Darfur refugees forced to join the fight

But observers say a deal is unlikely to happen while Chad remains unstable. "A rebel victory in Chad would significantly strengthen the hand of the government of Sudan both militarily and at the negotiating table," said Colin Thomas-Jensen, an analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. "Chad could easily and quickly become a base used by [janjaweed] to launch attacks on [Sudanese rebels] based in Darfur."

Although the Darfur conflict has been marked by gross human rights violations and ethnic cleansing, Olivier Bercault of Human Rights Watch says the forced recruitment of fighters, including children, is a new development.

Mr. Bercault says the majority of rebels captured by the Chadian government that HRW spoke to say they were kidnapped. Although children currently only account for a small number of fighters in Chad and Sudan, rebel groups had previously been strict about recruiting only adult fighters.But a push by the various rebel groups to gain territory - and therefore bargaining power - ahead of the end of the Abuja peace process, together with upcoming elections in Chad, have sparked a drive to add manpower to the rebel forces, he says.

"The war is shifting gear and [the various rebel groups] need more people to fight," said Bercault. "I'm very concerned about child recruitment. When you start with this, it's like an addiction. It's difficult to stop."

Forced recruitment of children has been a tactic used in other African conflicts. In northern Uganda, which borders Sudan, the Lord's Resistance Army often abducts children to fight, sometimes demanding they kill their own parents or be killed themselves.

In West Africa, forced recruitment and the use of child soldiers was common during regional wars that raged throughout the late 1990s until 2003. The Liberian warlord Charles Taylor even created a special "Small Boys Unit" for his child fighters.

But the clear-eyed young boys now being held in a government prison in Chad's capital are along way from the drugged-up youngsters that Mr. Taylor recruited. Some insist they joined the rebellion because members of the president's tribe stole livestock from their families. Others, like Zakariah Bashir Ibrahim, say they were tricked into coming to the front.

The 14-year-old Sudanese boy is one of at least three child rebel fighters currently being held in one of many fetid prison cells in Chad's capital, surrounded by men twice their age. He says he was forced to fight with hundreds of Chadian rebels who two weeks ago fought their way from eastern Chad more than 500 miles to the capital, where many were killed or repelled by forces loyal to Chad's government. Around 235 fighters, including Zakariah, were captured.

Squatting shyly at the feet of a Chadian soldier, he says he was abducted from Sudantwo months agoby a Chadian national and forced to undergo training. Unlike other child soldiers, he was not issued a weapon but instructed to ride on the back of a pickup truck with a machine gun mounted on the roof. "They invited me to dinner and then took me away," he says quietly. "They didn't tell me the truth.... My family doesn't know where I am."

Page: 1 | 2