Chad's boy soldiers slowly grasp lost childhood
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N'DJAMENA  - In an anonymous compound in Chad's capital N'Djamena, young boys clad in matching shirts play volleyball, shrieking and clapping with delight.
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FURAWIYAH, Sudan -- Rummaging through the ashy debris of this abandoned village in a dingy gray suit, Moussa Safi is like a ghost in a ghost town.
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Former child soldiers in  southern Sudan are failing to settle back into their  communities and instead are picking up guns to fight again, a  U.N. official said on Thursday.
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NAIK NAM, Afghanistan -- Saher Gul was chalking a long division lesson on the blackboard of his two-room village school. Twenty-five boys, ages 9 to 19, were sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor. Suddenly the earthen walls and ceiling exploded and collapsed, smothering the class in a mountain of rubble.
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About all Wanga Guerra remembered about this village in eastern Angola was that it was home. And after 19 years as a war refugee in Congo, he said, he had been eager to return, build a house and raise his daughter in their ancestral village, just a few steps from the huts of his siblings and parents.
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Former child soldiers in southern Sudan are failing to settle back into their communities and instead are picking up guns to fight again, a U.N. official said on Thursday.
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JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 7 -- Tens of thousands of Chadians who fled fighting last weekend remained hunkered down in a Cameroonian border town Thursday, as the United Nations and aid groups raced to head off mass hunger or an outbreak of disease among the refugees, humanitarian officials said.
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The grim monotony of waiting had been punctuated only by stomach-churning sounds &#151; the clatter of gunfire, the boom of grenade launchers. Then came an announcement that gripped parents with a forgotten emotion: Hope.
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JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip -- One moment, Suleyman abu Foul was at the breakfast table, asking his mother for food. The next, the 15-year-old Palestinian had slipped out unnoticed into a neighborhood torn by more than a week of combat.
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DOGDORE, Chad The sun beat down on 18-month-old Izzedine Adam, who sat naked and crying on the floor of his roofless straw hut. His mother cannot afford a sturdier home or ev en clothes to protect him from the cold desert nights. For now, she is just trying to find enough food to keep him alive.
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KABUL, Afghanistan -- The room was carpeted and cozy, warm from the wood stove and filled with the chatter of children. But the tales their mothers and older sisters told recently, speaking hesitantly even in the safety of a guarded private shelter, were bone-chilling.
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"Little man, I love you! Mommy misses you," Spec. Amy Shaw spoke softly as she looked into the video camera in her Baghdad barracks, surrounded by photographs of tiny Connor James, the infant son she left behind in Wisconsin. "Mommy'll be home soon."
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A shy toddler with a strange name is one thread in a larger story of Africans now rebuilding interrupted lives - sometimes after decades of war.
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One of the soldiers has proudly served in the military for 10 years. Another passed up a chance to remain safely at home, instead re-enlisting in the Army Reserve and heading to Iraq so "the young kids in that unit" would have someone experienced alongside them.
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The case of the youngest detainee at GuantÃ¡namo Bay has implications as large as the growing ranks of child soldiers worldwide.
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Iraqi children are haunted by dreams of bad guys wielding knives or kidnapping relatives. For some, like 13-year-old Zaman, the nightmares become reality. She was abducted, beaten and threatened with rape.
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Fleeing militias with thousands of other boys, John Dau walked for years with no destination. Now in the U.S., he struggles with culture shock but has found his direction.