Former child solider from Democratic Republic of Congo, Mulume* (front left) feels hopeless about his future. Central African Republic rebels now need international credibility and know that the presence of child soldiers in their ranks tarnishes their image.Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Maurice Garbiro
BANGUI, Apr 10 2013 (Infosud)

At 13 years, Youssouf embodies all the ills that have plagued the Central African Republic in recent years. On Mar. 24, he helped capture Bangui, the capital, as he fought in the ranks of the Séléka rebel coalition.

“Only yesterday, I was old enough to fight and kill. Yet today I have to wait until I’m 18 to join the army?” Under the shade of the mango tree in the Bangui army base, where he is being kept secretly with three other child soldiers, Youssouf fumes. He feels betrayed by the Séléka rebels who marched onto the capital to instate their leader, Michel Djotodia.

The rebels now need international credibility and know that the presence of child soldiers in their ranks tarnishes their image. The question came into sharp focus after the South African troops who were defending the presidential palace and its occupant, ousted President Francois Bozizé, reported being traumatised to find that the rebels they had fought and killed were mostly “kids”.

To keep them out of sight, Séléka has placed many child soldiers with families from northern CAR, where most of the rebels, like Youssouf, come from.

But Youssouf stayed at the camp. Djotodia dropped the young boy off in person the day after Bangui was captured when he found Youssouf standing guard at a Séléka checkpoint.

“I want to be a soldier, fighting is the only thing I know how to do,” he says. The army beret glued to his head is almost as red as his eyes. “That’s because of white tobacco,” he confides. It is his “drug” – a mixture of Indian hemp and cassava flour. “With this, you don’t retreat, you’re never scared.”

Kidnapped by the LRA

Youssouf’s life is a convergence of the evils eating away at CAR for several years. His life was turned upside down for the first time in April 2011.

“For several days, Ugandan militia from the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) were looting and kidnapping people around in Birao (in CAR), where I lived. Even though it was dangerous, I went with my mother to the fields. But the LRA men found us. They raped my mother in front of me and then they shot her.”

The armed group forced the young boy to carry their ammunition. Then they turned him into a killing machine. “They taught me to use weapons like Kalashnikovs, RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) launchers… I became a man like them.”

Not long afterwards, Youssouf and other child soldiers, who make up 90 percent of the LRA forces, met Joseph Kony, the militia leader who is wanted by the International Criminal Court.

“The first time was in August 2011, near Zémio (in southeast CAR, on the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo). He is very tall, with a beard and always wears a hat.

“He spoke to us very roughly. I saw him again soon after that, during the attack on Djéma, a nearby town. Kony lined up seven villagers and ordered us, the children, to kill them. I shouted out ‘Yes sir!’ and shot two people. That’s how I was able to stay alive.”

Youssouf’s slender body heaves with sobs.

“The LRA kills children who are sick or too slow. One evening, I escaped,” he recounts.

After walking for three days, he was rescued near Rafaï, a southern town that borders DRC, by American troops deployed in a renewed hunt for Kony in 2012. Youssouf was placed in the care of the International Red Cross, who brought him home to Birao as part of a programme to reunite child soldiers with their families. But Youssouf had no family left in the town.

“War is war”

He found a job as an errand boy with close allies of Djotodia, the former diplomat who had returned from exile in Benin to lead the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity, one of the main rebel groups in the Séléka coalition that was formed later on.

“I wanted to enlist with them. But Djotodia said he did not want child soldiers. He offered to let me follow them to help with cooking and cleaning,” Youssouf says.

For all that, starting with the attack on Ndéle, northern CAR, in early December 2012, a few hundred kilometres to the south, the leader’s good intentions disappeared into thin air.

“As soon as the colonel told me to get onto vehicle number six, I knew I was going into combat. The vehicles numbered one to 10 were attack vehicles, the ones after that were for logistics. The sergeant gave me a gun and said to me, ‘Be a man.’”

“I continued the journey all the way to Bangui in that car, using my AK, town after town. How many people did I kill? I don’t know. War is war, that’s all. As far as I am concerned, I stopped being a child a long time ago. My only hope now is to be trained as a real soldier at last,” Youssouf said emphatically.

