Children Of Death
Young Ray Benedict killed “plenty-oh” with his grenade launcher during Liberia’s war, becoming famous on the streets of Monrovia.
Rambo Farley fought on the other side, using an automatic rifle almost as long as he is tall.
Ray and Rambo traded their childhoods for a chance to kill. Now they are trying to get on with their lives in the city they looted and leveled.
Nearly deaf after launching rocket-propelled grenades from his shoulder for the past six years, Ray sits on a quiet beach with fellow fighters who survived the war, joking and talking about friends who did not.
Ray, who looks about 20 but is unsure of his age, says he came to Monrovia for the first time on April 12 when warlord Charles Taylor brought in reinforcements for his National Patriotic Front of Liberia faction.
Taylor launched Liberia’s civil war in December 1989 to oust the corrupt government of President Samuel Doe. His and six other factions have been battling for control of the country ever since.
The fighting moved into the capital in April, when the interim government tried to arrest a faction leader on murder charges and thousands of young fighters flocked in from the countryside to back their leaders.
One of those fighters was Ray.
Unable to spell his own last name, Ray is shaky on the details of his past. He says he was recruited by the NPFL in 1990 and taken from his village to Taylor’s headquarters in Gbarnga. Since then he has been launching grenades.
“They told me there would be advantages if I was a soldier in Gbarnga,” Ray said. “Not money, but I’d be defending my country.”
When he came to Monrovia, Ray quickly earned a reputation as the most efficient killer on the front line. He was the only fighter who used a rocket launcher to strike down groups of rivals.
Younger boys without weapons made toy grenade-launchers from fire extinguishers and ketchup bottles and carted them in the streets to imitate his courage. Rival fighters on the other side often shook their heads, mumbling “Hey, Ray” when his white flash made another building burst into flames.
“The people I killed, I killed them because they wanted to take Monrovia,” Ray said. “The people I killed - plenty-oh.”
Many of the NPFL’s young fighters, including Ray, will soon be taken back to Gbarnga, but for now Ray and his friends spend their days exploring what remains of Monrovia, walking through the refugee camps carrying radios instead of rocket launchers and being treated for the most part as heroes of war.
In Liberia and in Sierra Leone, Angola and Sudan, boys - and often girls - have been used by their elders to fight their countries’ civil wars. The United Nations estimates there are 200,000 children bearing arms among some 25 nations currently at war.
In Sierra Leone, some 1,000 children last year were ordered to put down their guns and head to U.N.-sponsored camps for former child soldiers. In Liberia, the estimated 6,000 children soldiers under age 15 have few such options.
In a tiny Monrovia room turned into a makeshift movie theater, school-age children sit in rows watching a Charles Bronson video. Among them is a small boy who calls himself Rambo Farley.
The same size as the other boys, Rambo acts older, leaning back in his chair, not throwing as much popcorn. Unlike the others, two days earlier Rambo was a fighter on the front line. Not much taller than the assault rifle he struggled to shoulder, the young ULIMO-J soldier says he is 16.
When the city exploded in early April, Rambo lived near the compound where those loyal to ULIMO-J leader Roosevelt Johnson took shelter. Rambo’s parents fled the daily shelling of the compound, but Rambo stayed behind, was given a weapon, and followed older fighters every day to battle on the streets.
There is now an uncertain calm in Monrovia, but Rambo’s parents have not returned and he remains here, relying on fellow rebels or displaced civilians to share food or floor space.
Squatting on the ground sharing a bowl of rice with the children of a civilian family, Rambo is unsure of his future, but knows he has few options.