Rescuing Former Child Soldiers

Sayed Rahman, 18, speaks with a high-pitched voice and still has no trace of a beard. He shuffles along in boots that are too big and holds an old British-made gun in his small hands. He says he has been a soldier for two years, fighting with an Afghan militia unit in the northern city of Kunduz.

Rahman says he wants to learn a trade but needs help to change his life. He envies his older friends who have taken part in the UN-sponsored disarmament initiative. At least 7,000 soldiers have laid down their weapons under the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration programme, DDR, in exchange for job training to help them return to civilian life.

“I regret that I fought and I hate the war. It took everything from us,” Rahman told IWPR. “I have studied [until] sixth class. If there was not war, I would have already finished school now.”

Rahman is one of thousands of former underage soldiers who have fought with Afghan militias. A new programme, launched by the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, seeks to assist them. More than 200 youths have already been demobilised in Konduz alone since the programme began in February, according to Edward Carwardine, a UNICEF spokesman in Kabul.

According to the UN agency, a child soldier is any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity, including cooks, porters, messengers and anyone accompanying such groups, other than family members. The definition includes girls recruited for sexual purposes and for forced marriage.

UNICEF estimates that there are 8,000 former child soldiers in Afghanistan, many of whom have already left the fighting forces informally over the past year. The current programme is designed to assist 5,000 of them this year alone, Carwardine said. In addition to Konduz, similar programmes are under way in Badakhshan, Takhar, Baghlan and Bamian provinces. Overall, more than 1,000 youths have already been demobilised, Carwardine said.

Since the programme started in Konduz on February 10, hundreds of young people have come forward claiming to have been child soldiers. But only a portion of them actually qualify for the programme. It appears that some militia leaders have encouraged youths and regular soldiers to apply for the programme because they “thought that they might receive some incentives for handing over the soldiers and young people”, a UNICEF official in Mazar-e-Sharif told IWPR.

Of 500 youths who have applied in Kunduz, about 150 were determined to be eligible. The others were found to have had no combat experience, UNICEF officials said.

Those that do qualify first undergo a complete medical checkup, which includes screening for drug addiction and HIV, provided by the International Medical Corp under contract with the UN. After vowing not to join the military again, they are given an identity card and become eligible for continuing education programmes or vocational training in areas such as metal working or tailoring.

They are also taught about the danger of land mines and given instructions on AIDS prevention and basic health issues.

Publicity about the programme in the region still appears limited. Rahman, along with several other young soldiers and even General Mohammad Daoud, commander of the Sixth Military Corps, said they were unaware of the programme.

General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Afghan defence ministry, said that recruits for the New Afghan Army cadets must be at least 22-years-old. Azimi also said that until he was informed by IWPR, he was unaware of the initiative to demobilise young soldiers.

“They used these children in wars,” he said. “Who used them and how many of them were used and which group used them, I don't know. The government has nothing to do with these issues."

There appears to be no shortage of genuine candidates for the UNICEF programme.

Wasil Ahmad says he be became a soldier with the Eighth Infantry Division of the Jamiat-e-Islami faction when he was 14. He claims that he fought against the Taleban in the Shamali Plain, north of Kabul, until the fundamentalist regime fell in 2001. He says he continued to serve in the military unit since then.

Ahmad says there were many soldiers his age fighting the Taleban and that most had joined the militias to earn money for their families. He says he stopped going to school after the fourth or fifth grade.

“We were made by the [actions of the] Taleban to take weapons and fight against them,” he said. “They burned our houses, and we were obliged to get armed.”

Now 21, Ahmad would welcome help finding a new occupation.

Zubairullah, 18, says he was a member of Ittehad-e-Islami, a militia faction led by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a warlord based in Paghman near Kabul. Zubairullah says he quit the militia when the Taleban were defeated and he stopped receiving his monthly salary of about 1,800 afganis. He currently works at the Pushta-e-Cheltan stone mine in Paghman.

Mir Habib, also 18, says he spent two two years fighting with Ittehad-e-Islami’s rapid-reaction division under Commander Haji Sher Alam. He too says he eventually quit because he was not being paid on time. He also now works at the stone mine in Paghman for about 30 afganis a day, blasting rocks out of the quarry and loading them onto trucks to be taken to building sites.

Lutf-u-Rahman, 22, says he became a soldier with Jamiat-e-Islami, the faction that controls the Sixth Military Corps, when he was 17. He says he would like a different kind of life but doesn’t know where to start, and was unaware that he might be eligible for the UN programme.

“I’m still a soldier,” he said. “I don’t have money to make a shop or start some other job. As long as the government doesn’t help us and provide us with jobs, we can’t do anything on our own.”

Lutf-u-Rahman expresses regret over the years he spent fighting. “It looks like we wasted our ... time in fighting and in war,” he said. “Now I am 22 and I need to have a house and a job. But I have nothing except a weapon to carry and [barely enough food for three meals a day].”

Hasina Rasuli and Ahmad Khalid Sakhi, freelance journalists in Kunduz and Kabul respectively, are IWPR contributors.