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INSIDE AFRICA
INSIDE AFRICA
Aired June 30, 2007 - 12:30:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FEMI OKE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Femi Oke. This is INSIDE AFRICA, your weekly look at life and issues on the continent. Today we are going to explore the issue of child soldiers.
We begin our look in the Central African Republic where human rights groups say widespread violence and kidnappings have forced thousands of villagers to flee their homes. Among those fighting are children.
Nick Patton Walsh has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK PATTON-WALSH, CHANNEL 4 NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Desolate, remote, brutalized, a land that has fended for itself for 30 years. Few outsiders set foot in this, the forgotten north of the forgotten Central African Republic.
Yet life endures here, caught between the turmoil of Chad and the genocide of Darfur. And cursed with chaos of its own. Security is so precarious here, the U.N. are only just about able to operate as they discuss a peace deal with rebels in their stronghold.
This is the rebel army, the UFDR. And their leader, General Zakaria Damane. Few arms between them, and by all accounts, fewer rules. One of their most plentiful assets, children.
As part of the peace deal, the generals agreed to release 450 of them to aide agency UNICEF. Yet they are hardly (INAUDIBLE) happy, perhaps it is their troubled past, all the uncertainty of their future.
This boy in camouflage claims he is 16, stuttering, terrified, saying he shot dead two government troops just three months ago.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): When I shot them, my head started spinning. I fell down and passed out.
PATTON-WALSH: Two years of this army's war scarring even his dreams.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Whenever I fall asleep, I have nightmares. I see the heads of the dead without their bodies.
PATTON-WALSH: Volatile as the area is, much is made of these children's liberation. Dignitaries flying in to witness this first act of good faith from the rebels.
(on camera): While despite these celebrations, it has been touch-and- go here up until the last moment, which we could tell by the overall (ph) body language, it almost fell apart at the last minute because of the settlement (ph), and there are still many rebel soldiers here.
But they have achieved one thing, which is to bring these boy soldiers out of the rebel army and now turn them into schoolchildren.
(voice-over): Just a few hours after the ceremony, the boy we interviewed is back in his old military gear. He says he doesn't want to go home, but join the army and become minister of defense.
He is a victim of a civil war that has gone mostly unnoticed in the West, but unlike other intractable conflicts on this continent, a Western power has definitely taken a side, a strong-arm intervention that has proven controversial.
The boys we spoke to shared one experience, a story barely heard in the West, but alive in these boys' drawings. The fight for the northern town of Birao this March, and how the French used jets to bomb their rebel army.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We were afraid, as we don't have any arms to kill the Mirages. They used bombs. That is the Mirage, and we were under the mango trees.
PATTON-WALSH: So we headed for Birao through a landscape of anarchy, ruin and rape. One that in this village of Musabo (ph) is beginning to resemble the bloodshed of neighboring Darfur. Raiders on horseback came here in February, killing 56, torched homes and graves all that remains. Locals say they were Janjaweed from Sudan, the same armed men blamed for genocide in Darfur.
As we head north, it is clear this violence has put an entire region on the move. Here a mosque was leveled, these locals say, after government troops dragged four men into the street, asked no questions, and then executed them as rebel sympathizers.
Another three men were killed in this compound, also allegedly by government troops for the same reasons, at the time it was used by aide agency Medecins Sans Frontieres.
This is the village chief. He says he watched two French jets fly three sorties over this compound. He says he was meters from here when he saw one jet drop something that enveloped this house in flames. Medecins Sans Frontieres declined to comment on the incident.
The local commander of government troops denied accusations of execution and rape.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is not true, no. My soldiers, you say? No. That is not true.
PATTON-WALSH (on camera): And what about the soldiers who were here in March? An earlier unit perhaps?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) the same, that is not true.
PATTON-WALSH (voice-over): His rations spell out the links between local and French troops. But their commander also said local troops didn't attack civilians.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): In a military action, collateral damage is possible. I wasn't here to see any, but there was no voluntary action against the population.
PATTON-WALSH: Despite a fragile peace, what little community there is is in collapse. This woman has malaria and is eight months pregnant. She came from 25 kilometers away only to find no medicine in this hospital to help her. Her husband looks on, powerless.
That day, a U.N. team lands to see what can be done to fill the vacuum left here by conflict. For some though, no intervention now is enough. As we leave Birao, we pass the funeral cortege of the pregnant woman with malaria. She died seven hours after we saw her. A people that can no longer afford to wait for help or choose who gives it.