* With additional reporting from Sandra Titi-Fontaine, Geneva/InfoSud

**Published under an agreement with InfoSud

The Comboni missionary-run hospital in Nzara, South Sudan provides counselling to former abductees of the Lord’s Resistance Army who were traumatised by the war and provides antiretrovirals for those living with HIV/AIDS. Credit: Raymond Baguma/IPS

By Raymond Baguma
NZARA, South Sudan, Mar 19 2013 (IPS)

Sungu Mizele, a Congolese national living in Yambio, in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state, earns a living selling the fruit and vegetables that she grows in her backyard, at the local town market. On average, she earns nine dollars a day. But on a good day, when she has fresh supplies, she can earn up to 31 dollars.

She may not have much, but as someone who once lived in the Makpandu settlement camp, which houses some 5,700 refugees, she is at least able to support herself and her late sister’s six children.

Her family’s story is like that of the thousands of others in the camp – they were attacked by Joseph Kony’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has spent the last two decades reportedly fighting for a biblical state in Uganda, and has been accused of recruiting child soldiers, killing, maiming and taking sex slaves.

The rebel group, which originally operated from Uganda and now operates mostly from the Central African Republic (CAR) and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), attacked Mizele’s home in Dungu, in northeastern DRC, in November 2010.

Mizele and her six nieces and nephews were released, unharmed, by the rebels a day later. However, her elder sister, the mother of the children, was shot dead as she struggled to flee from an LRA commander who tried to rape her.

While living at the camp with the other refugees, Mizele was determined to give her family a better life. She kept aside some of the food and cooking oil rations given to them by relief agencies and resold them. She also scavenged in the bushes near the settlement camp for firewood to sell. Eventually, she was able to earn enough to rent, for six dollars a month, a grass-thatched hut in Yambio, some 44 kilometres from the camp.

“I moved out of the camp and came to town where I started a small business for survival and to support the kids,” Mizele tells IPS.

The family is one of the many who are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives as attacks by the LRA on South Sudan have decreased over the last few years. From the DRC and CAR, the LRA reportedly carried out attacks in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state, especially around harvest time.

In Nzara, a frontier outpost in Western Equatoria state, families have returned home to cultivate maize, pineapples, sorghum and peanuts. At local trading centres, business is brisk. Groceries and local pubs, which sell items imported from Uganda, are open till late, powered by solar or diesel generators.

Life here has been more peaceful of late. The LRA Crisis Tracker Report, released on Feb. 5 by the United States non-governmental organisations Invisible Children and Resolve, shows that out of the 275 attacks carried out by the LRA in 2012, none were carried out in South Sudan, while 225 occurred in DRC and the remainder took place in CAR.

Many here believe the drop in attacks was largely due to the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) opening a base in Nzara in 2010.

“We are glad that Uganda came. Without them, we would not have planted our crops and harvested,” Reverend Samuel Enosa Peni, of the Episcopal Church of Sudan, tells IPS.

In addition to the Ugandan military presence here, the Regional Task Force (RTF), which was created last September by the African Union, has been tasked with hunting down the LRA leaders in the region. The RTF is comprised of troops from South Sudan, DRC, CAR and Uganda, with the latter contributing 2,000 troops that are supported by 100 U.S. military advisers.

Peni, who is also the bishop of the Nzara diocese, which oversees 33 parish churches, says that the local community is still grappling with the traumatic effects of the conflict and the church is counselling them.

“We were born in war, grew up in war, and rehabilitation needs to be done,” Peni says. “People have no hope for the future and our job as the church is to reach out to them. Many have died, but those of us who are alive need to forget the past and go forward.”

Former abductees often require psychological counselling before they are integrated back into the community. Many of them are traumatised by the rejection they face upon returning home, he says.

Raphael Reba lives with the fact that her family may never accept her and her son, whose father is one of the LRA rebels who abducted her seven years ago from her home in Gangura Payam, which lies southeast of Yambio.

She was forced to become part of the LRA and was handed over to a rebel commander, who she only calls David, whose child she later conceived.

