The Making and Unmaking of a Child Soldier

This is a compelling account of a child soldier in Sierra Leone, who describes how he was able to kill without mercy, but still retained an underlying guilt, which haunted him once he was removed from the frontlines and withdrew from "brown brown," (a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder), and other drugs...It is a tragic story, which echoes the sorts of experiences of those I worked with and interviewed on my trip to Sierra Leone several months ago. What really amazed me in my interviews is how many of these young people seemed to be psychologically healthy, despite undergoing unspeakable trauma...seeing pregnant women being sliced open and the babies falling from the bellies, while the killers laughed at the dying mother and child; being given a choice between being killed or watching one's wife get gang-raped, living for a month in the jungle with a broken leg and subsisting on a single papaya after a rebel attack etc...As Mohammed described to me, he became so emaciated after a month of a single papaya that when he finally returned to his family...they were unable to recognize him... They thought he was a ghost.

The other issue is that there is now a whole generation of youngsters (who were given blanket amnesty) after the war, who have not been educated. Many are also still hooked on "brown brown." It is frightening indeed to imagine that these will be the future adults in this country, which is already in such dire straits---no electricity for 40 years, few passable roads, endemic corruption etc...

Much of the history, economic dynamics, and yes, natural beauty of the country is captured in the movie, "Blood Diamond," which I highly recommend.

During that time, a lot of things were done with no reason or explanation. Sometimes we were asked to leave for war in the middle of a movie. We would come back hours later after killing many people and continue the movie as if we had just returned from intermission. We were always either on the front lines, watching a war movie or doing drugs. There was no time to be alone or to think. When we conversed with one another, we talked only about the movies and how impressed we were with the way either the lieutenant, the corporal or one of us had killed someone. It was as if nothing else existed.

The villages that we captured and turned into our bases as we went along and the forests that we slept in became my home. My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector and my rule was to kill or be killed. The extent of my thoughts didn’t go much beyond that. We had been fighting for more than two years, and killing had become a daily activity. I felt no pity for anyone. My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen. I knew that day and night came and went because of the presence of the moon and the sun, but I had no idea whether it was a Sunday or a Friday.