Nick Patton-Walsh, Channel 4 News, Birao.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OKE: At the time of fighting in March, the French defense ministry said its jets had fired on rebels who attacked a French military compound near Birao, destroying several pickup trucks. The French government has denied that its forces bombed anywhere in the town.
The United Nations Children's Fund says that in armed conflict, it is the children who suffer most, hundreds of thousands of them do so as soldiers of war. According to Human Rights Watch, child soldiers are reported in 33 current or recent armed conflicts around the world.
With the emergence of smaller automatic weapons, which are easier for children to handle, the use of child soldiers has increased. Many of them less than 10 years old live through acts of violence, including the murder, rape, or torture of parents and siblings.
They are at times forced to commit atrocities against their own family or neighbors, often in a deliberate attempt to stigmatize them so they cannot return to their communities. Unfortunately, there are few provisions for the rehabilitation of child soldiers. And as a result, many of them end up homeless or pulled back into armed conflict.
When we come back, it has been called a landmark step towards ending the use of child soldiers. We take a closer look at the Sierra Leone war crimes court ruling.
And later.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have no time to think about it. You have no time to be remorseful. Because if you did, you will get killed. You will die.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OKE: Memoirs of a boy soldier. We will talk to Ishmael Beah about his recently published book. See you soon.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Plans for $300 million U.S. sugar factory are in the works in Kenya's Homa Bay District. The project is reportedly funded by the European Union and developers from Sudan and Switzerland. The factory, which breaks ground in November, is expected to ease sugar shortages in the country.
And Kampala's New Vision reports that oil reserves from the Kingfisher Well in Uganda, the largest found in the country so far, could yield oil potentials of up to $7 billion. That would be 10 times more than previously believed and three times Uganda's budget for the next financial year.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OKE: Welcome back. You are watching INSIDE AFRICA, with a special look at Africa's child soldiers.
Last week for the first time, an international court convicted three people for using children as soldiers in conflict. It was a ruling human rights advocates call a groundbreaking step towards stopping the use of child soldiers.
Rebel leaders from Sierra Leone were convicted by a U.N.-backed court of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
OKE (voice-over): At any one time, more than 300,000 children are actively fighting as soldiers according to Amnesty International. (INAUDIBLE) the recruitment and conscription of children reach a new level during Sierra Leone's civil war.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The level of the atrocities that took place and that had been going on in Sierra Leone at that time for almost seven to eight years was incredible and beyond belief.
OKE: Thousands of children were abducted in the 11-year war that ended in 2002. Many were used for sex or for carrying weapons. Others were given drugs and forced to kill, sometimes even their own families. Their involvement not only does terrible harm to the victims, but also scars the children for life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our lead-off witness was a young man, a child soldier who bravely came forward and described what took place while he was a child soldier, how he had to kill his parents and then was moved off into the bush. And at the very end of his testimony, he stood up, unbuttoned his shirt, and there carved into his chest was "AFRCRUF."
So again, it is important that the victims themselves come forward, but this is how we proved the case, by the bravery and the courage of the victims coming forward to try to seek justice for their people.
OKE: At the end of the trial, the judges found 35-year-old Alex Tamba Brima, 39-year-old Brima Bazzy Kamara, and Santigie Borbor Kanu, aged 42, guilty of murder, rape, and enlisting child soldiers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Justice need to be done. And people that were responsible for the horror visited on this society, on the men, women and children of Sierra Leone deserve to be punished. And justice needs to be done.
OKE: Other cases involving child soldiers are still pending at the International Criminal Court. But lawyers and activists say the recent verdict is a milestone that could finally bring to justice those who exploit children in conflicts worldwide.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The conviction of the leadership of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council is important because it sets the standard by saying that if you these things anywhere in the world, whether it be child soldiers or whether you are going to rape, pillage or plunder, you are going to be held accountable for this anywhere that you do this.
So I think that this is a good beginning of showing that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of the gun.
OKE: Still, it is not clear if these convictions will actually encourage warlords or rebels to curb their brutal practices.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OKE: He has been through terror, but he has also been the cause of it. A few months ago, former Sierra Leone child soldier Ishmael Beah put his memoirs into writing in his book "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier."
He told his story to Randi Kaye.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): By the time he was a teenager, Ishmael Beah had killed more people than he wants to remember. Growing up in Sierra Leone, he was a happy kid, loved to play soccer with his father and wrestle with his brothers. But in 1993, rebels looking to overthrow the government attacked his village.
ISHMAEL BEAH, FORMER CHILD SOLDIER: That day was the first day we really started seeing firsthand what were those people. There were -- there were, you know, women carrying their dead babies in their arms, fathers carrying their dead sons in their arms, a lot of bodies on the side of the street.
