A former Liberian rebel commander, known as “General Butt Naked” and notorious for sacrificing children and engaging in battle in the nude, is now trying to find redemption by rescuing former child soldiers from drugs.
One of the most feared figures to emerge from the West African country’s civil war, Joshua Blahyi, sacrificed and cannibalized children.
He would also fight naked in the belief that this permeated him with spiritual power and earned him the moniker “General Butt Naked.”
Massacres, torture and rape marked Liberia’s two civil wars, which raged from 1989 to 1997 and from 1999 to 2003, claiming about a quarter of a million lives.
Many of these brutal crimes were committed by drugged child soldiers. When the fighting ended, many of the young people remained hooked on drugs and slipped into a life of crime.
Blahyi, for his part, became an evangelical preacher.
“We got them to take up arms and consume drugs,” the 49-year-old told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “Now I want to fix that mistake.”
Since 2006, he has traveled to the slums of the capital Monrovia to try to cooperate with former child soldiers.
The former rebel also built a compound 25 kilometers north of the city in 2012, where he runs training sessions in an attempt to reintegrate them into society.
“To me, these children are victims and not perpetrators,” Blahyi said, adding that it is a challenge to lure them out of the underworld.
“I usually explain my own story to them, and then I ask them to follow by giving their lives to Christ and leaving the drugs.”
‘Deep bitterness’
Blahyi’s 0.6 hectare compound is surrounded by high walls topped with barbed wire. Inside, former adult child soldiers hook the ground and tend to four brick loaves.
There is also a small chicken farm on site and volunteers come to learn skills such as carpentry, plumbing and painting.
About 500 former child soldiers have passed through the association, according to Blahyi.
One of them, 38-year-old William Wilson, said he robbed people with drug money machetes before hitting Blahyi.
“I chose to go to Bible school,” Wilson said. “Today I am an evangelist and married with three children to a bishop’s daughter.”
Another former child soldier, 33-year-old Titus Sylvester Borbor, said Blahyi helped him kick drugs and put him on his way to becoming a college student.
“Today my parents are happy, they have accepted me back,” he said.
Many children took up arms to protect their relatives during the civil war but were rejected by their families when the fighting ended.
“It put deep bitterness in them,” Blahyi said, explaining that the legacy of the conflict still felt strong across the country.
Atrocities
In the First Civil War, Blahyi led fighters from the dreaded United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) who supported then-President Samuel Doe.
It was Does’s murder in 1990 that triggered the orgy of violence that hit the country for most of that decade.
In January 2008, Blahyi testified before the Liberian Commission of Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) and recalled the atrocities he had committed to maintain his “special power”.
“Every time we conquered a city, I had to make a human sacrifice. They give me a living child that I slaughter and take out my heart to eat it,” he told a stunned audience.
He did not know how many people they killed, he said. “But for what I did, it’s no less than twenty thousand,” he added, breaking down in tears.
The turning point, he said, came in 1996, after seeing the blood of a child on his hand “Jesus appeared to me and asked me to stop being a slave.”
War crimes
Despite regular appeals to set up a war crimes tribunal, very few people have been prosecuted for war crimes or crimes committed against humanity in Liberia – and none in Liberia itself.
Some former warlords also remain powerful people in the poor nation with 4.8 million people.
Prince Johnson – another infamous war figure who has also become an evangelist – is the head of the Liberian Senate Committee on Defense and Intelligence.
But Blahyi is a strong advocate for prosecuting war criminals, including himself, to ensure lasting peace.
“I destroyed so many people’s children,” he said.
“If I refuse to answer that … the same violence that I started will follow me and my children.”
President George Weah has so far resisted setting up a war crimes tribunal, but calls are mounting.
The issue was raised in recent hearings by a committee from the US House of Representatives.
And last week, more than a dozen influential Liberian organizations presented the country’s legislators to support such a court.
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