Africa News blog

War child sings songs of peace

“When you see a Sudanese walking on the street there is a story,” child soldier turned hip-hop star Emmanuel Jal says.

That’s certainly true for Jal. He was sent to fight for Sudan People’s Liberation Army when he was just six years old.

The exact dates are sketchy, but in about 1987, his village in southern Sudan was attacked by soldiers loyal to the Khartoum government, during more than two decades of north-south civil war.

His mother was killed and he was taken into the SPLA and taught to fire a rifle he was barely strong enough to hold. With the help of a British aid worker, he managed to escape to neighbouring Kenya and today is known for his music and messages of peace.

More than 20,000 child soldiers have been demobilised since the war that killed 2 million people ended in 2005.

His experience was turned into a documentary, “War Child”, which he went back to Kenya from his base in London to promote.

“Kenya is my home, this is where I became known as a rapper … so I’m bringing the movie home to see what had happened into the neighbouring country, for them to know why we are refugees here,” he told Reuters Africa Journal in Kenya.

What future for southern Sudan?

It’s less than a year before Sudan’s first ever national election, so what are people thinking in the south of the country, in an area blighted by two decades of fighting?

In the village of Leer, reminders of civil war are everywhere, such as a large hole where most of the village would crouch, hiding from bomber planes and helicopter gunships.

 James Chuol, who is now 27 years old, fought in the war as one of thousands of children recruited to fight for the southern rebels. He is now a teacher.

“We went to the bush as child soldiers and we were really like children … We were trained by the big people how to fight the enemy, how to hide ourselves in the bush,” he told Reuters Africa Journal.

The war between north and south started in 1983. In 2005 the two sides signed a comprehensive peace agreement.

According to the agreement, southern Sudan will have a referendum in 2011 to decide whether it will be independent from the north. The country will hold joint elections next year.

Putting Africa on trial?

Look down the list of the cases the International Criminal Court is pursuing – Congo, Central African Republic, Darfur, Uganda – and it doesn’t take long to spot the connection.

Of the dozen arrest warrants the court has issued, all have been against African rebels or officials. On Monday, the court begins its first trial - of Thomas Lubanga, accused of recruiting child soldiers to wage a gruesome ethnic war in northeastern Congo. Earlier this month, former Congolese rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba was in court for a decision on whether to confirm charges of ordering mass rape to terrorise civilians in the Central African Republic.

The judges are also deciding whether to indict their first head of state, Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accused by the court’s prosecutor of instigating genocide and other war crimes in Darfur. All those being pursued by the prosecutor reject the accusations against them.

There is no doubt there were atrocities in all the conflicts in question – families, villages and countries scarred for ever by murders, rapes, mutilations, kidnappings and burnings.

The question is why the court is only targeting conflicts in Africa, which may have a higher proportion of troubles than other continents, but certainly has no monopoly on evil. Ongoing or recent conflicts elsewhere include Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia-Georgia, Israel-Palestinians and Sri Lanka among others.

“We have the feeling that this court is chasing Africa,” Benin’s president, Thomas Boni Yayi, commented last year of the moves to prosecute Sudanese President Bashir. Boni Yayi is no maverick. He is the leader of a peaceful pro-Western country with a record of democracy as good as any on the continent.

One explanation for the ICC’s focus on Africa could be that justice systems on the continent are not in a position to pursue those accused of war crimes.

Managing anger in the Niger delta

Much of the news that comes out of the Niger Delta, the vast network of creeks home to Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry, is generated either by militant leaders claiming spectacular attacks on oil industry installations or by the military, keen to publicise its victories flushing out crude oil thieves from camps nestled deep in the mangroves.

Rarely heard are the voices of the “boys” who have taken up arms and make up the rank and file of the militant gangs. Oil theft on an industrial scale or kidnappings for ransom make some of their bosses rich. Peace negotiations see others rewarded with the veneer of political legitimacy and a comfortable new government-funded lifestyle. But the grunts tend to share little of the spoils.

So an initiative to take them out of the militant camps and send them abroad to be immersed in the teachings of non-violent activists from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela raised – after the initial scepticism – a strong dose of curiosity. After the attempt to “reorientate their psyches”, the candidates would be schooled in skills meant to make them employable once they returned back home.

Would they be convinced that they could renounce violence and still fight for their rights? Did they really believe that theirs was a political struggle or were they simply interested in emulating some of their leaders and growing rich from stolen crude, ransom money and government pay-offs?