SUDAN-CHILDREN: Marching The Young Off To War

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Dec 18 1996 (IPS) - One fateful day, a Sudanese refugee reportedly asked rebel leader Colonel John Garang why his children were not among those being trained to fight in his guerilla movement in southern Sudan.

The refugee had four children of his own — ages 2, 7, 14 and 17. The last three had been conscripted into the ‘Red Army’, a rag- tag child soldiers version of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

“Garang replied that his children, who were still in school, would join their compatriots later, ” recalled Farouk Saleh Mohamed Abdalla, who played a leading role in the training of the ‘Red Army’s’ children.

Five days later, the refugee who was from the Baria ethnic group which lives around the main southern town of Juba, mysteriously disappeared. “We heard that he had been murdered by unknown elements,” said Abdalla, who recently defected from the SPLA.

He told IPS this week that the incident took place in 1990 at Dima refugee camp in Ethiopia, near the border with Sudan, where he had been training child soldiers.

“We collected the children and we trained them how to fight, read and write,” he said. “We took them by force from their homes, from their parents and guardians. We confined them to one place. The children that we usually looked for were between the ages of five to 16 years.”

The training of child soldiers took place in refugee camps in Itang, Bilpam and in Bunga, all inside Ethiopia, according to Abdalla.

After the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam was toppled in 1991, the SPLA moved the training of child soldiers inside southern Sudan, and to neighbouring Kenya and Uganda, Abdalla said.

“The scenarios are common all over the so-called displaced camps within the south of Sudan in Lobone, Mangalatore, Narus, Natinga and Mugali, as well as in refugee camps in Kakuma, Kenya and in Koboko, Uganda,” Abdalla said.

“These places are not what the world is made to understand…, but are in fact reserve centres for SPLA recruitment.”

Abdalla, a career teacher, served in the rebel movement for six years until his resignation last week. The SPLA, he said, has no educational policy for the majority of recruits. Only the children of the leaders get preferential treatment.

“…It (SPLA) prefers everybody to be a soldier when Garang’s children and those of his close relatives and other confidants are being educated all over the world,” he said.

According to Abdalla, funds from donors for educating refugees and displaced children usually end up in individual pockets. “The rebel movement movement officials provide fictitious names and non- existent schools like school in Kongor in Garang’s home area to entice the donors’ funds”.

He claimed that 70 percent of relief items like food, medicine, plastic sheetings and school materials meant for displaced persons also end up in the hands of the rebel movement for either the soldiers or find their way back to the nearest neighbouring countries where they were sold.

Abdalla’s descriptions of the training of children match a recent report by South Sudan Watch, an independent human rights monitoring group run by a group of southern Sudanese journalists and academics.

In the report, the organisation noted that in 1987 Garang ordered that children from the ages of six to 13 years be conscripted and brought to the SPLA bases of Bilpam, Panyudo and Dima. Parents were “deceived” into believing that their children were going to school in Ethiopia and Cuba.

“Sixty thousands children were collected and made to walk hundreds of kilometres on foot to Ethiopia. Thousands perished on the way and less than 50,000 reached their designated bases,” the report said.

“Once in their bases, they were given wooden guns and drilled as child soldiers. Many of those wretched children died out of neglect from poor feeding, lack of medical attention and parental care for the six years old,” it added.

“After the Mengistu regime was overthrown in 1991 these children had to walk back to new bases in southern Sudan and many died on the way. The remnants of these children are about 20,000. There are about 10,000 in Kenya and in Palotaka, southern Sudan,” the report said.

Sudan’s ruling Islamic, military rulers have also accused the SPLA of recruiting children as soldiers and according to a government statement, the issue has been communicated to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other human rights and child protection groups.

The United Nations focused specifically on child soldiers in a November released report on ‘The Impact of Armed Conflicts On Children’, by Graca Machel of Mozambique.

“Once recruited, children generally receive much the same treatment as adults – including the often brutal induction ceremonies,” said the report.

“Many start out in support functions which entail great risk and hardship. One of the common tasks is to serve as porters, even carrying heavy loads of up to 60 kilogrammes including ammunition or injured soldiers,” it noted.

According to the UNICEF global study, the “children who are too weak to carry their loads are liable to be severely beaten, or even shot…”

One of the key recommendations of Machel’s report was for the age of military recruitment to be raised to 18. “No child under 18 should have any role in any armed force of any kind,” she said, adding that all children now in an armed force, whether governmental or non-governmental, should be demobilised.

In Sudan, the child soldier is used mainly for fighting in the war in southern Sudan between the Arab, Moslem government and the mostly Christian SPLA. They are recruited mainly from among the more than 300,000 Sudanese refugees — 209,000 in Uganda, 111,000 in Zaire, 63,000 in Ethiopia and 41,000 in Kenya.