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NEWS STORY
James Astill February 25, 2001 Child soldiers are infamous for their tall stories. But Byamungu tenses up when he tells how the prostitute laughed at him before he shot her - and you sense he is telling the truth. Byamungu says he is 13, though he looks barely 10. Most of the armies at war in the Democratic Republic of Congo rely on children like Byamungu. They learned the trick from former president Laurent Kabila. His kidogos - little ones - were his most loyal fighters, he boasted, until one of them assassinated him last month. Byamungu was pressed into Kabila's army aged 10. Six months later he was captured by the main rebel army, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), and for three years fought with them. With his piping voice, Byamungu might seem like a little boy playing the man. But he is not play-acting. 'Of course I killed men,' he says, craning his neck horribly to avoid eye contact. 'It's very difficult to fight and not kill, and I fought many times.' Byamungu is in a child demobilisation centre run by Save the Children on the edge of Bukavu, in the east of the country. In a concrete yard surrounded by concrete stalls 50 children - technically, under-18s - are waiting while their families are traced. Deo Buuma, Save the Children's Bukavu office manager, apologises that the centre looks like a farmyard. 'At first we had them in a house in town, but the kids kept trying to rob people and rape girls in the street,' he explained. Over the past year and a half, 344 children have been demobilised in Bukavu. The rate is accelerating rapidly - 44 have come this month. Most are from the RCD, which commands Bukavu and the surrounding towns, and a few are from the Mai Mai, a nationalist militia hiding out in the dense forests. Valery Manegabe, Save the Children's demobilisation officer, says RCD comman ders are becoming 'quite helpful', but adds: 'With the Mai Mai it's more difficult because more than half of them are children - maybe 10,000 in all. They say we're just trying to reduce their strength.' The RCD provincial president, Norbert Basengezi Katintima, says it is delighted to co-operate but it is thought it still holds around 1,000 children. Part of the problem is that the rebel army, widely considered a front for neighbouring Rwanda's occupation of the eastern part of the Democratic Republic, has a shaky chain of command. 'There is no respect for orders from top to bottom,' Manegabe said. 'Even if the brigade commander authorises the release of some children, their officer-in-charge can refuse to give them to us.' More fundamentally, child soldiers are highly prized. 'An officer told me that children are more obedient and less afraid than adults, so they use them on the front line,' said Manegabe. 'And of course they don't complain as much when they aren't paid.' The Mai Mai are even more committed to youth. They claim to possess a charm which makes warriors invincible, provided its conditions are stringently observed. 'Even though the children have the magic, we shouldn't ignore the fact that they are still underage soldiers,' said Manegabe. Like all Save the Children's staff in Bukavu, he is convinced of the charm's efficacy. Little Byamungu is more sceptical: 'There is no medicine against a bullet. Whenever we shot Mai Mai, they died.' It is one thing to pull children out of the army, quite another to keep them out. Many join up to escape the poverty of a country ravaged by war: at least four boys have passed through the demob centre twice. 'The only people guaranteed not to starve in Congo are those with guns,' said Claude Jibidar, UN co-ordinator for the province. More than 70 per cent of eastern Congo's schools have been closed by the war. Charlotte Ernique has a new dress from Save the Children and a head newly shaved by the RCD. She is 15 but, like virtually all the children at the demob centre, years of malnutrition have made her look much younger. Last month Charlotte gave up prostitution and joined the RCD because she was scared of getting Aids. She says she cannot go back to her village because she was forced to leave when a neighbour accused her of witchcraft. 'And anyway my parents had no food for me. The army was a hard life because I was beaten,' she said. 'But I did not ask to leave. If not prostitution, what am I to do? I will have to go into the army again.' The UN has failed miserably to address the root cause of the use of children as soldiers: the war. A year after they were promised, almost no UN military observers have been deployed. 'We cannot hope for everybody to suddenly wake up and stop the war. But we must at least pull the children out,' said Jibidar. story url
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