In South Sudan, a child soldier long thought dead comes back

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) – She had no body to bury, so the grieving mother kneeled in the dirt outside her small hut, recited psalms and simply traced her finger over the uneven earth.
It was December 2015, a year after Nyayan Koang’s boy was abducted by government soldiers at the age of just 14 to fight in South Sudan’s army. Now Koang was told that her James was dead, from a gunshot to his leg. She was so broken, she could hardly move.
She invited just a few close friends, relatives and priests to the funeral. But people from across town poured in anyway to pay their respects to the mother of the fallen soldier, yet another casualty in a bitter civil war that has left more than 50,000 people dead.
“We were all crying,” Koang said. “I didn’t believe he was gone.”
It would take almost two years for Koang to discover that she was right – her son was alive.
James was one of an estimated 18,000 children fighting in South Sudan, which has more child soldiers than any other country, according to the United Nations. The youth fight for either government or opposition forces in the world’s newest nation, pawns in an ethnic war that the U.N. has warned could spiral into genocide.
About 1,500 children were victims of incidents such as abductions and attacks on schools in 2016 alone, according to UNICEF. Child soldiers can be seen standing stone-faced outside the buildings they guard, often with two or three Kalashnikovs slung around their small frames.
James is a shy boy with a piercing gaze and a tendency to retreat into himself, who can hardly walk except with a cane. He tells his story with the intensity of someone who relives it in his dreams, with one arm tightly hugging his stomach as if to protect himself from the memories. The AP is only using his first name, for fear he could be recruited again by government soldiers.
James’ father died when he was young, leaving him to care for his disabled mother and five younger siblings. He looked after the cows, tended the farm and provided the family with daily fish in Koch County, one of the areas most affected by the conflict. Government soldiers would come to James’ village to round up children, and he would hide in the bush.
One day in February 2014, as James set out for the river as usual, his mother warned him to be careful of the bad men. He told her not to worry, and that he’d be home later.
That was the last time she saw him.
James and 10 other boys were fishing in a pond about 25 minutes from his house when they saw dozens of men with rifles. The soldiers bound the boys’ small arms behind their backs with their shirts, shouting, “We’ll finish the opposition!” James realized he might be forced to kill his own people, because the opposition was his tribe, the Nuer.
The soldiers stripped the boys, aged 12 to 14, to their underwear. Then they crammed them into the cargo bed of a pickup truck.
After several hours in the truck, bound and petrified, the boys arrived at army headquarters. They were brought before the commander. As he thrashed each boy in turn with a rubber wire, the others could hear the screams.
James was given a choice: Join the army or die.