Sierra Leone may now be at peace, but thousands of children who were forced to fight in a brutal 10-year civil war still bear deep physical and mental scars. They now need all the help Trócaire and other aid agencies can give. Declan Fahy reports
There are two scars on 18-year-old Musa Daboh's right leg, visible reminders of his five years of fighting with a rebel force in Sierra Leone's brutal 10-year civil war.
The first, on his shin, was where his commanders in the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), who abducted him when he was 13, cut his skin and rubbed cocaine into the wound before sending him and other similarly drug-frenzied child combatants into the front line.
His calf bears the second scar, a bullet wound he says he received when he returned (at about 14) to his home town of Kabala, in the north of the country, when the RUF attacked it - as they did other places throughout the conflict, murdering, raping, looting.
Daboh says he was hunched down, aiming his weapon forward, when he was shot in the leg from behind. He eventually killed his attacker, a member of the Sierra Leone Army (SLA), a force aligned with the government.
During the attack on Kabala, as he saw his former neighbours scatter, Daboh recognised his mother. He did not shoot, but another soldier coming from behind him did not hesitate. His older brother was also killed.
Daboh finds it difficult to reflect on his actions during the war. At first he would only say he had shot "plenty" of people - "all kinds, soldiers, civilians".
Eventually, with reassurance from the translator, he says he killed 50 or 60. Daboh says they were on drugs when they attacked the village, going on a firing spree, as humans "were like chickens". (As he describes this memory, he makes a shooting motion with his hands.)
He is just one of an estimated 6,000 child soldiers who fought in the civil war which has sapped and battered the country since 1991. A further 5,000 children were recruited for forced labour among armed groups.
In the conflict, government forces (including the SLA and militias) and international peacekeepers fought against rebel forces, which included the RUF and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). Atrocities were committed by government-allied forces, as well as rebels.
The war started in 1991 with an incursion by the RUF, which said it was fighting against the corrupt middle-class in Freetown, capital of the former British colony.
Although other causes of the war were corruption, monopolisation of power, and unequal distribution of wealth, the conflict has largely been bound up with control of the country's precious diamond resources.
In the war - which has had a horrific catalogue of murder, rape and mutilation - nearly half of the five million population was displaced. A further 500,000 people were forced to move to neighbouring countries. About 50,000 were killed and an estimated 100,000 were mutilated. The country is now the poorest in the world, according to UN statistics, which ranked Sierra Leone bottom of 162 countries surveyed across a range of poverty and development indices.
Peace was finally declared in January of this year by the president, Ahmed Kabbah, at a ceremony which featured the symbolic burning of weapons.
More than 20,000 UN peacekeeping troops are stationed in Sierra Leone; they took part in the demobilisation, disarmament and rehabilitation process of the country's fighters.
Daboh was among 6,000 child soldiers - 200 of them girls - who have been demobilised since May 2001. A total of 50,000 people were disarmed in this time, said Rodolfo Mattarollo, chief of the Human Rights Section, United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL).
The former soldier is now a trainee carpenter. Daboh is one of many who have benefited from a rehabilitation programme which includes education and vocational training for former child soldiers. It is funded by Irish aid-agency Trócaire, whose Lenten campaign this year focuses on child soldiers and child exploitation.
In the rehabilitation programme which Trócaire funds, thousands of former child soldiers were taken to care centres for an initial period of about six weeks during which they are given food, shelter and counselling-type support. After this, they are usually reunited with their families or released into foster care. But the children, families and community receive ongoing counselling and support to ensure successful reintegration.
Other forms of rehabilitation are also vital for the children. In an article in Review of African Political Economy on the country's child soldiers, one theorist noted how the children were often "socialised into violence", having to kill their parents, relations or villagers. Or they were forced by their commanders to watch their parents being tortured or murdered.
Children were also forced to perform mutilations. One child was well-known for performing the RUF's signature atrocity: cutting off limbs.
The boy - nicknamed Mike Tyson because of his stocky build - was given a bag by his commander and told to bring it back that evening filled with severed limbs, said Sunkarie Kamara, programme manager, child protection, Caritas Makeni, a local aid agency which receives funding from Trócaire.
