COLOMBIAN KIDS JOIN REBELS - OR ELSE

And If They Manage To Flee, They're Hunted Down And
Murdered

BOGOTA -- A large, rather rundown house in a quiet suburb of Bogota
does not seem a likely place for insight into the horrors inflicted on
children in Colombia's civil war.

But the house is a secret rehabilitation center for children as young
as 11 who once fought for the guerrilla armies in Colombia's 37-year
civil conflict.

Francisco is 13. Always fiddling and tapping his foot, he is so shy he
cannot look up as he talks -- too shy to seem like a cop-killer, but he
killed a policeman with a hand grenade when he was 12.

He fled the guerrillas because he wanted to see his mother, and could
not understand why his parents greeted his return with horror and told
him to give himself up to the army: The guerrillas kill all deserters,
no matter what their age.

Adriana is a 17-year-old with a lovely smile that she rarely reveals.
She is a veteran of five years service with the Marxist guerrillas of
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish
acronym, FARC.

"I took part in two attacks, one on a police station and another on an
army base," she said. "I just remember the wounded, some of them my
friends. One of them took a grenade to the chest." She looked down at
her own small frame and began to point to various points across her
body. "He was hit everywhere; there were bits of grenade all through
his body. The worse thing was that he didn't die."

At 16, while she was on sentry duty, she fled, running for more than
two weeks, dodging guerrilla patrols, until she found an army garrison
and turned herself in.

A Child Every 2 Hours

A child is killed every two hours in Colombia as a result of the civil
conflict, according to UNICEF. Both the Marxist guerrillas and their
right-wing paramilitary foes use minors in their ranks, although the
FARC is guiltier by far. The National Department of Statistics
estimates that at least 6,000 minors are fighting in the civil conflict
now, and the number is growing as the civil war escalates.

The FARC's ranks include an estimated 30-plus percent of minors, and
they freely admit that they recruit children from 15 onward. In fact,
the minimum age limit is often much lower than that.

All the kids at the rehabilitation center had volunteered to join the
guerrillas, mainly the FARC, and most of them are from impoverished
peasant families. Francisco said his parents had urged him to join the
guerrillas, "because they said I would get a good meal every day and
some clothes."

With few economic or educational opportunities, the children are
attracted by the status of being a guerrilla or paramilitary. In the
half of the country that the various illegal armies control, they are
seen as the only law and government.

Earlier this month, the FARC tried to take a key communications center
on Mount Montezuma, some 160 miles east of the capital. The military
replied with heavy reinforcements and airstrikes. After the dust of
battle had settled, soldiers recovered the bodies of 15 minors among
the guerrilla dead.

'Little Bells'

The paramilitaries also use children, but more for intelligence-
gathering and as scouts. They are often referred to as "little bells"
by the right-wing death squads for the warning they provide. They also
have to witness the massacres and tortures that are the hallmark of the
strategy of paramilitary groups against suspected left-wing
sympathizers.

But children are suffering not just by fighting in the ranks the
warring factions or becoming inadvertent targets of the warfare.

They also make up the majority of the estimated 2 million people who
have been displaced by the civil conflict in the last 15 years. Last
year alone, according to figures compiled by human rights groups,
180,000 children were displaced, chased from their homes by the civil
conflict, often seeing members of their families murdered by the
warring factions.

Colombia has long been the kidnap capital of the world, with 3,000
abductions recorded last year, the majority by leftist guerrillas who
use the ransoms to fund their war against the state. Now, a new twist
has been added: the kidnapping of minors, at an average of almost one a
day so far this year.

"The kidnappers have switched to taking children, as they know they
will get the ransoms much faster," said Hernando Ortego of the
government's anti-kidnap department. "A parent will do almost anything
to get a child back, and the kidnappers have been using this to
lucrative effect."

If Peace Ever Comes

The problems will not end with peace, should it ever come to Colombia.
After 37 years of civil conflict, three generations of children have
been traumatized, witnesses to violence almost beyond comprehension.

"How do we show the young that violence is not a real option to solve
matters?" said Juan Pablo Urrutia, the director of the Family Welfare
Institute. "There are literally millions of children over the last 40
years who have grown up amid horrific violence. You cannot just rub it
out."

He predicts it will take three generations after peace has been
declared to heal the scars.

The war certainly not over for Adriana. She will live with her
experiences, and fear, for the rest of her life.

"I can't really leave here," she said looking out of the window. "I am
marked, and cannot walk out on the streets, as there are guerrillas
everywhere and they will kill me. I just can't relax, I cannot visit my
family, because it's so dangerous."