SARAVENA, Colombia - Leftist rebels battling for control of an impoverished corner of Colombia are increasingly using a recruiting tactic associated with Africa's bloody civil conflicts, abducting children and forcing them into their ranks, residents say.

A Colombian soldier walks next to some of the fuel trucks burned in Maicao, near the Venezuelan border August 14, 2006. Some 87 fuel trucks were attacked by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels using home-made explosives, police said. [Reuters]

 

Fearful their sons will be press-ganged into a rebel army, at least 100 families have fled the countryside to arrive in Saravena, with a population of about 60,000.

Close to the Venezuelan border in Colombia's oil-rich eastern plains, this region is one of the most violent battlegrounds of the four-decade civil war pitting leftist rebels against the army and far-right paramilitaries.

Waiting in line for her ration of rice along with other displaced Colombians, Ramona Pacheco said it has been four months since she's heard from her six sons, the youngest 15 years old.

Information is scarce, but she said they were apparently abducted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as they worked on a farm.

"I don't want to return," said Pacheco, who fled with her 4- and 6-year-old daughters. "And if I do return it will be because I want to find my sons, even if it is to see them dead."

Locals say a brutal rebel turf war between the FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army, or ELN, has led to the rise in forced conscription.

"Since the beginning of this year ... there has been a conflict between the FARC and the ELN for the control of the riches of the zone, the agriculture and the coca," said Saravena Mayor Antonio Ortega, referring to the raw material used in the production of cocaine. "The dispute means both sides are recruiting children to fight for them."

Farmer Victor Algarra quoted a common local saying: "If one has four children, one is for the guerrillas and the others you get to keep."

Some of the displaced arriving in Saravena are staying with local families, while others have gone to a shelter set up at a school.

Still others have opted instead to keep their children at home during the day, despite police being posted at school entrances to guard against abductions.

In a statement on its Web site, the FARC denied forcibly recruiting minors from schools, saying its fighters join voluntarily.

The United Nations estimates that some 250,000 child soldiers have been drafted to fight in civil conflicts worldwide, despite improving conditions in long-running wars in Sierra Leone, Burundi, Liberia and Congo.

Activists have long complained of underage combatants in Colombia. A 2003 study by Human Rights Watch said "at least one of every four irregular fighters in the Colombian civil war is under 18."

Colombia's Family Welfare Institute says that in the past 10 years, almost 3,000 minors have demobilized from the country's illegal armed groups, with about two-thirds coming from the leftist rebels.

Authorities say locals are often too scared of reprisals to file formal complaints about forced conscription.

Saravena town councilor Elizabeth Galeano cited as an example a woman whose 16-year-old son was nabbed in early August just six blocks from home. The woman has had no news of her son and fears that if she goes to the police, rebels will harm her son or her five other children, Galeano said.

Oberto Pestrana, another council member, said his 22-year-old son received a telephone call from the FARC threatening him with forced conscription.

"Now the only thing I want is to get (my children) out of here," Pestrana said, "because I don't want them to become victims of what has happened to other families."