How They Joined the Rebel Groups

Each child goes to war for his or her own reasons, which often become obscured in the process of co-option, because fearing for their lives can turn them into ruthless fighters and killers (McIntyre 2005:2). Children in Liberia found themselves with the armed groups for varied reasons, which ranged from conscription to joining voluntarily. A section of the children interviewed alluded to the fact that they were encouraged by their

122 peers. Others joined to avoid harassment from soldiers especially the girls. While others were conscripted by the armed forces and armed groups. The other reasons advanced for joining were, self-defence to save themselves after the death of their parents by the armed groups, were encouraged by adults who were close to them while children also joined out of total frustration of life by then, they had lost everything to the armed groups, ranging from close relatives, property and food. The children were picked up from hiding places, on their way to markets, in their homes, in the gardens, no place was safe for them then. The qualitative responses below are the voices of children who were interviewed on how and why they joined the fighting:

“I joined to save myself; they killed my father, mother and brother. I looked for the rebels myself.”

“We were at the farm, we were captured by LURD forces, me and my sister, and I was just 12 years”.

“I was in the kindergarten by then, we were hiding, my brother, mother and I. They took me and my brother. We were many small children; they took us to Bomi hills”.

“They beat my grandmother and they took the only rice we had, that is why I joined the rebel group”.

“My mother’s husband was a general with MODEL, he convinced me to join”.

“I was sleeping at 4.00am, they opened the door and took me with them, and I was 15 yrs. by then”.

Children of all ages joined the armed groups; some were as young as 6 years old. They joined various armed groups that included the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) and the government forces by then. In some cases children joined as a group, as neighbours, peers or were captured in a bunch.

Children‟s roles changed on joining the armed groups. Their social status changed, they took on adult roles and lost their innocence. The roles they emulated were of a dysfunctional society, where society has lost it equilibrium and social disorder prevailed.

123 As clearly reported by the children, they were compelled by the prevailing situation and the situation dictated. It was not out of free will. According to the Liberia TRC (2009:55- 56) forced recruitment was deliberate, widespread and systematic by all fighting factions. Even government troops, who were supposed to protect the population, preyed on children and enlisted them by force, often systematically by selecting young boys and girls from schools or by raiding internally displaced people‟s (IDPs) camps to forcibly enlist new recruits. International and local child rights organizations reported that in mid-2003 parents in Monrovia had stopped sending their children to school because children as young as nine years old disappeared on their way to school. It was a common practice of recruiting children right at or near schools.

The government which is a primary duty bearer in ensuring and providing a protective environment where children are well nurtured, instead was at the forefront of creating social disorder, by ensuring children ceased being children.

However, not all children were openly abducted by force. Although this was probably the case for the largest number of child recruits, a much broader set of motivations compelled young boys and sometimes girls to join. It would be wrong to conclude, however, that even those children who apparently joined armed groups „voluntarily‟ did so out of their own free will. Children who found themselves in a context of war, violence, and the breakdown of social ties cannot be considered exercising free choice. Their world has been turned upside down and thus children made decisions in the context of a broad range of war-related pressures – political, economic, social and cultural. The following statement from a child summarised the predicament the children found themselves in:

“Whenever the rebels would come, we were running. I decided it was too much running, I decided to join”.

124 Economic reasons were also advanced as a motivation for children to join the armed forces (Liberia TRC 2009:56-58). Often, children‟s motivations to join armed groups seemed rooted in the inequalities inherent in Liberian society, where rural youth were caught between a lack of educational and economic opportunities in rural areas and a deep feeling of marginalization by those from underprivileged social or ethnic groups. In such an environment of deprivation and desperation, young boys in particular seemed to have developed a certain admiration for soldiers and the fighting forces as potential channels for empowerment and social mobility. Consequently, a number of former child soldiers reported to have joined armed groups voluntarily, often because they wanted to emulate soldiers, to whom they looked up and who seemed to embody a sense of freedom and empowerment that was otherwise sorely missing from their lives.

There was a shift in community values and norms, where role models were not the respected people in the community but those who held instruments of coercion. The

children were re-socialised to respect those who could terrorise others. Giddens (1993:80) argues re-socialization may happen, which is marked by the disruption of

previously accepted internalised values and patterns of behaviour, followed by the adoption of radically different ones.

War and violence generated their own social and economic dynamics and, often, produced yet more war and violence. Children, who by nature of their age and dependency on their families are generally in a more vulnerable position, thus often resorted to joining armed groups as a coping strategy in a radically changed environment shaped by the power of the gun. In this context, motivations for children to join the fighting forces thus ranged from displacement and the loss of their parents or guardians to suffering economic hardship and taking revenge being recruited by their own family members. Abuse by one armed group could compel children to join an opposing armed faction, just to feel safe from the previous abuse. The children joined as a way of coping with the prevalent situation.

125 UNICEF (2006:22) summarised that the reason for recruitment in Liberia in times of conflict, when social support structures had broken down and normal attachments to family and community were severed, children were more easily attracted to join the fighting forces. They perceived that better opportunities existed with the fighting forces and that they would be more able to fulfil their social and psychological needs by joining the conflict. They believed that such engagement would satisfy their need to be seen as a worthy individual with access to resources and power. Engagement with fighting forces tends to provide the opportunity for being perceived as “masculine,” which is glorified among peers and has its roots in the process of socialization.

According to Functionalist theorists, the situation above presented a break-down of social systems, where there was no social control and parents and community members did not control the situation. There was lack of internal coordination of the social structures, which resulted in role reversal. Children had to adapt to a new environment by coping negatively, to acquire some form of social equilibrium in a chaotic environment.