GIRL SOLDIERS
ON the teenage girl’s shin are ugly bullet scars – a chilling reminder of the horrors of war and the terrifying death of her father.
Dorcas Kabongo, 16, is one of 20,000 child soldiers – many of them girls – snatched from their families by rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s civil conflict and forced to go into battle against government troops.
And they are armed with nothing but broomsticks and “magic skirts” as weapons against their opponents’ Kalashnikovs.
Meals of red ants and cocktails of their enemy’s blood give them courage.
They are trapped in the middle of the heartbreaking Congo crisis, which has forced 1.4million people from their homes and 400,000 kids to the brink of starvation.
The situation is now so desperate the UN declared a “Level 3” response was needed. That puts it on a par with humanitarian disasters that have consumed Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
MACHETES
But the sickening actions of the Congo’s militia forces against its country’s children, brainwashing them into battle with voodoo, would be beyond the pale even in those war-torn hells.
Dorcas is one of more than a thousand bewildered former child soldiers Unicef is now helping here, youngsters who have survived battles that claimed the lives of so many of their friends.
And her story of the day the rebel militia descended on her village is horrific. “Almost 30 men with guns and machetes came and took us from our home in Nganza,” she told me.
“We were marched with our hands bound behind our backs for two hours. They were demanding that we join the militia but we refused.
“When we got to the camp they cut my father’s head off with a machete. I saw his corpse. Then they made me do initiations. I drank ground tree bark and dust to make my skin bulletproof. I mixed red ants with alcohol to make me fast to reach the enemy quickly.
“I went into battle and I was shot. A militia member saved me. They put potion on my wounds and they healed.
“I couldn’t fight after that. I just helped cook. Then we were attacked by Presi- dent Joseph Kabila’s army, and I fled into the bush.” Dorcas was one of the lucky ones – and lived to return to her village.
For decades, large swathes of the eastern Congo have been a war zone. Now in the Kasai province – a rebel stronghold the size of Germany – thousands of children are still being enlisted to join armed militia groups.
The Kasia conflict was sparked by the 2016 murder of Kamwina Nsapu, a rebel tribal chief who had called for an uprising against the state. His followers created the Kamuina Nsapa militia in his honour and have waged war ever since.
Around 1.4 million people have been