There were a lot of children running around screaming the names of their parents who they lost in the war. There were a lot of people with bullet piercings in them. The landscape that had been changed, that had been littered with dead bodies and rivers that were filled with blood.
KAYE: Ishmael fought the rebels for more than two years. He was brainwashed into believing he needed to kill the rebels who made him an orphan.
BEAH: We were told, you know, that you were fighting for your country and you were fighting to stop other kids from losing their families like you have lost your families. You are going now to avenge the death of your family, and to kill the people who have made you an orphan.
You lost your own humanity. I lost my own humanity at that time, and all the people who were around me did.
Because when you kill another human being, it does something to you. It traumatizes you. It changes you.
KAYE: In 1995, UNICEF members handpicked Ishmael for rehabilitation. It took nearly a year to wean him off drugs and hatred. In 1996, he was invited to speak at the United Nations. On that trip, he met Laura Simms, a storyteller hired to help kids like Ishmael prepare for speeches. They stayed in touch after Ishmael returned to Sierra Leone.
In 1998, fearing he'd get caught up in the war again, Ishmael escaped Sierra Leone. He used money hidden in his shoe to get to Guinea, the next country over, and eventually to the U.S.
LAURA SIMMS, ISHMAEL'S ADOPTIVE MOTHER: When he came to hug me, I saw him like a 9-year-old child and I realized that that summer he was going to have his childhood and I was going to be a mommy.
KAYE: Ishmael was 17 when he began his new life in the U.S. Laura adopted him. He graduated from the United Nations high school in 2000 and later from Oberlin College.
BEAH: Those memories will always be there. This is part of my life. This is part of what makes me Ishmael. My life before the war, my life during the war, and my life now, that is what makes me Ishmael. I come with that full package. So it is not something I can put behind me.
KAYE: Randi Kaye, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OKE: There is more to come on INSIDE AFRICA. Just ahead, a former Liberian child soldier's thoughts on his past and hope for the future. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
OKE: Back in 2005, when Liberians were heading the polls, one of the issues the country was facing was what to do with former child soldiers, often shunned by their communities because of the murders and atrocities they committed.
These young men and women were also victims of war. I met Jacob (ph) in Monrovia, who told me about being abducted and growing up with rebel forces.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
OKE (voice-over): In a tough area of Monrovia known as PHP (ph), you don't have to look far to see former fighters. Jacob was 5 when he was kidnapped by rebel soldiers. By the time he was 8, he was fighting alongside grown men.
JACOB, FORMER CHILD SOLDIER: Well, we used to go into a place, a village and attack, and then fire heavy (ph), kill people, kill our enemies, and then we'll take over a town where we used as a base. We inject ourselves with certain injections, we did intoxicants (ph). We don't feel nothing at all.
OKE (on camera): Did you feel that -- when you were so young, that it was strange to be fighting, wicked to be fighting?
JACOB: Oh, I don't know why you call it strange to be fighting, wicked to be fighting, because I was very early when I engaged myself into this scene, say so. I was very early. I don't know nothing. Just to fire a gun. That's all. Not anything else, to fire a gun. To fire a gun and kill people, enter into area, break the area down, bomb the area of civilians, burn them, put it into work (ph).
OKE: How do you go forward? Because the things you did, people find it hard to forgive.
JACOB: Oh, as for me, the people I did bad to within the area I was, I can go back there, and I have been to there, reconcile with them, and tell them, that is the war. We didn't know what we were doing. We were under the influence of drugs. I have been telling, and I believe that they will accept free.
OKE: So, how do you want the future to be for you?
JACOB: Oh, I want to be in my home with my children, where I would be relaxed every morning, and I would get up and go to work. Every evening, I would come back and I would relax myself. Sunday, I will go on the beach and enjoy myself. I want to be -- I have never experienced enjoyment since I was born. This thing called enjoyment, I have no experience in.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
OKE: Now I did that interview with Jacob back in 2005. When I was sitting watching the tape, getting the interview together, it was the first time I had ever noticed during an interview my face actually register pure shock.
He was an amazing young man. And he also made you realize that even though these child soldiers had done terrible things, that they were just as much the victims as their victims.
Liberia now has a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate human rights abuses from 1979 to 2003. The aim is for Liberians to be able to record, understand, and move on from their traumatic history.
And that is INSIDE AFRICA for this week. Thanks for watching. We hope that you will let this show be your window to the continent. I'm Femi Oke, until the next time, take care.
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