Sawaneh told BBC World Service how he and the other child soldiers in his unit were deliberately issued with lightweight automatic rifles like AK-47s because the guns were more manageable:
“They used to give us, the S.B.U, those small guns because if they give us some kind of heavy artillery we would not be able to carry them.”
Thousands of children were involved in the decade-long conflict in Sierra Leone. They acquired a reputation among rebel commanders for unquestioning obedience - and a reputation among civilians for extreme cruelty.
Empowered by the rifles they carried, and often high on marijuana or crack cocaine, many of the thousands of children who took part in Sierra Leone’s 10-year civil war visited terrible atrocities on the civilian population.
Apart from the infamous ritual ‘amputation’ of hands, and summary executions, child soldiers sometimes cut open the bellies of pregnant women just to see what sex the child was.
With the advent of peace in Sierra Leone, the country has attempted to comprehend it’s own ‘insanity’.