Hundreds of traumatized child soldiers return home in Congo
UPDATED: 2009-03-04 11:49:12 MST


By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


KIWANJA, Congo — Some beat their heads against the wall until doctors inject them with tranquillizers. Others remain mute for days, their eyes darting around like frightened animals.

In recent weeks, hundreds of child soldiers in eastern Congo’s catastrophic war have returned home, sometimes to the same villages where they killed and pillaged. Some have been forced back out with threats of vengeance, and even ostracized by their own families.

These children were kidnapped by rebels and used as fighters, labourers, porters and sex slaves in a war that has torn the mineral-rich region apart for years. Children helped slaughter some 150 civilians in a two-day massacre in Kiwanja in November, one of the latest atrocities in a relentless cycle of ethnic warfare.

But in January, President Joseph Kabila invited troops in from neighbouring Rwanda to help end the conflict. Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda was arrested and his fighters integrated into the army — and child advocates are seizing upon the relative stability to persuade militias and rebels to let go of those under 18. At least 478 children, including 15 girls, were demobilized in eastern Congo in January and February, according to UNICEF.

Stripped of their camouflage uniforms, guns and machetes, many of the youngsters still have raw aggression programmed into them through years of being pumped up with drugs and thrown into battle. Some have scars on their arms from knife cuts where herbs and other concoctions were rubbed under the skin to convince them that bullets would ricochet off their bodies.

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