S.sudan’s child soldiers hope for life after war

PIBOR: By the time Baba John escaped the tribal militia he had joined as an 11-year-old, he had long stopped counting the number of people he had killed.

“I shot people. We all did,” said Baba John. “I received a gun and was told how to shoot and point the gun. I don’t remember how many I shot but there were many.”

A murderous time for Baba John began with a life-or-death decision when a South Sudanese armed group, known as the Cobra Faction, attacked his village close to the eastern town of Pibor, nearly 400 kilometres north of the capital Juba.

Baba John survived that attack but, fearing he would not be so lucky the next time he decided, like many others have done, to join the militia.

“I was forced to shoot and loot,” recalls Baba John of the year spent with them.

Now aged 15, Baba John found salvation in a programme run by the UN children’s agency, Unicef, to give child soldiers a chance of a new life even as recruitment, press-ganging and outright abductions continue.

During nearly ive years of civil war in South Sudan an estimated 19,000 children under the age of 18 have joined the ranks of the army, rebel forces or various local militias, Unicef says.

Nearly 3,000 have been released since 2015.

Baba John returned home to his mother and ive siblings in the ill-itting clothes of his victims.

Pibor lies in an open plain, a ramshackle town with a dirt airstrip, where the biggest building is a hangar-sized tent to contain the sacks of emergency food that fend off starvation.

Today, despite the ongoing conlict and dificult living conditions, Baba John is hopeful.

Barefoot and slim, dressed in a neat striped shirt and a beaded bracelet, and with a grin on his face, he is now a ledgling farmer, learning to plant, raise and harvest crops.

“I want to become a farmer so I can help my family,” he says.

The focus provided by a structured education programme and the learning of new skills helps with the psychological recovery of former child soldiers, says Muraguri Wachira of Vets Without Borders (VSF) Germany, a charity that runs the programme in Pibor.

“We’re working with almost 1,500 children,” she says.

Baba John still has nightmares but, like others, he is beginning to imagine a future without ighting.