Yasmina with her grandmother and nurse Arinkunda.
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA -- Yasmina Muhiddin is just six years old. Her face may not betray her age, but her little frame has endured more than its share of pain.
A few months ago, Muhiddin was outside playing with her friends in front of her home. The kids could hear gunshots from a distance, but that is a regular occurrence here. The kids were undeterred and continued playing.
“We felt the ground below us shaking and then I saw my friends and siblings lying on the ground covered in blood,” she recalls through tears.
That day, as her legs were blown off her body, her parents and all seven of her siblings died in the mid-afternoon attack. Muhiddin was taken to the AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) Field Hospital, an outpatient facility operated by African Union forces. When doctors examined her, they opted to amputate what was left of her legs.
“By the time she came in her limbs were dirty. They were still discharging wounds,” says Dr. Ibrahim Kimuli, AMISOM chief surgeon. “We took her for surgery, at this point we had no choice but to amputate.”
Today, Muhiddin still lives at the hospital. She spends most of her time in bed. Her grandmother, her only surviving relative, sits with her most days. Some days she feels well enough to take a ride around the hospital grounds in the little wheelchair given to her by the hospital.
“I do not see much hope for Yasmina,” says Juliette Arinkunda, a nurse at the hospital. “With the parents gone and with just her grandmother to fend for her, life is going to be really difficult for her.”
But in Somalia, hers is not an isolated case. The AMISOM hospital is teeming with little children -- most of whom are nursing bullet wounds, fractured limbs and disfigured faces thanks to the war that has been going on here for nearly 20 years, since warlords ousted President Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991. Al Qaeda backed al-Shabab forces have been waging a war against the African Union and United Nations backed transitional federal government since last year.
Human rights groups estimate that more than 30,000 people have died since the uprising began. The United Nations estimates that there are now 614,000 Somali refugees worldwide and more than 1.4 million Somalis displaced within the country. But children are perhaps the most frequent victims of the conflict. Thousands have died. Many have lost limbs. Countless more have been orphaned by the conflict. For other children here, they find themselves on the front lines. The United Nations estimates that as much as 60 percent of all soldiers in Somalia are children. Last month, Somalia’s government agreed to begin working with international agencies to remove and rehabilitate child soldiers. Meanwhile, hundreds of other children continue to stream into the AMISOM hospital in need of urgent care.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. special representative for children in armed conflict, says that while the exact number of child soldiers in Somalia is still unclear, the Somali government is actively working to establish the extent of the problem. Coomaraswamy confirms that the recruitment of child soldiers to all sides of the Somali conflict has risen in the past few months thanks to blatant radio broadcasts and school visits. "They are exploited for the fact that children have a much less developed concept of death so they tend to be fearless," Coomaraswamy says.
“Two generations have been lost,” says AMISOM Commander Major General Mugisha. “It is a big problem of exploitation, there is no education, so the manipulation is no wonder.”
Mugisha says young men are talked into fighting on behalf of al-Shabab with the promise of going to heaven if they die. During the holy month of Ramadan, al-Shabab forces vowed an all out attack on AMISOM fighters. They publically urged mothers in the capital, Mogadishu, to allow their children to join in the fighting.
Mugisha warns that if nothing is done to stop the recruitment of young people into militant groups then the country’s youth will be lost to indoctrination.
“It is a case of preying on these young people’s ignorance, this is what happens when you tell a young person who has never been in a classroom, to take up a gun and fight the enemy, with a promise of going to heaven,” he says.
While some mothers watch their children become soldiers in the war, others spend most of their time at the hospital nursing their children who were wounded in the war.
“Most of them come with trauma, 90 percent have got gunshot wounds and bomb blast shrapnel,” says Dr. Lopez Mukuye, a principle doctor at the AMISOM Field hospital. Mukuye says, the breakdown of the health sector is another problem. In the absence of local facilities it often takes several days for critically wounded children to reach the AMISOM hospital.
Once the children do reach the facility, he says doctors do their best to treat them as fast as possible. Halima Abdi, a mother who says she knows only too well the price of the Somali war, holds her two-year-old daughter close as one hand supports her daughter’s bandaged arm.
Umi Abdi, 2, is lucky to be alive. Her mother managed to grab her just as shooting started in her neighborhood in central Mogadishu. The girl escaped with a gunshot wound in her left arm. It took her mother three days to reach to the AIMISOM hospital. By that time, her daughters arm had already become infected.
“This is the case with so many of those you see here without limbs. The fighting in the areas where they are coming from can keep them for days at home,” says Mukuye, obviously frustrated.
At a different outpost, manned by the Burundi contingent of the African Union forces, a little boy lies in bed with his grandmother fanning him. His body is almost lifeless, except for a few grunts and moans. Hassan Amir was an ordinary 3 year old. His grandmother remembers him as playful and a little bit naughty. But when a mortar shell hit their house in the Mogadishu district of Dayniile, that all changed. Amir survived, but the impact left him paralyzed.
“He just sits here. For a child who could walk, run around and kick his ball, I do not know how to help him,” says his grandmother, who asked not to be named.
But amid the bandaged limbs and constant pain of the AMISOM ward, there is hope too. Yass Musa Amar, 10, says he accompanied his mom to the market earlier this year. Fighting broke out just as they were leaving. His mom was caught in the crossfire. He says he is sad that she did not live to see him grow up to be a doctor.
“I will be a doctor and I want to defend my country,” says Yass with a proud smile.
