One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [75]
At the same time as the Ugandan army seeks to justify its use of child soldiers, despite being a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (which forbids using child soldiers), Bantariza denies that it is their policy to do so. “Last year we got thirty recruits who had been duly recommended by the community councils, but after scrutinizing them [we found] they were underage and their applications were turned down,” he said. It seems the Ugandan army only recruits children who were previously abducted by the enemy, suggesting that they are damaged goods, that their protection as minors is less important than the protection of those who had not been abducted by the LRA already. Bantariza noted that there were few rehabilitation programs in northern Uganda that dealt with child soldiers and those NGOs operating in the region were already overstretched, preferring to take in younger children. Whatever the justification, the government of Uganda, far from protecting children from the threat of abduction by the LRA, continues to use youth on its front lines. Uganda’s commitments to international law do not seem to outweigh the benefits of using child soldiers. This is the modus operandi for most groups who use child soldiers. Public commitments matter little when there is a war on.
While RCD-Goma claimed to be demobilizing all of its child soldiers, recruitment continued. In December 2001, a month before I met Paul in the demobilization center, RCD soldiers burst through the doors late at night. The raid happened quickly, and the armed soldiers ignored the objections and pleas of the civilian staff. When it was over, one hundred children had been taken back to the Mushaki military base. The staff showed me the bullet hole in the door and the broken lock. They complained that there was little they could do to protect the boys in their care if the army wanted them.
In 2005, an aid worker in what used to be an area controlled by RCD-Goma said that, as the fragile peace in the region deteriorates, military commanders beef up their ranks with children. “[The Mayi Mayi] have realized we want the kids, so they won’t give them to us,” the aid worker said.
The fighting in the Ituri region, which displaced over 80,000 people in the first four months of 2005, involved children ordered to maim civilians believed to be of rival ethnicities. Local defense forces—sometimes calling themselves the Mayi Mayi—also made use of children to protect against these attacks. While commitments to protect children are easy to make, breaking the habit of relying on young fighters is much harder.
One boy, Augustin, told me about being taken by force into RCD-Goma. He told me he was sixteen years old. He was more likely fourteen years old. He said he was recruited when he was thirteen and spent one year as a soldier. He had only been at the transit center for a few months. It is likely that he was instructed to say he was fifteen if anybody asked when they took him into the army, again, because fifteen is the absolute minimum age allowed by international law for participation in the military. Now that a year had passed he said he was sixteen, improvising on his instructions.
“I was forced into the army,” Augustin said. “The soldiers from the RCD passed by my house. They gave me supplies and told me to carry the things for them. After I carried supplies for them, they told me to go to the airport with the things. At the airport they instructed me to get on the plane with