CHILDREN-SIERRA LEONE: Militia Admits Recruiting Child Soldiers

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Jun 29 1998 (IPS) - Sierra Leone’s pro-government militia, popularly known as the Kamajor, has admitted to recruiting thousands of children into its ranks to fight the remnants of the ousted military junta.

“In Kailahun district (east of Sierra Leone) alone, we have 3,000 child Kamajors,” said Kamajor field commander, Patrick Zangalaywah. “These kids are very brave on the frontline.”

Zangalaywah said children are unadulterated and that they keep the laws governing the conduct of the militia like abstinence from sex, drugs and looting when in combat.

“We don’t trust adults quite much because many have breached the rules governing our militia group and so they get killed by the enemy,” he explained in a recent interview.

Last month, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, urged Sierra Leone’s belligerents to stop recruiting child soldiers into their army and to demobilise those already serving in their fold.

“I saw children as young as 10 and 14, bearing arms and in battle-readiness. This is unfortunate,” said Otunnu, after visiting Sierra Leone’s eastern war zones.

Otunnu told IPS that the Kamajor Movement National Coordinator, Chief Sam Hinga Norman, had given him his word to demobilise the child Kamajors, whose exact number is not known.

Norman, Otunnu added, also had assured him that no new child Kamajors would be recruited and that a process to demobilise them would soon begin.

But until now, there has been no demobilisation of child Kamajors. IPS recently saw dozens of children being drafted into the militia group in the north of the country, where remnants of the ousted military junta are committing atrocities against civilian populations.

A top Kamajor commander, Monya Farmah, told IPS last week that the militia would rather do away with adult Kamajors. “The children know the battle terrain quite well and they can meander through the forests in pursuit of rebel bandits,” he said.

This view has, however, been rejected by rights and child advocates groups. “This is a gross abuse of the children’s rights,” said Jonathan Freeman of the Freetown-based ‘Save the Child’, a new non-governmental organisation that advocates the rights of the child.

“It is appalling and I think the government should move fast enough to demobilise the kids within the Kamajor group,” he said.

“These children have killed, maimed and acted as adults. I believe they should be immediately demobilised and a process of trauma counselling be put in place for them,” said Thomas Sandi of the Freetown-based Human Rights League.

Ironically, some of the child Kamajors interviewed by IPS said they would want to become soldiers in adult life, as well. “I am 14 and a rebel killer. I don’t want to be demobilised, because the rebels know I kill them mercilessly,” said Sandi who is based in Daru, a military garrison in the east of the country.

The problem of children involved in the conflict is becoming complex. Retreating junta troops have been abducting and conscripting dozens of children in the north-eastern provinces.

In a strongly-worded message, Otunnu appealed to the rebel forces to discharge all child combatants within their fold. “It is difficult to estimate the number of children in the rebel movement, as much as it is to reach the rebels and persuade them to demobilise children,” he said.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), in collaboration with Sierra Leone’s national radio and television, has launched a major campaign aimed at demobilising the children and rehabilitating them.

Discussion progammes are aired everyday and rights groups are eagerly waiting to see whether the Kamajors will take the lead by letting the children go.

The Kamajors took up arms in 1992, a year after the outbreak of Sierra Leone’s civil war, to complement the efforts of the national army to fight the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

The RUF, headed by former army corporal Sankoh Foday, joined forces with the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) junta which was toppled in February. Remnants of the AFRC are still fighting to oust the elected government of President Ahmed Kabbah, who returned to power in March.