In 2010, she and David escaped from LRA captivity with their child. He returned to Uganda after surrendering, and she and her son came to her home in South Sudan.

Today, Reba lives in her brother’s house with her now four-year-old son. She cultivates other people’s gardens for a living.

Still traumatised by the atrocities she was forced to commit, including being ordered, during an attack in Aba in DRC’s Orientale Province, to kill and drink the blood of two babies, Reba says she is being ostracised by her own family. Even her father, Thomas Yepeta, cannot accept her or her son.

“If it (the insulting) continues, I will walk to the UPDF camp in Nzara so that they can take me to the father of my child,” Reba tells IPS.

She has undergone counselling from different NGOs here, but is worried that even though her son is innocent and undeserving of the anger directed at him, he will be forced to endure it as he grows up.

At St. Daniel Comboni Primary School in Nzara, missionaries look after formerly abducted children. The administrator, Sister Maria Teresa Carrasco, tell IPS that about 200 of the school’s pupils are ex-abductees brought to them by the Ugandan military, and that many are still traumatised by what they were forced to do while in captivity.

The Comboni missionaries also run the Rainbow Community Centre, which helps over 3,000 formerly abducted children rebuild their lives.

At the centre, formerly abducted mothers infected with HIV/AIDS during LRA captivity come here with their babies for psychosocial counselling and antiretroviral therapy.

“But we have challenges with antiretrovirals because Juba provides the drugs and they don’t arrive in time. We don’t have enough supplies of drugs,” Carrasco says.

Elia Richard Box, the Nzara County Commissioner, tells IPS that until Kony is caught, they will continue to live in fear of a resurgence of violence. “We feel the continued presence of Kony in the bush will not bring peace. Our fear is that the LRA is in DRC and could one day return.”

*Additional reporting by Joseph Nashion in Yambio, South Sudan.

Ishmael Beah, UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War, visits Central African Republic and talks to released child soldiers in Akroussoulback. Courtesy: Brian Sokol/UNICEF

By Kristin Palitza
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Aug 28 2012 (IPS)

The protection of children remains critical in the Central African Republic, where parents willingly give their children to armed groups in exchange for protection and services.

This is according to United Nations Children’s Fund(UNICEF) ambassador Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier from Sierra Leone, who spoke to IPS during his visit to South Africa.

Beah had just returned from a trip to CAR where he witnessed the release of 10 child soldiers in the conflict-ridden, northeastern town of N’dele by the rebel group the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP).

The move comes after the CPJP signed a peace accord with the government on Aug. 25 – yet another small step towards ending years of violence in the country. The release of the children was the group’s show of commitment towards peace. However, more than 2,500 boys and girls are thought to still work for various armed groups in the Central African nation.

Seven years of civil war have led to food scarcity, a collapsed economy and limited access to healthcare and education. Despite its mineral wealth, CAR remains one of the world’s least-developed countries. In 2011, CAR ranked 179 out of 186 countries in the U.N. Human Development Index.

“In CAR, parents willingly give their children to armed groups in exchange for protection and services, even though it’s against the children’s human rights. That makes it very difficult to negotiate the release of children,” Beah told IPS.

One of the armed groups operating in CAR is the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by internationally hunted Joseph Kony. Two LRA leaders under Kony, Dominic Ongwen and Okot Odhiambo, who are sought by the International Criminal Court, are reportedly hiding in CAR.

The LRA has increased its attacks in the country since early 2012 and continues to abduct children as fighters.

Beah was himself forcibly recruited into Sierra Leone’s civil war, in which his parents and two brothers were killed, when he was 13. He fought alongside rebel groups for two years until he was removed from the army and placed in a rehabilitation home.

He now lives in New York, where he works as a human rights activist. His book “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” has been translated into 35 languages and was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 50 weeks.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: You witnessed the release of 10 child soldiers in CAR, one of the world’s poorest nations. What is life like there?

A: The government of CAR only has control over the capital city, Bangui. When you arrive in N’dele you understand how it is possible for an armed group to operate there; it is because the government is not providing social and economic services. Poverty is very stark, there are no resources or opportunities.

