Times: A Sudanese boy forcibly recruited by the Rapid Support Militia yearns to return to school | policy

The British newspaper The Times interviewed a 16-year-old boy who was forced to join the ranks of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces to fight against the Sudanese National Army in the war that has been raging since April last year.

Although Muhammad – this is the name the British newspaper gave him – had never used a firearm before, one of the militia leaders ordered him to shoot anyone who moved.

He told newspaper correspondent Jane Flanagan, who interviewed him about his first battle in the war: “It was easy and not what I thought. I did not see where the bullets hit. They may have killed civilians or soldiers. I ask God to forgive me.”

The reward that Muhammad received was a military uniform and combat boots from his new commander, who told him: “It seems as if you have been fighting with us for a long time. You are a good soldier.”

Weeks before the interview, Mohamed was nearly shot when he was kidnapped from a street in central Sudan and forced into the ranks of the Rapid Support Forces, which grew out of the Janjaweed militia that committed genocide, the Times reported.

Beating, torture and starvation

The newspaper pointed out that the Rapid Support Forces used beatings, torture, and starvation to recruit hundreds of men and boys to fight the Sudanese Armed Forces in order to control “what remained of the country.” As for those who refuse, they expose themselves to the possibility of being executed without trial.

After his hands were stained with blood in the first battle, Mohammed was deemed fit to join the “killing and looting” campaign launched by the Rapid Support Forces in the villages of Gezira State, to which his family was displaced from the capital, Khartoum, when the civil war broke out in April last year.

He said of his role in the conflict that displaced 10 million people, fleeing horrific atrocities: “I thought every day I sat on the back of the military vehicle would be my last day. I was not prepared for what would happen.”

I became a thief

The newspaper’s correspondent stated that as soon as the Rapid Support Forces invaded the villages, Muhammad and other boy fighters began plundering homes, markets, and banks, and stripping the lands of livestock.

He also volunteered to slaughter looted sheep for his officers, and was rewarded with the heads of the sacrifices to eat. During one of the raids, he kept a phone. He said: “I felt guilty because I had never stolen. Oh my God, I had become a thief and a murderer.”

But he avoided rape gangs, adding: “When they don’t find young girls, they attack old women instead.”

The newspaper explained that the Rapid Support Forces and the Arab militias allied with them use rape to subjugate and distort societies. Women and girls are bearing the brunt of 17 months of war with no end in sight.

He plans to escape

The reporter said that Muhammad is planning to escape, and seems concerned about his family, who fear that he might be harmed.

In one of the villages besieged by the “terrorism” campaign launched by the Rapid Support Forces, he and another teenage person – a forced conscript – stopped outside a looted school. “We were just looking at the building,” Mohammed said.

He continued: “I was thinking about my high school near my home and playing football with my friends, when my colleague (the teenage soldier) told me this is where we should be, not killing people with these criminals.”

The ongoing conflict deprives all of Sudan’s 19 million school-age children of their right to education.

Sudan food basket

According to the newspaper, Mohammed’s teenage companions were swept up in the Rapid Support Forces attack on the island, turning the state, which is Sudan’s breadbasket, into a battlefield at the height of the harvest season.

The Times went on to say that foreign and regional powers, tempted by Sudan’s natural resources, took sides. Closed borders prevented aid from reaching those in need.

It quoted the latest Amnesty International report that there are many countries that supply both sides of the conflict with weapons.

Chance to escape

She said that an air strike was launched by the Sudanese army on a convoy of vehicles, one of which Muhammad was aboard, and he survived, but it killed many members of the Rapid Support Forces and dispersed the rest. This was his chance to escape – according to the Times – and after he felt safe, he called his mother on the phone he had looted.

He spent hours walking to the city of Rifa’a, located on the banks of the Nile in Gezira State, where his father traveled to search for him.

Muhammad said he found refuge in a mosque while he waited for his father. He said at his grandfather’s house in the city of Omdurman, near Khartoum, “I cried over what I saw and did, thanking God for my survival.”

It’s not what it used to be

It has been 4 months since he escaped. His mother, Fatima, says: “He has become calmer. I no longer feel like he is the son I knew.”

Muhammad does not know the fate of the other child soldiers who were trapped with him, and he is now busy studying his school books, absorbed by the same thoughts that helped him stay alive, according to the newspaper.

The Times concluded its report with an expressive comment from Muhammad, in which he said: “I don’t want to think about anything else but returning to study. I want to think about anything but staying with the Rapid Support Forces.”