By Daniel P. Clerk

Imagine this suburban neighbourhood in a war-torn territory whose streets have been lined with pines and oak trees to form natural canopies. There is a 24-hour security service to protect the families of people of high places although the well-built armed guards are bored beyond imagination. There is a beautiful playground where all the little ones jump and roll and tumble and scream.
On the outskirts of the city, there is also a small village cosseted away in a leafy gated community where the real meaning of abject poverty can be understood in its entirety. The only source of portable water is a river flowing through a nearby thicket of bushes. Most children there while away their evenings telling folktales under a moonlit sky amid drumming and dancing.
The children in both settings are as happy as larks though the economic situations are as different as day and night. The innocence that accompanies the unique voices of the children can melt the heart of the most evil men. It captures an audience in a touching manner sending viewers down the memory lane to the joys of childhood. …what if one day, bush rebels invade the village, shoot the men in cold blood, ruthlessly rape the women, take away all young boys and leave the young girls to ‘support’ their mothers in anguish?
The last flickering embers of communal unity even in financial distress has just been extinguished in the most abrupt and cruel way. The sickening scent of blood and the sight of guns and massacre have replaced the joys. The boys have just been thrown into a conflict blender where they will be shredded and pulverised into gravies of bloodshed: a journey of no return!!
Why didn’t the bush rebels enter the affluent residential neighbourhood? It is clear they knew the weak and vulnerable often fall victim to bullying. These rebels take the children through sessions of indelible torture including hideous crimes like branding. They are sometimes blindfolded and forced to shoot captured citizens much to their chagrin. They brainwash them into believing that their parents are bastards and imbeciles who need to be wiped out from their land. The initial terror of the children slowly becomes submission to authority and finally inherent hatred for their once beloved families.
Finally, the commander confers the prestigious title of ‘Field Marshall’ on the naïve boys by just giving them military berets. Seven and eight-year olds are introduced to rubbing alcohol and are taught to dance over piles of revolvers and AK 47s resting comfortably among corpses. It is more of a cultic initiation ritual of a wanted secret society.
Poor personal hygiene is the norm at the rebel camp. The filth and squalor is probably powerful to cause resurrection of the dead. Who cares anyway? They are happy killing the masses and they have been exposed to wads of bank notes provided by the ‘over-generous’ foreigners who have hidden agendas. Extreme profanity governs their language. The kids now stand at roadblocks wearing round-necks of many bright hues with stained berets to match. The instructions from above are very simple:
Press the trigger when a motorist refuses to stop!!
Do not show any compassion on the basis of ill-health!
Finally, let the blood flow!!!

How can the very same children who used to enjoy folklore become like this? The stainless innocent hearts have become stone cold hearts of hate. Like a potter who moulds clay into anything he wants, the rebels form ugly mindsets out of these potential leaders.

This was the reality of the situation in Sierra Leone and Liberia. It is the reality in Darfur, Sudan and parts of DR Congo. It is what happens in places where children are forced to be beach guards. Toying with a child’s psychology is probably the worst injury one can cause to him/her.
Even when the child soldiers are reformed, the ghosts of the past will haunt them forever especially when they were made to cut off limbs and eat the internal organs of the perishing.
As Michael Kerr of London School of Economics (LSE) once quoted on the BBC, “There is an awful lot of personal antagonism and difficulty; there is an awful lot of grief and memory from conflict” Suffice to say, it is difficult to start anew.

There are two worlds in that country. It seems the intricate bloody patterns on the territory’s embroidery will forever remain but there is always comfort: “A glimmer of hope always leaps forward when our survival instincts tug the grim possibilities o the inevitable above and beyond all thoughts.”