So it’s the armed group there, the CPJP, which provides some services. That’s why the group is very entrenched in the community. You see them walk around with weapons everywhere.

Q: Armed groups are part of the social fabric?

A: Yes, exactly. Still, the kids don’t want to fight. Once you take them away from the commanders, they tell you “I don’t want to do this.” But there are no alternatives beyond joining the armed group. The community relies on them. And the rebels have all the opportunities.

Q: How does a release operation happen?

A: The military doesn’t want to release the kids. They hide them. When you arrive at a military camp, the children who were identified are nowhere to be found. There are negotiations with the commanders until, slowly, they bring the kids out. After that, you have to leave immediately, because some of the children’s families live within the communities (and belong to the rebels).

The children are brought to a transit and rehabilitation centre in N’dele, where they receive psycho-social therapy as well as vocational training or are sent back to school.

Q: It sounds like a long, difficult process.

A: Yes. Added to that is that the rebels have weapons and ammunition, while you don’t have any protection. You rely on them keeping their promises. Everything about the situation is dangerous. When we landed in N’dele, the whole airport was surrounded by rebels with brand-new, sophisticated weapons, guarding the place. You are very exposed.

Q: What will happen to the rest of the estimated 2,500 child soldiers in CAR?

A: Right now, the rehabilitation centre takes care of 35 kids, and I witnessed the release of 10 more. Slowly, more and more are being released. All (three) rebel groups in the country have signed action plans to release children. But if nobody forces them, they will not do it.

Q: Visiting N’dele was to some degree a return to your past. How did that feel?

A: It brought up a lot of memories. I was driving in the car with the child soldiers who had just been released and could feel their uncertainty about being removed from what they know. I was in that same position (when I was a child soldier). I told them: “Things will be difficult, but you’re going to get through this.”

Once they understood that I had the same experience, there was a kinship that helped ease the situation a little. It’s such a daunting situation. You had this power of the weapon – some of them were lieutenants – and all of a sudden you’re just a child again, trying to figure out what to do with your life.

Q: How did they react when they heard your story?

A: They asked me questions repetitively. “Is it really possible to get through this? Can we actually have another life after this?” I was very honest with them. “It’s possible but it’s not easy. You’re going to be frustrated a lot. It’s not going to be as fast as you like.”

They are coming from an experience where they get things as fast as they like because they have a weapon. They understand these things when they come from someone like me.

Q: Are there viable alternatives for children in a poverty-stricken country like CAR?

A: There are viable alternatives, but they require long-term investment. If you want successful rehabilitation, you have to be willing to look beyond one year.

Q: What are the core demands of the CPJP and other armed groups?

A: During my visit, I talked to CPJP leader Abdoulaye Hissene. He said he started his group because of social-economic inequalities in the country. The official demand is for the government to provide services. Of course he is right, but he is using the argument to pursue his own, personal agenda. He is tapping into people’s needs, so they buy into his ideology. But then the only option he provides is armed struggle, which doesn’t solve people’s problems.

Q: What is Hissene’s hidden agenda?

A: He will not tell you, but from close observation you can tell that he wants to benefit from the natural resources in the area, the diamonds, the gold, and so on. In the end, all natural resource wealth goes to the armed groups or the government, but never reaches the people. That’s the problem.

Q: What presence does the LRA have in CAR?

A: The LRA is very strong in the southeast of the country. A lot of work needs to be done in that area to protect children. Since the beginning of this year, there have been frequent attacks and abductions (of children) by the LRA. Already, the government has no capacity to fight the armed groups in the country. Now there is this foreign group that has come in that is even stronger.

Q: Do you see any chance of the LRA agreeing to peace in CAR as well?

A: I am not sure. The LRA is very unpredictable. But what I do know is that many young people from this group would run away if they had a secure place to go to, instead of being arrested by authorities that try to get information out of them.

If there were a place that took them back as children and rehabilitated them, they would find a way to escape. You can’t just tell someone to put down a gun and then leave him out in the cold or throw him into prison. Structures need to be put into place for these children to leave. To get to the heart of the LRA or any other armed group you need to make sure that the candidates who can be recruited are not available.

