Liberia’s civil war ended 18 years ago, but some of the child soldiers from that conflict are still fighting. It’s a battle not against human enemies, but against drugs and the addiction that has devasted their lives ever since the war.
A series of efforts to rehabilitate former child soldiers have mostly failed. Drug trafficking through the region has increased as drug cartels see West Africa’s unpoliced borders as an easy way to transport drugs from Latin America to Europe.
As crime and violence ticks up the Liberian government is taking another shot at rehabilitating drug affected youths and former child soldiers. But, as Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh reports, no one has much hope that this will fix things.