A childhood lost in action
Aid agencies face monumental challenges in a war zone where children are ordered to kill.
Agroup of soldiers seek respite from the heat under the shade of a neem tree. One of them is slumped on a rusty old chair. An AK47 is slung across his chest.
Buildings are burnt and broken. The shells of burnt-out vehicles line the roadside. We’ve arrived in Malakal in South Sudan’s Upper Nile region. Once a major trading centre, it’s now a heavily militarised zone controlled by government forces.
This is a city torn apart by inequality, corruption, lawlessness and tribalism. There was a massacre in February in which 25 were shot dead, and the environment is extremely volatile.
I’ve come here with a team from World Vision and we’re passing through the town in a marked white Toyota Land Cruiser. We are warned: no film or photos.
Malakal has changed hands numerous times as opposition and government fighters struggle for dominance. The government soldiers are mainly from the Dinka tribal group. The opposition consists mainly of the Nuer people. Tens of thousands have died in vicious intertribal attacks – most of them civilians murdered in their own homes.
It’s stifling hot. I wipe the dust and sweat off my face as I get out of the truck and introduce myself to a man who is crouched down next to a smouldering fire. His name is Kun Chol – he’s a fisherman now living here with his four children. He’s tall and skeletal. His eyes harden when I ask him how he’s coping.
A woman standing behind him approaches me with a bowl full of leaves. They’ve been cooked in oil – it’s what she’s been eating. She says the leaves are not enough to sustain her or her family, but her small stash of grain is running out. She’s worried about her children.
Hundreds of thousands forced from their homes during this war have fled to neighbouring countries. At least 1.6 million have been internally displaced by the conflict – about 750,000 are children. As a father-of-two, it’s the suffering of young people that affected me most during my week in this war-ravaged nation. Thousands are growing up in UNprotected camps (POC). Life behind the razor wire is the only life they know. Children I spoke with still had big dreams, and so they should. But they have so little, and their lives are blighted by violence, exploitation and hunger.
What I found deeply disturbing is the fact that thousands of children end up on the front line of this war. There are an estimated 16,000 child soldiers. After decades of fighting, weapons are readily available and young minds are easy to manipulate. Many boy soldiers are forced to take up arms. Others join armed groups willingly so they can feel part of something and have a sense of belonging.
While travelling to a remote village in the Upper Nile to film at a hospital, we drove past a young boy. He can’t have been much older than 10. The gun he was carrying was almost as big as he was. Grown men taking up arms to fight is sad enough. A child with an AK47 just horrifies me. But it also makes me angry.
Unicef’s Abraham Kur Achiek is a former child soldier turned aid worker. He says children are energetic and easily brainwashed. He knows this because in 1987 he was taken from his home at gunpoint as a 12-year-old, and his father was killed. He spent seven years fighting for a group which at the time was locked in a battle with Sudan’s government forces. ‘‘It was traumatic. It took me more than 20 years to overcome that period.’’
I ask him if was instructed to kill people. I can see in his eyes it’s a difficult subject for him to recollect. He tells me he’d rather not talk about it. He doesn’t want to go back to those dark days. But then he adds: ‘‘You follow orders – you don’t think. You follow what you are told to do.’’
A report released by Human Rights Watch in 2015, based on interviews with 101 child soldiers, said children were thrown into terrifying gun battles in which they were wounded and saw friends killed.
Incredibly, after Abraham escaped the grip of the military, he went to university and studied sociology and international development. He now helps other children leave the fight. He recently helped rescue 1755 young boys and five girls who had been recruited as fighters. It took nine months of negotiations with military commanders.
At the camp in Malakal we came across a group of children making pretend guns out of mud. One of the boys I see salutes me as we walk past. What appears to be a rocket-propelled grenade rests on his shoulder. They don’t smile – they’re acting tough. Their innocence has been taken by the war. It’s confronting, but maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s what they’ve grown up around.
It seems there’s so much hopelessness, but then there are the heroes – those amazing individuals who doggedly carry on. World Vision has rebuilt the school that was torched in Malakal. Students like young Taban are starting to return. Even in places as grim as the Malakal camp, World Vision and other aid agencies make the situation bearable.
When we arrive at the school, children are smiling, laughing and dancing; behaving how children should. It’s a jubilant scene – part of what World Vision calls a Child Friendly Space. And that’s exactly what it is – a place of distraction, a place of safety, a place where children can for a moment forget about the everyday struggles.
After two years of war, a peace deal has been signed. But given the culture of fighting, real peace seems a distant prospect.