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| Abdul Sesay, 33, a former child soldier, in Monrovia on May 8, 2014 (AFP Photo/Seyllou) |
Monrovia (AFP) - Abdul Sesay used
to carry an AK-47 in jailed Liberian warlord Charles Taylor's notorious
"Demon Forces" militia, which tortured, killed and raped its way
through the country's second civil war.
Now he sleeps
rough, with no steady job and little chance of ever finding one,
scraping together what money he can to buy the drugs that help him
forget.
Sesay was one of
thousands of children conscripted as fighters, ammunition carriers,
cooks and sex slaves during two ruinous back-to-back civil wars which
pulverised the west African state between 1989 and 2003 and killed
250,000 people.
Brutalised by
conflict, the youngsters were both victims and perpetrators of the most
sickening abuses, but as adults they find themselves fighting a new
battle, against poverty and drug addiction.
Sesay says he was 15 when Taylor's men came for him as he was heading for school in the northern county of Nimba.
"They abducted me on the street and bundled me into their car and later gave me a weapon to start fighting," he told AFP.
He
was placed among the ranks of the feared paramilitary anti-terrorist
unit, commonly known as the "Demon Forces", led by Taylor's son Chuckie.
New
York-based Human Rights Watch accused the brigade in 2006 of "torture,
including various violent assaults, beating people to death, rape and
burning civilians alive" from about 1997 through 2002.
Sesay, now 33, denies
committing any rights abuses or #killing anyone, saying his war involved
supporting roles behind the frontline, but he admits regular drug abuse.
"It used to make me brave to keep carrying my weapon," he says.
Now
Sesay gets his money where he can, doing odd jobs and operating as a
"car loader", one of a legion of young men in central Monrovia who yell
out destinations and load bags into the back of taxis.
"I am still taking drugs... I always hustle and save money to buy my drugs," he says, scratching nervously at a baggy maroon T-shirt.- Skinned alive -
Like
many former #child soldiers, Sesay feels abandoned by a government he
says left him with nothing after he handed in his weapon as part of a
demobilsation process which disarmed 103,000 rebels and government
militia in 2004.
In the years
since the conflict ended sympathy has been in short supply for ex-child
soldiers, many of whom committed the most depraved abuses, and
thousands of young men and women remain traumatised and often jobless.
Two charities, Plan and
Family Health International, interviewed 98 former child soldiers for a
2009 study which found that 90 percent showed symptoms of post-traumatic
stress disorder and 65 percent had a major depressive disorder.
Three in five of the girls had suffered sexual violence and a fifth of girls and boys had attempted suicide.
"The
children formerly involved with the fighting forces are more aggressive
and more severely affected... And we noticed that they are often blamed
and stigmatised by other community members, which makes them become
hostile and fight and abuse drugs," the study said.
One
young man described seeing his mother skinned alive when he was 15
while many of the girls described being taken as "bush wives" by rebels
when they were as young as nine.
The
Disarmament, Demobilisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration programme
(DDRR) offered $300 and training schemes to child soldiers in exchange
for weapons.
But those who
could not hand in a gun or ammunition were excluded, so children who had
been recruited for domestic or sexual services received no help.
Michael
Wilson, a social worker for Don Bosco Homes, a Catholic group which
worked with child soldiers in #Liberia, says many are now suffering
severe trauma which manifests itself in aggression and sometimes
drug-fuelled delusion.
"If you take a walk around the streets of Monrovia you will see one or two of them still portraying armed conflict, with died hair and a stick, running around," he told AFP.- 'Saved by God' -
Both
the government and the main rebel groups denied the existence of child
soldiers but various estimates put the total number between 15,000 and
38,000.
Augustine Tregbee fled
to neighbouring Sierra Leone aged 15 as anti-Taylor guerillas pounded
the coastal town of Robertsport with heavy artillery.
When
he returned rebels had overrun the town, moved into local homes, taken
villagers as their "wives" and made children carry equipment and
weapons.
"I came back and
found that my grandfather had been killed. There were no civilians here
-- the town was occupied by fighters," he told AFP.
He was given a Soviet-era PKM machine gun, trained in guerrilla warfare and told he would be executed if he tried to escape.
"I saw lots of friends die in battle during an attack on Charles Taylor's soldiers but I was saved by God," he said.
Now
29, Tregbee is reticent to talk about how many combatants he killed but
recalls vividly the 2003 siege of Monrovia, which resulted in the
deaths of some 1,000 civilians in heavy shelling.
"I did not look people in the face to kill them while I was fighting. If I killed people, maybe it was through stray bullets. We did not target civilians in our unit," Tregbee says.
Back
in Robertsport he is now a fisherman whose dream of buying a boat looks
unlikely to be realised with earnings of as little as $15 (nine euros) a
month.
Tregbee along with his wife and two children rent one squalid room of a building with no windows, running water or electricity.
One bed takes up most of the space and puddles form on the hard floor when the roof gives way in the rainy season.
He says he looks to the future with optimism despite having no money, but his dark past is never far away.
"I still reflect on my days as a child fighter. Often I think about the moments of jogging with my friends, moving together," he says. --AFP
