BABES IN ARMS.

Is there a future for the child fighters of Sierra Leone?

With more than six years of frontline fighting experience, T.S. is a seasoned soldier. During raids of villages along the border of his country, he has "killed so many, mostly soldiers," he says. So violent are his war memories that he suffers from nightmares nearly every night.

T.S. is 12 years old.

At an age when most boys! biggest worry is homework or soccer practice, T.S. (pictured above) has already spent half his life forced to fight as part of the rebel forces in the war-torn country of Sierra Leone in Africa. Seven years ago--when he was only 6--rebels raided his village, killed both his parents, and abducted him.

Told that his new job was to "fight for freedom in Sierra Leone," T.S. (whose name has been abbreviated to protect his identity) and other young boys were injected with cocaine or forced to ingest gunpowder, which acts as a stimulant, before they were sent out on daybreak attacks. After a daylong raid, they were given a narcotic to make them sleep for hours.

Although he once escaped to a safe house for ex-combatants, the other boys there teased and beat him because of his nightmares and bed-wetting, so he joined the rebel forces again. Now, thanks to the help of a program run by a missionary priest, T.S. has agreed never to take up arms again and hopes to learn a trade.

T.S. is one of some 3,000 children who have been coerced into fighting for the rebel or civilian defense forces during Sierra Leone's eight-year civil war. With the brokering of the July peace agreement, the task of rehabilitating these physically and psychologically wounded children has become paramount. Reunification with their families is difficult, if not impossible, because many children cannot return to the villages where they slaughtered their own people.

That's why Xaverian Father Giuseppe Berton opened St. Michael's Lodge, a center for former "baby soldiers" in Lakka Town, several miles south of the capital city of Freetown. Berton returned to Sierra Leone in September, after fleeing the country in January following his capture and release by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

Some 500 children who escaped or were handed over to UNICEF have benefited from St. Michael's services, which include counseling, medical assistance, schooling, and skills training. Although some are reunited with their families, many are awaiting placement with foster families.

Xaverian Father Rocco Puopolo, a U.S. missionary who spent 11 years in Sierra Leone, believes child soldiers are "the No. 1 victims of the war."

"They have been more traumatized than anyone they victimized," says Puopolo, who was evacuated to the United States in January after being wounded during a raid in Kenema.

According to a Human Rights Watch report, an estimated 300,000 children serve as soldiers around the world. U.S.-made lightweight weaponry makes it possible for boys as young as 8 to be armed, while the children's unpredictability is seen as making them better fighters. Child soldiers are cheaper to feed, less demanding, and more easily manipulated.

For years, the United Nations has tried to ban the use of child soldiers in armed conflict. A broad prohibition was to be incorporated into a new international agreement on child labor, but the United States opposed it to protect its 7,000 minors employed in the military.

In Sierra Leone, both the RUF and the pro-government local militia, the Kamajors --who did much of the frontline fighting for the West African peacekeeping force, ECOMOG--recruited young boys as soldiers.

Often dragged away from the dead bodies of their parents and siblings, child soldiers forced into the RUF were threatened with death if they escaped. Girls as young as 12 were raped and required to become "wives" of rebel commanders. Mutilation through amputation of arms and legs was used to terrorize civilians, both old and young, into not supporting the government.

The Kamajors are the traditional hunters of the Mende tribe. Often, these children volunteered to defend their bush villages against rebel forces, believing that an initiation ceremony gave them magical powers that deflect enemy bullets.

Because of widespread government corruption, "some were seduced because they saw no future in the way it is," says Puopolo.

Now that rebel forces are surrendering, the child soldiers face an even bleaker future. Most haven't attended school in years, if ever. They are unskilled, except in killing. And the peace in Sierra Leone is shaky, at best.

"It's going to take a long time," says Puopolo. "It's not going to be a quick fix."

MARTIN LUEDERS is a photographer living in Washington, D.C HEIDI SCHLUMPF is assistant editor of U.S. CATHOLIC.