Excerpt:

Activists are aiming to renew the fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Ugandan rebel group made infamous by its ruthless leader Joseph Kony, despite noticeably diminished concern for the issue just months after the release of a controversial yet viral video about the leader.

Seeking to push the anti-LRA movement forward, activists have embarked on a tour across the United States to raise awareness. The most prominent are Father Benoit Kinalegu, a Congolese priest and president of the Dungu-Doruma Diocesan Commission for Justice and Peace, and Sister Angelique Namaika, who runs Dynamic Women for Peace, which provides assistance to female and child victims of the LRA.

Father Benoit and Sister Angelique testified before the U.S. Congress Jun. 19, hoping to maintain awareness in the U.S. of the LRA’s brutality. “Because of their trauma, the refugees and child survivors refuse to go back home as long as Joseph Kony is out in the bush and as long as the war is not over,” Sister Angelique told Congress’s Human Rights Commission.

The Ugandan rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced even more, such as the South Sudanese refugees above. Credit: UN Photo/Tim McKulka

“They prefer to die of hunger than to return to their homes.”

In 2004, the BBC estimated the death toll of the LRA’s victims at more than 100,000. And while it is difficult to ascertain exact numbers, thousands more have been brutalised since.

Activists on the ground in Central and East Africa, however, are fairly resourceful, using whatever limited means at their disposal to combat the LRA, including using a high-frequency radio system to try to appeal to LRA soldiers to defect.

“These radios allow us to transfer the information around the world” and the region, Father Benoit explained. Nevertheless, “the number of devices that we have is not enough to cover the area,” he added.

Sister Angelique has been a voice of compassion in the region, trying to provide help to traumatised women and children in the area. “Until now, we have not seen any organisation address this issue because there is a war going on,” she said.

Other activists are calling for more political measures. “We need personal engagement from President Obama,” said Paul Ronan, the co-founder and director of advocacy, for the group Resolve, which works to end the LRA’s atrocities and create peace in affected Central African communities.

“Unfortunately, this administration has been slow in utilising funds,” he said in reference to the allotment of military funds towards the struggle.

In October 2011, the Obama administration deployed approximately 100 U.S. Special Forces agents to Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. The U.S. troops mainly served in an advisory role to Ugandan troops in the hunt for Kony and the fight against the LRA.

It was the first time since 2003 that the United States specifically deployed troops to aid in an African conflict. In 2003, President George W. Bush sent a small number of troops—estimated between 500 and 2,000—to assist in the Second Liberian Civil War. (NATO troops intervened in Libya in 2011, although U.S. naval forces were involved in firing Tomahawk missiles at Libya.)

“Our advisers will continue their efforts to bring this madman to justice and to save lives,” Obama said in a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in April. “It’s part of our regional strategy to end the scourge that is the LRA and help realise a future where no African child is stolen from their family, and no girl is raped, and no boy is turned into a child soldier.”

The region has seen some progress, Ronan said, thanks to two factors that have weakened Kony’s grip over the LRA. The first was “the relative isolation of Kony over his senior commanders”. According to Ronan, intelligence places Kony’s location possibly in South Darfur – though if his location were known, he would be dead. The second was the capture in May of senior LRA commander, Caesar Achellam.

Nevertheless, the LRA’s atrocities have not garnered quite the support that the hoopla surrounding it would seem to suggest. The original KONY 2012 video, produced by the advocacy group Invisible Children, went viral, and has been viewed more than 91 million times since March.

Many critics have branded this video as a “slacktivist” – a portmanteau term of “slacker” and “activist”- cause, which has not translated into any prolonged action.

After so much initial interest, support for the cause has subsided. A sequel to the original video, entitled “KONY 2012 Part II: Beyond Famous” boasts comparatively few hits – 2.2 million – since its release in April.

In a report released mid-June about the conflict, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the biggest challenge was providing aid and protection to the war-torn region. “The initiative itself lacks adequate and predictable funding for its operations,” Ban wrote.

“Without the necessary resources, the African Union will be unable to execute this important task fully.”