‘My Job Is to Throw Bombs and Burn Houses,’ Moluccan Boy Says

With homemade bombs in their school bags and cans of gasoline in their hands, the boys of this shattered city go to war in the name of religion.

The youths of Indonesia’s Molucca Islands, some as young as 11, hurl homemade bombs at enemy soldiers, drive civilians from their homes and burn down rivals’ neighborhoods.

Some fight for Jesus, some for Muhammad. In a conflict that both sides call a holy war, children commit arson and terrorism, mayhem and murder.

“My job is to throw bombs and burn houses,” said Arjun Unawekla, a 14-year-old Protestant who has been shot in the wrist and foot since he began fighting at age 12. “I didn’t set out to kill, but because they started first, I have to kill them.”

For more than two years, Christians and Muslims who once lived as neighbors have waged a cruel war of religious cleansing. Both groups claim that they are the victims of aggression. Both have mounted bloody attacks on their foes.

More than a quarter of the Moluccas’ 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes. At least 5,000 have been killed.

With children serving as soldiers, some Indonesians fear that the enmity between the two religious groups could last for ages. “We’re not talking about 10 or 20 years, but generations,” said Tania Thenu, an aid worker with Action Against Hunger, one of the few relief agencies operating in the area.

The Christians, often outnumbered and outgunned by the Muslims, use boy warriors as an integral part of their military force on Ambon island. The youths, Roman Catholic and Protestant, form disciplined fighting units that are headed by adults and given specific assignments in battle. They are known as the Agas, for a sand fly with an especially nasty bite.

On the Muslim side, the young warriors are usually volunteers who show up spontaneously when a battle begins. Muslim fighters give them bombs to heave at the Christians and gasoline to incinerate the homes of the enemy. They are called the Bakar, the Indonesian word for “burn.”

“I just want to fight in the holy war,” said Fadli Burhan, a 14-year-old Muslim who said he took part in two battles last year and helped torch 10 houses. “I bring the bombs and burn the houses.”

The fighting has turned Ambon, the Moluccan provincial capital, into a rubble-strewn wreck, with scores of gutted buildings in the city center. The two factions live in enclaves separated by manned barricades and burned-out neighborhoods. People from both sides travel by boat to avoid the parts of the island they do not control. Snipers are a frequent danger.

Muslims and Christians who wish to see each other must meet in one of the city’s few neutral zones--the governor’s office, the airport or the military hospital. Traveling from one side to the other requires going to a safe zone and switching cars and drivers.

With their Nike T-shirts, sandals and baseball caps, the Agas look like members of any church youth group. They laugh and joke as they walk together through Christian-controlled streets or hang out at their unofficial headquarters, the unfinished Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral. Some wear shirts with the Agas slogan: “God is love.”

Agus Wattimena, commander of the Christian forces on Ambon, said there are 200 child fighters in the Agas, virtually all of them boys.

“Their houses were burned,” he said. “Their parents were killed. They really want to fight. I don’t see it as a problem. It’s better than their doing nothing.”

One young fighter, Bertie Aurisah, doesn’t know when he was born but believes he is 13. He began fighting on his own two years ago after Muslims burned his village and his uncle died.

“A lot of my people were killed, so I felt very angry,” he said. “I just went into the Muslim village and attacked them. I burned the Muslim houses with gasoline and matches. I also threw bombs at the Muslim people.”

Now, as a member of the Agas, he often fights alongside a detachment of older soldiers. The boys carry two to five homemade bombs each, which they throw from behind the relative safety of walls and buildings.

As he hurls his bombs, Bertie said, he yells, “Blood of Jesus!”

Once the enemy has been driven back, the boys move in with their gas cans and set the buildings on fire.

The youngsters seldom see what or whom they hit with their bombs. But Bertie said he was once so angry after a friend was shot that he charged into the fray and finished off three fighters he had wounded.

“I know they were dead because I cut their throats,” he said. “When I’m very angry, I just want to cut them. It’s unfortunate, but they have made my life miserable.”

Like many of the Agas warriors, he said he has permission from his mother to fight the Muslims. “It’s OK because our parents let us do this,” he said. “It’s more fun to throw bombs than to play soccer.”

A Protestant, Bertie is among a number of Agas boys who have benefited from the efforts of the Catholic Church to provide housing and schooling for the young fighters. About three dozen members of the Agas now live at the cathedral.

Bishop Petrus Mandagi said he hopes the program will keep the youngsters off the streets and out of the war. “I am afraid that if we don’t give this group special care, they will be killers,” he said.

The result, however, has been to concentrate the young fighters on the church grounds. Much of the time, they hang out in the partially built cathedral, which was under construction when the war began.

The boys who live at the complex say the priests know full well that they still go to battle whenever fighting breaks out. The fathers lead prayer sessions before each clash, the boys say, and ask God to protect the young warriors from harm.

Clerics on both sides decry the use of children in the war--even as partisans encourage the fighting. A spokesman for the Java-based Laskar Jihad, which has sent 4,500 trained warriors to fight the Christians, said the Islamic fundamentalist group is concerned that the conflict will leave an indelible mark on the children.

“The culture of violence is recorded in their minds, and they imitate and apply that to their daily life,” Ayip Syafruddin said.

The group has tried to help youngsters in the war zone by building emergency schools, he said, and has evacuated 63 children to other parts of Indonesia.

“When we asked the children what they want to be, most of them said, ‘I want to be a soldier,’ ” Syafruddin said. “When we asked them to draw during a psychology exam, they drew guns, weapons and bombs, which have become natural in their life. This represents a very bleak future for Molucca.”

Father C. J. Bohm praises the Christian forces for preventing Muslims from seizing central Ambon, but he shares Syafruddin’s fears: “What is going to become of these children?”

Candra Lattan, 14, said he was among a group of Agas who attacked a mosque full of praying Muslims last year. Candra, who joined in 1999, said he looked in the window just before the assault and saw about 60 people inside.

“I saw them reading the Koran and threw the bombs into the mosque,” he said. “They all came out, and I saw their clothes were full of blood.”

After the Muslims fled, Candra said, he and four other Christian boys went into the mosque, poured gasoline inside and set it on fire. They also burned the Muslims’ houses nearby.

Candra, a Protestant who attends Catholic school, admits to suffering pangs of guilt but said the priests have helped him unburden his conscience.

“Burning houses and killing people were always in my memory,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep. But after the priests prayed and gave me [blessed] water to drink, I stopped thinking about it.”

The Christians make their weapons in a rundown hut hidden among palm and banana trees on a hillside above Ambon. On the walls are pictures of soccer players and a faded flag of the South Molucca Republic--the failed Christian separatist movement.

Here the boys scrape the heads off matches to make 6-inch pipe bombs. Sometimes they wrap wire and nails around them to make them more deadly.

At the hut recently, 15-year-old Rano Imblabla displayed some of the weapons he helped make, including bombs capable of destroying two-story houses.

He said he began fighting with the Agas at 13 after his older brother was killed. He isn’t sure if he has ever killed anyone with his bombs, but he estimates that he has burned 25 Muslim houses.

“My mom says, ‘War for God is OK,’ ” he said. “If there is a battle, I will join. And if it is safe, I will go to school.”

And when will the war end?

“Only when God comes,” he said. “The world will be safe then.”