia
JOHANNESBURG -- The children had nicknames based on their grimmest deeds -- like "Castrator" or "Laughing and Killing."
Some dyed their hair bright orange. Others fought naked to terrify the enemy. Some girl soldiers fought in their underwear because they thought it would make them magical and bulletproof.
They carried the scars of secret initiation rites and wore neck charms that they believed would protect them from enemy bullets, though one 17-year-old, Isaac T., conceded that the magic did not work against larger artillery.
Commanders in Liberia's four-year war deny recruiting child soldiers. But, according to the accounts of child soldiers interviewed by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, the government and two rebel groups abducted children as young as 9 and turned them into combatants during the past four years.
The kidnappings occurred when children were on their way to school or from camps for displaced persons, said the group, which protected the children's identities. The use of child soldiers under the age of 15 is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
The commanders sent the children to the front line first, to fight the most dangerous battles -- presumably because they were the most expendable. Girl soldiers were used as sex slaves, repeatedly raped, often by groups of fighters.
A Human Rights Watch report, which was being released yesterday paints a chilling portrait of the suffering of child soldiers in Liberia and the atrocities they witnessed and committed. It highlights the problems faced in Liberia, and other African countries, in demobilizing thousands of child soldiers and returning them to communities where they may have committed atrocities. The United Nations has estimated that 15,000 child soldiers have fought in Liberia since 2000.
The Human Rights Watch report was being released ahead of a donors conference in New York this week, when the United Nations will seek to raise $400 million to help rebuild Liberia.
According to the report, many children demobilized after an earlier conflict from 1989 to 1997 got little support from the international community, could not afford to go to school or find work, and ended up idle in cities and towns. When the civil war restarted in 2000, many went back to fighting.
Samson T., whose age was not available, fought with former President Charles Taylor's rebel National Patriotic Front of Liberia, or NPFL, but later for the forces who opposed him, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, or LURD. Before every battle, the commanders passed out drugs, tablets that the children considered magical.
"The medicine was for protection. If a bullet hit you, it would bounce right off. After I took that medicine, it made me feel bad, it changed my heart," Samson T. said in an interview with Human Rights Watch observers on Bushrod Island in Liberia last October.
Solomon F., who was grabbed by Taylor's NPFL forces in the 1990s on his way home from school, told researchers that children were given the drugs because "you need the drugs to give you the strength to kill."
Taylor was elected in 1997 after a cease-fire. Facing international war crimes charges, Taylor stepped down last August and accepted asylum in Nigeria. An interim Liberian government is now in power.
Human Rights Watch said that although many children left their units after UN peacekeepers moved into Liberia, some in areas outside UN control were still in fighting units. It called on the international community to fund the demobilization of child soldiers so that they did not cross borders to fight in other West African conflicts.
Boys as young as 10 fought on the front lines, the study found. They had a couple of weeks' training before being sent into war. Robert L. described ordeals such as having to crawl through barbed wire while LURD commanders shot at him and other boys.
