EMMANUEL Jal was a battle-hardened warrior who completed several tours of duty during his five years of military service.
But while most soldiers leaving the Services after such a stint would be well into adulthood, he was still just a 12-year-old boy.
Snatched from his home by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, rebels fighting for south Sudan’s independence, the seven-year-old had survived unspeakable violence only to face more horrific abuse. His mother was beaten and his aunt raped in front of him.
Jal was taken to a training camp and brutalised to remove all feelings except hatred. Rebel leaders slapped and kicked their charges as they instructed them in guerrilla tactics. Food was scarce and the children hunted for their next meal or raided villages, taking food by force. With nothing to lose, they became fearless cannon fodder.
“We were told it was a war in which we were protecting our dignity, land and freedom of worship. Most of us had witnessed our villages being burned down, our cattle killed, our mothers and sisters being raped and shot in the face,” Jal told Soldier, adding that he had no parents to turn to and was beaten if he cried, as the rebels turned him into a cold-blooded killer for Africa’s longest civil war. “I wanted to kill as many Arabs or Muslims as possible and that’s what was driving us.”
Five years after he was seized, Jal escaped the rebel clutches with 400 other child soldiers. He was among the “lucky” 16 who made it to a refugee camp. But the civil war raged on, evolving into the humanitarian catastrophe now known as Darfur.
Unlike many children who still carry AK-47s on the world’s killing fields, Jal’s story has a happy ending. A British aid worker smuggled the teenager into Kenya and later adopted him. The youngster slowly found a new meaning to his life through music. Hip-hop and rap liberated his feelings and expressed his personal pain. The 13 tracks on his new album, WARchild, tell not only his story but depict the ongoing bloodshed and carnage in Darfur with graphic lyrics. Forced to Sin recounts Jal’s personal diary, as Vagina compares the physical and emotional damage inflicted on girls and women during widespread sexual violence to the rape of Africa.
Mixing smooth African melodies with the harsh words makes Jal’s messages compelling. The album’s release was timed with the rapper’s campaign to highlight Olympic host China’s role in prolonging Darfuri suffering by supporting the government and buying southern Sudan’s oil. The former child soldier is concerned people are forgetting the horrors of Rwanda in 1994 and becoming complacent about the daily atrocities still going on in his homeland. Yet despite the West’s lethargy in stopping what has been called genocide in Darfur, the rapper is inspired by life in Britain.
“Here people have a freedom of speech and you can say what you want. We don’t have rights like that. If you say anything bad about Sudan’s president, you’re asking to die.”
Now nearly 30, Jal wants his music to inspire his campaign for peace and reconcilliation between warring ethnic and religious groups. And he wants youngsters to make the most of their lives.
“The only thing that sometimes makes me feel bad is that I lost my childhood. I didn’t have fun or the chance to play soccer. I didn’t play video games, and as the kids here were playing these games, I was playing with real guns,” he explained. “I have to live with what I have now and I make up for it through my music. When I’m on stage I dance and have fun and it looks like I’m a child. If you watch my show you’ll think that I’m a small kid because I dance so happily.”
