MONROVIA, Liberia — When Miatta Pasaweh hears talk about reconciliation, she matter-of-factly explains what happened to her three brothers, and what happened to her, and why forgiving is as impossible as forgetting.
First, she describes how the rebels in this country's brutal civil war cut her brothers' throats and mutilated their bodies. Then, in the calm voice of someone who has spoken the unspeakable many times before, she describes how the rebels forced her to eat her brothers' flesh, and then raped her.
"I suffer because when they gave me that blood and I drank it, I was sick. I was sick for nine months," said Pasaweh, 31, who lives in a repatriation camp with her three children. Her father was also killed in the conflict; the fate of her mother and husband are unknown.
Now the Liberian government has set up a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission, which would allow victims of the 14 years of fighting to recount their suffering and the majority of killers to get amnesty in return for admitting their crimes and expressing their remorse. But to Pasaweh, no remorse could ever be enough.
"It makes me sad and it makes me angry because they killed my three brothers and I had no father to help me," she said. "I'm not satisfied. I want to cry tears."
After rebels kidnapped Quayquay Bonah when he was 9, the first thing they told him was "don't cry." The next lesson, just an hour long, was how to fire an AK-47. It was difficult for the boy to handle such a large gun. But the next day, he was sent into battle. When bullets were fired around his feet, he finally started to fight.
Attacking villages as a rebel fighter in the four years that followed, he fired indiscriminately. "As soon as the gunpowder gets into your nose, you'll be firing away," he said. "When you go into a town, you shoot everyone, you shoot everywhere. You don't know whether it's civilians or not."
At first, the endless battles were terrifying. He survived with little to eat, not much sleep and many prayers. After a year it was "like playing football," he said.
Bridging the rift between victims and combatants is key to Liberia's process of reconciliation, which is just beginning two years after the conflict ended. But it's a delicate balance: Pursuing too many former combatants deprives them of a stake in the peace. Pursuing too few of those responsible for the killings and atrocities fails to address the culture of impunity.
