Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

I would like to talk to you about the civil war in Sierra Leone, a war which lasted for more than eight years (1993-2001). Some western media did cover what happened there, but this coverage was mostly sporadic and irregular. Most of the time, this war is presented as a fighting between a rebel movement, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the government of that time – this is indeed how most civil wars in Africa are presented to the western public. But this is a very basic analysis. What do you think really happened during that war ?

I believe that the war started because of an endemic political corruption that caused people to be really poor. And there was a lot of embezzlement of funds that where supposed to be allocated to either schools or hospitals. At some point, teachers weren’t even pay for six months to a year. So they stopped teaching. Some people started taking briberies, in hospitals which weren’t funded for example. So with all theses things, people began to hope for something new to come along, for a revolution to get rid of the APC government that had been in power for so long. When the RUF was starting, they had an intellectual and a military side. They started in Furra Bay College. But the intellectual side was gone before the revolution started, so only the military wing, with Foday Sankoh, remained in charge. So from the beginning, you knew the revolution was bound to fail because there was no intellectual branch for it. Also, when Foday Sankoh started the war, he had people like Charles Taylor (Liberia ex president) who lent him soldiers, but Taylor had his own agenda. So whatever Sankoh idea was, it got quickly lost because the people who supported him initially had their own agenda. They wanted the diamond mines, and very quickly this war that had started for the people became against the people. That’s why in Sierra Leone during the war you could always hear the RUF say, we’re fighting for the people, because that was the original thought of it, but that changed very quickly. It became a war where people only struggled for the limited basic living necessities that were available. You had groups of soldiers who had gun and ammunitions, but no food. They harass civilians to get what they had. The focus quickly was lost and it became only a blood bath.

During this war, you were a child soldier, which means that at the age of twelve, you were forcefully enrolled to take part in the war. How did this recruitment happen ?

The war reached my part of the country when I was 12, in 1993. Between 12 and 13, I had lost everything, my family was killed, my mother, my father and my two brothers. I ended up going to a child group of the Sierra Leone army. I thought if I go to an army base, I’ll find safety. But it turned out to be the place where I was forcefully recruited along with other kids that had been running. We basically had three choices; it was either be recruited, or killed, or asked to leave which was as good as being dead, because once you look for safety amongst one group, the other group would think of you as a spy, so they would kill you also. So we were taught how to use the gun, AK 47, G3, and in a week, we were in the battlefield. One other thing they do is that they give you drugs. There was also a strong sense of cohesion: if you didn’t do what you were told…well, there were examples of people who didn’t follow command and who were killed in front of you. So you knew that if you didn’t do it, you would be killed. There is also exposure to a lot of killing that traumatize you. You don’t have the emotional or psychological maturity to know what’s good, and there is a lot of drug as well. There is also a lot of political rhetoric, like we are the guys who are doing the right thing for the country, who deserve to live. By being part of this group, even though you have no choice, they would tell you that you would prevent other children from losing their family, like what you had to go through, that you were fighting for the benefit of this nation. So after you’ve lost yourself completely with the drugs and the trauma, you come to believe theses things. And this group, after you’ve lost everything, becomes like a surrogate family, because it’s the only thing you know that slightly organized. Everything had collapsed. So that was my life over two years.

Were there several different groups inside the RUF? Or were there rather “free” groups going from one place to the other, from one side to the other ?

I was part of the government group and that was a group that had broken off from the government army. What happened during the war is that at some point there was a military coup which took over the APC government. There was a group in the capital city and their friends in the countryside who were fighting the rebels decided to pillage the country themselves for their own benefit. So they too had their own groups. In Sierra Leone, there’s a term, “solbel”, which are soldiers that behave like rebels. So they were groups of this around. And there were also RUF groups all over the country attacking. So I was in this group that identified itself as the Sierra Leone army. And even though we were fatigue, they weren’t completely army fatigue. And basically we attack whatever group the commander said to attack. So some of them had military fatigue, sometimes they didn’t; it didn’t matter because you weren’t questioning. You weren’t even told where you were going. They would say: ok, follow us, now we’re going to attack for arms and food and drugs, and then you went. Sometimes they were also kids in other groups that you were attacking. This was a senseless war at some point; everybody was just trying to stay alive.

