Ishmael Beah

“I believe children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.”
-- Ishmael Beah, from his book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Washington -- Ishmael Beah saw and did some horrible things during the civil war that wracked Sierra Leone -- all when he was just a young teen.

But with some support and good luck, he is now able to extend a helping hand to children who have been pressed into combat.

At age 12, Beah lost his family when the rebel army, known as the Revolutionary United Front, attacked his town. Running away from the carnage, he wandered the countryside for nearly a year with other frightened boys his age. Finally, he and his little group happened into a government army base and quickly were recruited as soldiers to fight the war.

Indoctrinated to believe he was defending his country and fed a combination of narcotics to make him fierce, he found that “killing became as easy as drinking water,” he writes in his book, A Long Way Gone.

At 15 he was removed from the battlefields by UNICEF and rehabilitated in a facility run by a nongovernmental organization known as “Children Associated With the War.” Eventually, he made his way to the United States, where he graduated from college and wrote his poignant memoirs, which received international acclaim.

Today, Beah, at 28, is the UNICEF advocate for children affected by war and travels the world to lobby for government and private support to rehabilitate and reintegrate former child soldiers into society.

BEACONS OF HOPE

“People think once you go through this as a child, you’re finished, you can’t recover,” Beah told America.gov. “That’s not true.”

With the proper care and support, former child combatants can live meaningful lives, he said.

Beah acknowledged he is among the luckiest and most publicly visible of these rehabilitation “success stories.” But he emphasized: “I want people to know that it’s not just me, that there are other people as well, so people [can] see the diversity of the success stories.”

To this end, Beah said, he is working to form an association of former child soldiers who can speak publicly about how to help other victimized children and “serve as role models for young people who are coming out of this [recovery] process.”

“Everyone heals differently,” Beah said, adding that some would rather forget what they went through and not relive the horrors by talking about them.

Regarding his own terrible memories, Beah said: “Whether I speak about this or not, it will always come up in my head. It’s part of my existence. My life is colored with those experiences. I’ve lived to transform them and live with them well. So, for me, if it’s going to come up anyway, I might as well use it in a way that benefits all the people.”

Beah said when he and fellow former child combatants talk among themselves, “it’s not in sensationalist terms, [but] in terms not dwelling on the negative. … Mostly, we’re speaking about the transformative element of it.”

He said he hopes to have his association of former child combatants ready to introduce to the public within the next few months.

MAJOR CHALLENGES

Commenting on his current work with UNICEF, Beah said that most governments that do not have to deal with child soldiers are not particularly interested in the issue. And governments or rebel groups that use children “don’t want to talk about it much, because they don’t want to show that their human rights record is horrible because they are allowing children to be used.”

Leaders responsible for child soldiers should face justice, Beah urged. “You cannot prosecute everyone who had anything to do with the war,” he said. “But you have to go after the orchestrators, the ‘big fish,’ the people who really knew what this would do to the society and did it.”

Prosecuting these leaders “sets a precedent that if you do this, there is nowhere you can hide in the world, that people come after you,” Beah said. “The International Criminal Court is trying to do that, to a large extent, but we need more support.”

MAKING IT PERSONAL

Beah recommends that individuals or groups interested in helping former child combatants “take time to find out what it is that you can actually do to help somebody, as opposed to being a ‘blind giver.’”

Individuals with specific skills -- such as guidance counseling or psychological care -- can find ways to work with former child combatants seeking to live normal lives.

“Make it genuine and personal,” Beah said. “That’s the only way you can do something sustainable.”