Posted on 12/25/2003 2:18:04 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
An estimated 11,000 Colombian children are celebrating Christmas among the country's guerrilla forces, says a report by Human Rights Watch.
Girls and boys as young as 12 are forced to conduct executions, engage in combat operations, assemble anti-personnel mines or become concubines of middle-aged commanders in what is one of the most tragic side dramas of South America's longest-running civil conflict.
The two-year study based on interviews with more than 100 minors who have surrendered to authorities or been captured by Colombia's security services concludes that one out of every four guerrilla fighters is under the age of 18. Despite claims by the revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the National Liberation Front, and paramilitary groups that they don't recruit youngsters under 15, drafting children may have actually increased over recent years as it becomes more difficult for the narco-guerrilla organizations to attract committed adults.
Trained mercenaries cost money and are generally relegated to specialized tasks such as rigging car bombs, leaving the children to serve as cannon fodder for the rebel groups, say Colombian government officials who helped the New York-based group compile its report.
The plight of Colombia's child soldiers first came to the attention of authorities three years ago during "Operation Berlin," one of the first army offensives to clear FARC positions from mountains around Bogota.
"We were horrified to find that many of the uniformed guerrillas lying dead in the field or camouflaged in foxholes were pre-pubescents", said one major whose air-mobile battalion stormed the guerrilla camps. Some could have been as young as 8 or 9, said the officer.
A young girl, Angela, who was taken prisoner after being wounded in the leg, told her story to the human rights group.
Coming from a poverty-stricken broken home, she was induced to join FARC with promises of money and independence.
"The only other future I could see was begging on the streets", she says.
But at the age of 12, Angela instead found herself being conditioned to kill as an insurgent leader who forced her to execute a friend.
"She had broken the rules and had to be killed" Angela told HRW. "I closed my eyes and shot the weapon but didn't get her. Then I fired again. The grave had been dug up beside her and I had to bury her."
"You did it very well" the FARC commander commended her, said Angela. "You are going to have to do it many more times and learn not to cry," she claims to have been told.
Killings are a standard method to keep the young recruits in line. A boy who spent four years with the ELN recalls how one girl who came from a staunchly Catholic family was executed for going to church.
Both FARC and ELN are left-wing groups that are on the U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations.
While many children willingly join the guerrillas to escape abject poverty or abusive parents, others are press-ganged into service. One girl Johanna said she had a normal and happy home life until being suddenly kidnapped together with other school friends in December 2000.
"Four men armed with assault rifles took me from the street, forced me into a van and drove me to their camp," she said. "I missed my home and cried a lot but after a while I just got used to it."
Johanna was eventually allowed to see her parents but was always guarded by guerrilla minders listening to every word she said.
Some children are also sold by relatives. An orphaned boy from the Pacific coast region of Choco, one of Colombia's poorest areas and most fertile guerrilla recruiting grounds, says an uncle who had friends in FARC exchanged him for money when he was 7.
Besides the ever-present threat of death, discipline is continually enforced through torture. A 10-year-old boy who disobeyed orders to kill a friend was locked up in a cell and soaked in sugared water so insects would bite him, Human Rights Watch said.
Angela reports being tied to a tree for days for refusing to get an abortion when she became pregnant. Another 16-year-old girl says her commander raped her though many female teens say they willingly sleep with guerrilla leaders, who are often in their 40s or 50s, to obtain favors such as permission to see their families, extra recreation time, videos and alcohol.
But for most of the children, life in the guerrilla ranks is a constant challenge to their psychological and physical endurance. From the earliest possible age, they are trained to undergo forced marches through jungle and mountain terrain, surviving on one can of Spam or tuna fish a day.
While many military analysts dismiss FARC's reliance on minors as a sign of desperation, others believe conditioning its members in military skills and a Spartan existence from infancy is an essential factor in the insurgent group's ability to survive as a fighting force.
Adolfo recalls his first combat action at age 12.
"We waited among the tall grass in position to ambush an army column. We weren't allowed to move. Entire days and nights passed by until finally the order came, shooting started and all hell broke loose."
Xaviera tells how when she just turned 14, her commander ordered her to drink the blood of massacred paramilitaries as she saw their dismembered bodies piled up inside the house of a village that had just been taken.
Colombia's Interior Ministry has set up a special program for the hundreds of child soldiers who give themselves up or are captured by authorities every year. They are kept in rural farmhouses, caring for animals and fruit groves while being readapted to a normal existence until they turn 18.
But a leading psychiatrist who has treated them fears full recovery from their brutal conditioning is likely to be difficult if not altogether impossible.
"At least some of the demobilized youngsters will return to being associated with groups outside the law," said Dr. Jiovani Arias. "The more sensitive ones are likely to be deeply scared by guilty feelings for the rest of their lives."
Most efforts to reunite child guerrillas with their families have failed.
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