Mozambique Study Sees Hope for Ex-Child Soldiers

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A recent study has some surprising news about child soldiers. There are some 300,000 child soldiers around the world, according to Amnesty International. And for decades aid workers and child advocates have been concerned about the fate of children who spend their formative years in guerrilla armies. Well, according to a small study of former child soldiers in Mozambique, some of them are doing remarkably well. NPR's Jason Beaubien reports.

JASON BEAUBIEN reporting:

Across Africa child soldiers are some of the most feared fighters on the continent. Whether it's teen-agers wielding AK-47s during Sierra Leone's civil war or 10-year-olds with grenades in Liberia or the child conscripts of the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda, child soldiers have become known as brutal killers. And one of the concerns of child advocates is that these kids will grow up to be even more brutal as adults. But a study of 41 boys who fought with rebels in Mozambique's civil war in the 1980s shows that that's not always the case.

Unidentified Child: (Foreign language spoken)

BEAUBIEN: Israel Armando Massingue was kidnapped by RENAMO, the Mozambique National Resistance, when he was 14.

Mr. ISRAEL ARMANDO MASSINGUE (Former Child Soldier): (Foreign language spoken)

BEAUBIEN: `The RENAMO fighters were terribly cruel,' Massingue says, `and it worried me very much. That's why I wanted to flee.' He says they would destroy villages and kill anyone who hadn't already fled. During the 1980s thousands of kids, some as young as six years old, were abducted by RENAMO to fight in Mozambique's civil war. Massingue says he witnessed many terrible things during his two years with the rebels, but he insists that he didn't kill anyone himself.

Mr. MASSINGUE: (Foreign language spoken)

BEAUBIEN: `Because I didn't kill anyone with my own hands,' he says, `I was able to leave RENAMO behind me, and it does not haunt me now.'

The recent study out of Columbia University found that former child soldiers from RENAMO fared almost as well in life as Mozambicans who weren't abducted by the rebels. Massingue is a good example of this. This region of Mozambique is incredibly poor, but by local standards, Massingue is doing well. He has a small mud-and-thatch house. His wife, Saugina, is mixing bread dough beside an open fire. Several of his nieces run around in the dirt courtyard in front of his hut. Massingue works regularly as a farmer, and he sits on a committee that helps resolve disputes in the village. At the age of 35, Massingue is now just a regular member of his village.

During the late 1980s, Neil Boothby worked with Massingue and other boys from RENAMO at an orphanage in the capital, Maputo. Last year Boothby, who's a psychologist at Columbia University, completed the study of child soldiers and found that, in some ways, they're doing even better than their neighbors.

Mr. NEIL BOOTHBY (Psychologist, Columbia University): Approximately 65 percent of the former child soldiers do occasionally get off-farm employment, they do earn income, which the norm there is more like 38 percent.

BEAUBIEN: He says many of the ex-combatants feel that they were robbed of their childhoods and particularly of a chance to get an education. Boothby says, thus, these men want to send their own children to school.

Mr. BOOTHBY: Again, what you see through here is not cycles of violence, per se, which is what, I think, the myth is about children in war, but what you see, indeed, is that pain can be turned into altruism.

BEAUBIEN: Boothby says from a mental health perspective, the former child soldiers are all still affected by the war. Many still report having nightmares and flashbacks, Boothby says. But most of them have found ways to cope.

Mr. BOOTHBY: One boy--when he would walk by the tree where his father was murdered and he was abducted, he would--you know, it would trigger memories and stuff. So now when he goes to the farm, he walks down a different path. For some it's like butchering animals would create flashbacks, so their wives do that.

BEAUBIEN: Not all of the 41 boys who Boothby tracked were success stories. One, who was a commander with RENAMO, got drunk one night, picked a fight with some policemen and was shot dead. Another, the youngest of the 41 who entered RENAMO when he was just eight years old, never reintegrated into his family. People who knew him say at times he was mute and, at others, he was a compulsive liar. Last year he drowned in a pond while out fishing alone.

During the 1980s, Agostinho Mamamde worked with Boothby at Save the Children in Mozambique. Mamade says it's remarkable that the former child soldiers are doing so well.

Mr. AGOSTINHO MAMADE (Formerly with Save the Children in Mozambique): Children here in the south, they were known as killing machines.

BEAUBIEN: As part of a scorched earth policy, Mamade says, RENAMO used child soldiers, some as young as eight years old, to rape and kill civilians.

Mr. MAMADE: ...(Unintelligible) are particularly good at doing that with a lot of cruelty, not understanding the value of human life.

BEAUBIEN: The government of Mozambique, which was fighting RENAMO, described the young rebels as a lost generation and said they'd never be able to rejoin normal society. Mamade, however, says communities readily accepted the children back.

Mr. MAMADE: People are not seeing children as guilty, as responsible for what they were doing; rather, understanding that they were forced to do that and that they had no other way not to do that. Otherwise, they would be killed, simple as that.

BEAUBIEN: That acceptance by ordinary Mozambicans was very important, he says, in allowing the former child soldiers to return to relatively normal lives.

Four hours north of the capital Joaquim Fernando Tivane lives in a tiny mud-and-thatch hut. He doesn't have electricity or running water, but nor does anyone else in his village. Tivane also doesn't have a job, but that's not so unusual here either. At 26 years old, he still has the awkward, gangly posture of a teen-ager who's not yet comfortable with his body. Tivane thinks he was 10 years old when he was abducted by RENAMO.

Mr. JOAQUIM FERNANDO TIVANE (Former Child Soldier): (Foreign language spoken)

Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)

Mr. TIVANE: (Foreign language spoken)

BEAUBIEN: For two years he served as the bodyguard for a RENAMO commander, he says. It's a position in which he may have been exposed to or involved in some horrific acts. Tivane says thinking about the war gives him trouble, and he taps the side of his head with his finger. He credits a traditional healer with helping him forget the war.

Mr. TIVANE: (Foreign language spoken)

BEAUBIEN: `The women used a medicine to wash my body,' he says. `They made cuts on my shoulders and poured medicine into the cuts so I wouldn't be affected by what had happened to me during the war.'

Tivane and other former child soldiers in Mozambique are still struggling, but they're struggling with many of the same problems as those who didn't grow up in rebel camps. Some humanitarian workers who also focus on child soldiers caution that the results from the Mozambique study may not be a good guide for how well former child soldiers will fare in other parts of the world or even in Africa. But the study from Columbia does show that at least some of these former `killing machines' have been able to resume relatively normal lives. Jason Beaubien, NPR News.

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