When I was in Sierra Leone, I got the impression that no one understood why such violence had erupted throughout the country, why the situation became so chaotic and crazy. Even now, it seems that there’s not really an explanation.

It was definitely a crazy moment. Before the war, Sierra Leone used to be a very peaceful place. There was a strong sense of community, traditions. And all of sudden, this violence spread out so quickly that it brought the worse out of people and people were forced to do certain things; they lost everything, and so their life became only that. So even today people are still struggling to understand what happened. For me, it shows that everyone is capable of doing this kind of things if they find themselves in certain circumstances. During the war, there was tremendous fear and distrust among people. If you voiced certain opinions and somebody happened to be supporting a certain group, you would be killed. As young people, it was even more difficult because they were forced to kill their own family. So if you were a young person, everyone feared you tremendously. So you didn’t inspire innocence anymore, but tremendous fear in other people. People were traumatized because they saw their community changing. It’s hard to really explain what really happened. But I think it was the desperation, the poverty. People were willing to believe anything else that promised some kind of change. Also some people did not believe what they heard. Before the war came to my part of the country, we couldn’t believe it was happening. Because of what we had known, we couldn’t believe that people behaved that way until it reached our doorstep and it was too late.

For two years, you were a soldier. Today, you live in New York. What happened in between? How did you come out of the group ?

I think of it as pure luck. It had nothing to do with me being able to run fast, or being a good fighter, or being smart. I could have been dead instead of the guy next to me.

In Sierra Leone, they had been such a rampant use of children by every group that the United Nations set up and sponsored local NGOs. And these NGOs would go into the bush and talk to commanders to persuade them to release certain kids, so they would give them a certain number of kids to bring them to rehabilitation centers that would give them schooling. So I happened to be one of the kids who got released. This was in 1996. I was in rehabilitation center for 8 months to regain myself, then they tried to find whatever family I had left and I went to live with an uncle. After that, there was an opportunity to come to the UN to speak about what was going in SL. So I came along to speak. During my stay, I met my mom; she was one of the facilitators for the program. She’s a storyteller and I was quite interested because I come from a tradition of story telling. I went back and she sent me money to start school. In 1997, when the war reached the capital, the entire nation collapsed, the prisons were opened. The RUF and the government army had allied to take over; this was the first time they acknowledged their alliance. The civilians were then basically at their mercy. My mom decided to get me out because she knew I would be dragged back into the war, like some of my friends who had been into rehabilitation. Because you couldn’t say no. So I went to Conakry, to South Africa, to Cote d’Ivoire to try to get a visa. It was difficult because no one trusted people from Sierra Leone. Finally, in 1998, I ended up coming to the US.

How do you look back at everything that happened to you ?

One of the reasons I was able to survive is that they were certain things that had been imparted in me as a kid, appreciation for life, the joy I had known as a child. Some those things stay inside me even during the war when I lost myself completely. After the war, I realized those are the strengths that I have that allowed me to survive. Also I met people who were being really compassionate to me, even in the rehabilitation center, and helped me selflessly, which I didn’t have during the war. I distrusted everyone, because I had an experience of adults using me. I met people that showed they could genuinely care for you just for your own good, nothing more. Because of that, they gave me the strength to face the memories that I continued to have with me. I will never forget anything that happened because it’s so shocking. But I’ve been able to learn how to live with them, to transform them so they become an instructional tool for my life rather than a handicap.

The UN mission is Sierra Leone ended in December 2005. It seems that it’s a very delicate moment for the country now ?

When I went back last year, what made me sad was the fact that it’s still look like the war ended yesterday. The same corrupt practices that caused the war and made people desperate are present. And there are lots of young people who are just hanging around not knowing what to do with heir life. And we know what that does because they can’t feel their own worth. Those kids want to go to school but they can’t afford it. Some of them are orphans or their family can’t send them to school. The government needs to engage them, otherwise somebody is going to bring something which slightly looks in their best interest and they’re going to jump on it. That scares me. There’s an election coming up in July, so hopefully that might change. And also there’s another dangerous thing. When these wars end, most of international aid is pulled out and international attention is shifted. And this is the important time for this aid to come it, because the aftermath is crucial.

Interview made by Céline Curiol