This is very depressing to read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/africa/27IVOR.html
March 27, 2003
The Child Soldiers of Ivory Coast Are Hired Guns
By SOMINI SENGUPTA


AN, Ivory Coast — At Maquis Le Tirbo, a saloon of sorts in this rebel-held
town, the air is thick with porcupine stew, and a boy, no more than 10,
barely taller than his AK-47, strolls in for lunch to a thumping reggae
beat.

Dancing between the tables, another boy, his dirty T-shirt stenciled with
the face of the lewd American rapper Sisqo, dangles a Kalashnikov from one
hand, a loaded clip from the other. A third child soldier sits clutching a
hand grenade the way a teenager in a saner place might hold a cellphone.

At the next table a group of young mercenaries from Liberia, pouring each
other rounds of cheap rum, wear stars-and-stripes bandannas tucked under
baseball caps like Los Angeles gangsters.

Here in Ivory Coast's wild west, in the most volatile theater of this
country's conflict, the detritus of globalization meets the logic of war,
West African style. A far cry from the war occupying international
attention, this is how the world's other half fights today.

What began here six months ago as an armed struggle for the rights of
disenfranchised ethnic groups now shows all the symptoms of a plague
sweeping the region: lawlessness, gangsterism and a series of unspeakable
atrocities.

The war is the latest outbreak of a virus of civil unrest that began over a
decade ago in Liberia, slipped easily across the border and spread into
Guinea and Sierra Leone. That it should infect what until recently was
regarded as the most modern and prosperous state in West Africa is the most
ominous development of all.

In this country, rich with cocoa, timber and diamonds, guns are as plentiful
as mangos in March, and longstanding tribal enmities are easily deployed. As
are hungry, bored teenagers with a gun in hand and a chance to star in their
own Schwarzenegger fantasies.

Some of the hardened soldiers here today were the child soldiers of
yesterday. They are plucked from refugee camps, trained in the region's
other conflicts, in particular the one in neighboring Liberia, and raised on
intoxicants and Kalashnikovs and the principle that where there is war,
there is a paycheck.

"After this war ends, I will go to fight another war," a Liberian, about 25,
who calls himself Shala, said at Le Tirbo, high and happy by midday. He had
been sitting idle in a nearby refugee camp, he said, when a friend, Romeo,
seated next to him, taught him how to fire an AK-47 and told him there was
money to be made in the new Ivoirian war.

Romeo, slightly older, with expressionless eyes, will not say where he
learned to fight, only that he expects to get paid. "There's so many young
in this war — 15, 16, 9, 10," he says sagely. "You get big in war. If
there's another war, you will not go there? You will go there. In a war,
what we chasing? Isn't it money?"

Liberian mercenaries have been drawn into both sides of the war in Ivory
Coast. They have committed some of its most gruesome atrocities and, for
leaders on both sides, have become an increasing liability.

The Ivoirian state has lately found itself embarrassed by revelations that a
Liberian militia was responsible for a massacre just south of here. Men were
stripped naked, women raped and an entire town left littered with
disemboweled, hacked corpses.

The Liberian militiamen, detained by French peacekeepers, confessed to their
links to the government. The government denied the charge and pointed
angrily to similar atrocities committed by Liberians fighting with the
rebels.

Conveniently, both the government and the rebels are exploiting longstanding
rancor between warring Liberian ethnic groups. One aligned with the Liberian
president, Charles Taylor, fights alongside the Ivoirian rebels. Another,
aligned with Mr. Taylor's enemies, fights alongside loyalists of President
Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast.

From their presidential perches in Monrovia and Abidjan, the two men accuse
one another of cross-border terrorism.

Meanwhile, rebel leaders seeking a mantle of respectability for their cause
are having to confront the disorder in their own ranks, namely by Liberians
in the west.

"They steal, they pillage," said Dosso Inza, the commanding officer of
Seguela, a nearby town held by the largest rebel group, the Patriotic
Movement of Ivory Coast.

He said his group had already warned colleagues in the west about the
Liberians. "We told them to be careful, they escaped their control."

The chief's explanation was interrupted by gunfire. Some of his troops were
having a bit of fun. "Who's doing that?" he yelled like an annoyed
schoolteacher, then clicked his tongue in disgust.

He and other rebel leaders say they have zero tolerance for hooliganism.
Anyone who fires without authorization is stripped of his weapon, they say.
Anyone caught in the act of a crime is jailed indefinitely. When it is
appropriate, the Liberians who have joined them — voluntarily, they add, and
all under the command of Ivoirian rebel chiefs — will be sent back to where
they came from.

A recent visit to Man, where the stench of mass graves still lingered in the
air, showed a less orderly picture, however.

The stolen cars that screech along these roads are marked with the names of
their rebel platoons, nearly all allusions to Hollywood and comic book
heroes: Delta Force, Black Ninja, Death's Highway. Kids joy-ride through the
empty streets, piling their guns and girlfriends and rocket-propelled
grenades in the back, kicking up clouds of dust, sometimes firing in the
air.

Clearly, some have not yet learned to drive: the town hospital, run by the
aid group Doctors Without Borders since the regular staff fled, is awash
with accident victims. Some have not yet learned to fight either: they come
into the emergency room, having literally shot themselves in the foot.

Sometimes it is unclear who is in charge. One recent night a heavily armed
band of teenagers held a gas station owner hostage for five hours, robbed
him and killed his dogs. The man had no clue which side they were on, if
any.

"It's very volatile," an international aid worker said here. "It's difficult
for us to know who is doing what, who is responsible for what."

It is why aid groups that are in the business of working in war zones are
reluctant to come here. An emergency coordinator with the New York-based
International Rescue Committee decided on a recent visit that the area was
simply too dangerous.

In this vacuum a rash of criminality blossoms. Schools have been shut. Jail
doors have been flung open. Skinny boys whose voices have yet to change are
the lords of their dirt-road checkpoints, each one a hodge-podge of hollow
cars, felled trees and talismans for spiritual armor.

They poke their unwashed faces into the windows of a stranger's car. They
beg for cigarettes, food, money. They demand to see travel papers; sometimes
they hold them upside down and pretend to read.

The hardened ones scowl and swagger. "Everyone is a chief here," one boy
shouts at a visitor less than 100 yards from where his commanding officer
had issued the required permits. "If I say stop, you stop!"

Asked about the child soldiers, Sgt. Félix Doh, the chief of a ferocious
western rebel army, gave the savviest comment: "We are discussing this
problem with the United Nations so they can facilitate the return of our
brothers, their reintegration into civilian life." Like other rebel leaders,
he is keen to reopen schools but not so keen to say when his group might
disarm its youth.

Besides, a spokesman for the Patriotic Movement said, the children are not
allowed to handle heavy weapons, only AK-47's. When they joyride, firing off
their weapons, it is only for fun, he said.

As squabbling continues over who will rule this divided country,
international aid workers, seasoned in the conflicts of the region, warn
that precious time is slipping away for those who are the most vulnerable
victims of disorder as well as some of its ideal hosts: children.

Heedless, rebel leaders treat the subject of children in their ranks with
utter blitheness. In Africa, one commander said, they look younger than they
are.







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