Child soldiers in Liberia try to put war behind them

MONROVIA, Liberia -- In his dream, 14-year-old Moses Watson is running from the front lines in Liberia when a bullet hits him in the guts.

"All my intestines come out," said Moses, his voice quiet as he sat on a wooden bench, looking at the floor. "I have died. I ask God please forgive me."

Moses, like thousands of child soldiers here, is haunted by what he did and saw during the years when grown government soldiers doped him up with marijuana and crack cocaine and forced him into battle holding a machine gun that dwarfed his body.

And he doesn't know what will become of him next.

The United Nations says as many as 10,000 children fought in this West African country's last, 3-year civil war, a closing burst of carnage in 14 years of conflict that killed more than 200,000 people.

Liberians are looking ahead toward patching their country back together now that warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor is exiled in Nigeria, Gyude Bryant is Liberia's new leader until elections in 2005, and the U.N. peacekeeping force here will soon become the world's largest, at 15,000 troops.

And child soldiers are but one item on a long list of things to fix.

School -- restarting Nov. 3, as soon as classrooms that housed refugees are stocked with pencils and paper and cleansed of blood -- will take in many of the youngest fighters.

Some are very young indeed: Taylor took children as young as 5 into his notorious Small Boys Units.

Commanders on all sides quickly learned to prize the tiny fighters for their unquestioning obedience and viciousness born of a child's lack of comprehension of others' suffering, and of right and wrong.

'Special attention'

"Some have been armed forces so long they'll need special attention," acknowledges Cyrille Niameogo of the U.N. Children's Fund.

But the fact is, in the specialized field of counseling school-age battle veterans, there are few who can help, Niameogo says.

For now, Moses lives in a group home on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia's war-beaten seaside capital.

The home, run by a local aid group with the help of international organizations, is a nondescript, concrete house on a muddy, dirt road behind an outdoor market.

The boys who live there -- 22 former child soldiers and 15 children found on the streets, all age 11 to 18 -- eat regular meals and study reading and writing.

The words on the blackboard are simple, but far beyond the boys: "Eat. Pen. Dirt. Coal."

In the back yard, when the boys gather for a soccer game, neighborhood children watch from the sidelines -- pretending to fire at the boys with sugar cane as make-believe machine guns. Then the neighborhood children run away, giggling.

"They are not difficult children, they are children with difficulties and they need help," said Allen Lincoln, a Liberian official with the aid group that runs the home.

The United Nations estimates there are up to 45,000 armed combatants in Liberia, and is working with Bryant's government to plan for their disarmament and rehabilitation.

Moses, who is from Sierra Leone and was captured by Liberian forces from across the porous border when he was 10, said adult soldiers made the boys sing to calm their fears as they piled into trucks for the front line.

"The first time, I was scared," said Moses. "But when I saw my friend fire, fire, fire -- I became brave. I was a brave man."

Commanders plied the boys with marijuana and crack.

The drugs, Moses said, "make you see your friends are chicken."

Once, said Moses, heavy fighting forced him and his friends to retreat.

"But the commander fired at our feet to make us go back," he said.

One of Moses' closest friends was killed while walking alongside him.

"He was shot in his stomach," Moses said. "It blew up."

Later, at a bridge near downtown Monrovia, Moses trusted a cow horn he believed had magic powers to protect him as he fought advancing rebels.

Moses grew excited as he told of the cow horn, and he got up from the wooden bench to show how he waved it back and forth to ward off -- and even hurl back -- rocket-propelled grenades. "I pick it up, and send it back," he exclaimed.

Moses seems happy: He took part in classes one recent morning, helped clean the yard and then played soccer.

But he hasn't seen his mother in four years, and doesn't even know if she's alive.

He wants to go home, but fears being captured by fighters in the countryside around Monrovia.

"I want to tell my friends how I saw many things," he proclaimed -- and then promptly insisted he's already forgotten it all.