It's estimated that there are currently up to 300,000 children fighting for rebel groups and government forces in 20 countries all around the world. During the decade-long conflict in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, up to 15,000 children were forced to take up arms.
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Ishmael Beah was only 12 years old when the war broke out. Like most Sierra Leoneans, particularly the children, he understood little about the reasons behind the conflict, but he still remembers clearly the fear he felt at the time. "This was a landscape that people care deeply about each other," he says, "where your childhood was celebrated, your innocence. All of that was suddenly replaced by fear because children were forcefully recruited. Some of them made to kill their families, and destroy their own towns. I've seen people lying dead on the paths and on the road."Killing machines
The rebels killed Ishmael Beah's family and then forced him to join their group. Like most of Sierra Leone's child soldiers, he received only a brief training and then he was sent to the frontlines to fight and kill. Child soldiers were among the rebels' most valued combatants. They were given alcohol, cocaine and other drugs. They became killing machines, committing crimes that defy the imagination.
According to Beah: "During the war you had to stop yourself from accessing emotions because it would destabilize you. It became a defence mechanism to stay alive. But also you have seen so much death that things which initially shocked you were not shocking more." Haunted
 Cover of Dutch translation of "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" |
He was fortunate: he was adopted by a family in the United States, finished high school and then obtained a degree in political science. Most former child soldiers never get the chances he had; frequently after being demobilized, they go back to fight again.
Human face
He now travels the world to speak about his experiences. Despite the increasing attention in the media about the plight of child soldiers, Beah thinks he has something special to add. "I'm putting another human face to it. This happened to human beings who have the same human desires, needs and wants as any else anywhere. We're still kids who are capable of being intelligent, who have talents, who have things that the war left there we cannot discover those things."
"I think I've been able to break down those walls that allow people to say that oh, they can do that. We can never be like that, although they are Sierra Leoneans, Sri Lankans, they're Colombians. They need to think that could have been me. That could be my brother."