Refusing to obey these orders, or others such as not taking drugs, was called technical suicide and was punishable by death, she said.
Women and girls suffered worst in the war atrocities, with widespread and systematic sexual violence used by different factions to terrorise, humiliate and control the population.
A 2001 report by Human Rights Watch titled Sexual Violence within the Sierra Leone Conflict, said, "the perpetration of sexual violence is often marked by the systematic breaking of taboos and undermining of cultural values".
Girls were often raped and abducted, taken to rebel camps and used for years as sexual slaves, forced labourers or taken by commanders as "wives". Young girls were raped during sacred coming-of-age rituals.
Adama Mansaray (16), who features on one of Trócaire's Lenten campaign posters, was abducted by the RUF and force- trekked to a rebel base. She says many other girls were captured in the same way. At first, nothing was done to her, she says. She was forced to work for a commander's wife. Soon, though, she was taken on looting missions.
She says she was given a gun and told to kill. Afraid to disobey, she remembers "firing indiscriminately in a village".
She says she was raped and gang-raped more than once. Last September, when she was reunited with her family, only her grandfather initially recognised her.
She is now waiting for a training programme to learn dyeing and weaving skills. Other girls were abandoned after they escaped or were released: families and villagers rejected many girls who got pregnant by their abductors.
Fatmata Sesay (15), seven months pregnant, has no choice but to go and live with the baby's father, a former RUF soldier, in the countryside. She says she "only feels happy". A friend of hers, who was abducted at the same time, was killed, she says.
Reintegration is further complicated by cultural factors regarding sexual issues.
"Sex is taboo in our community. Most of these victims - and they are in their thousands - don't have the courage to come forward and say they were sexually abused by commanders," says Kamara. Furthermore, prospective husbands would "shy away" from the girls, she said. And there is the problem of HIV and AIDS. Widespread ignorance of the disease and the high cost of the test - about $6, the same price as four days' worth of food for a family - discourages girls from coming forward.
The trauma suffered by the children manifests itself in different ways, explains Kamara. Ex-combatants will sometimes think it is brave to boast about their actions. Others will recount their experiences over and over. Many more close down completely, neither talking nor playing, their silence interspersed with bouts of aggression.
Traditional means of re-integration are used, rather than Western psychological methods. Children take part in dances, music, and play football - rituals which help bring them back into the community. But fear of consequences is a barrier to reintegration. One soldier told Kamara he had taken part in the destruction of a village, had raped a woman he knew and was afraid of how he would be treated on his return.
And the child nicknamed Mike Tyson was afraid of going home, she said, as everyone would recognise him because of his build. "We tell him he was not responsible for his actions", as the commander said he would be killed if he did not obey.
Cultural factors are important. The children are sometimes viewed as being polluted by evil spirits and symbolic cleansing rituals are performed.
The former soldiers also have a role in both the Special Court and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that will hopefully help rehabilitate the country. The Special Court will try, under a hybrid of Sierra Leonean and international law, only "those most responsible" for the atrocities.
This follows debate about whether children could be tried at the court. When they heard they might be convicted of crimes, many children refused to talk about their history, which greatly affected their reintegration, said Kamara.
Mattarollo says it was eventually decided "children between 15 and 18 will appear before the court, but cannot receive criminal sanction". Children will also be "a really important chapter" in another instrument, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established to create an impartial record of violations of human rights and humanitarian law" during the country's war.
However, Helen Bash-Taqi, policy programmes co-ordinator with human rights group Network for Justice and Development, said the involvement of children with the special court and the TRC may pose problems for their reintegration.
She has argued that no children should appear before the special court. Their appearance, she says, may not help undo the stigma they already carry and may "harm their future standing in society".
Regarding the TRC, Bash-Taqi said children must be guaranteed privacy. "If they are not given proper privacy, then forget about it, there will be no information."
Posters, T-shirts and information sheets currently circulating in the country urge people to come forward to the TRC and "say what you did, say what you saw".
But some find it difficult to think too deeply on their past. Musa Daboh, with the two scars on his leg a permanent reminder of his history, says he does not want to "make any reflection on his past", especially now that there is peace.
His only comment is that he "must have been destined by God to carry out such atrocities".
Trócaire: www.trocaire.ie