Africa struggles as child soldiers grow up

David Wood
Newhouse News Service

June 21, 2005

WASHINGTON - The phenomenon of child soldiers, which burst into the world's consciousness in the 1990s as a series of savage civil wars swept sub-Saharan Africa, has morphed into a brutal new form as tens of thousands of hardened teenage fighters rejoin militias and drift across borders from one conflict to another.

Senior U.S. defense and intelligence officials say the re-emergence of child soldiers, used by rebel and government forces alike, is a serious and rising threat to stability across a broad swath of Africa. It comes despite millions of dollars spent by international donors and aid agencies to disarm and reintegrate them into their local communities, efforts falling short in part because of the lack of sustaining education and jobs in Africa's sagging economies.

"It's a big problem," said Theresa Whelan, deputy assistant defense secretary for Africa, who has met with former child soldiers who are now experienced adolescent fighters in Uganda and Liberia.

Earlier this year, she spoke with youths who fought under Charles Taylor in Liberia in the early 1990s and then enlisted with rebel Foday Sankoh in neighboring Sierra Leone during its bloody civil war, where they gained a reputation for amputating people's limbs, before moving back into Liberia.

Many like them are now fighting in the Ivory Coast, which is in the grip of a five-year civil war.

"Where they will go next, in these heavy conflict areas, who knows?" Whelan said.

These smaller conflicts, fought by irregular militias and guerrilla gangs, rarely make news in the West. But they produce a steady toll of death and destruction, wrecking social services, diverting investment away from schools into weapons and nourishing official corruption.

U.S. officials are watching closely for signs that al-Qaida will begin recruiting in the belt of chaos that spreads across sub-Saharan Africa.

"There is concern that these child soldiers might be prime recruits for terrorist groups," Whelan said. So far, however, "it's even too dangerous for them," she said, only half in jest.

Experts fear former child soldiers could plunge the region further into conflict, creating conditions where disease, despair and devastation spread and terrorism can take root.

A CIA assessment released in March said the gangs and militias, their ranks swelled by former child soldiers, may even overrun the deteriorating armies of some African countries.

"That is the longer-term threat," Whelan said.

The Bush administration has provided only sporadic military training to governments in the region, because of tight budgets and the diversion of U.S. troops to Iraq, Pentagon officials say.

Globally, experts say, there may be 300,000 child soldiers engaged in conflicts from Nepal to Colombia to West Africa. Many were forcibly abducted, lived as captives and had no choice but to fight.

During the 1990s, the issue won attention at the United Nations. But this year, a proposed crackdown on the use of child soldiers has been sidelined at the Security Council for 18 weeks without action, said Alec Wargo, an aide to the U.N. Special Representative for Children and Conflict.

In Africa, meantime, many former child soldiers who took part in reintegration programs are drifting back to war.

"We were just sitting around - no school, no food - what else are we to do?" a 14-year-old Liberian told researcher Corinne Dufka of Human Rights Watch this spring. The youth had just taken part in a rebel attack on the town of Logouale in the Ivory Coast. "My commander is the one taking care of me," he said.

"They aren't children any more," a 30-year-old Liberian mercenary, returning with five adolescents from combat in Ivory Coast, told Human Rights Watch researcher Dufka. "They have been fighting for years, and after all they've done and gone through - they are big men now."

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