Children under Fire

Seven-year-old Adnan, a Bosnian refugee, knows what he wants to do when he has grown up. He wants to take revenge on the soldiers that attacked his village. He wants to kill their children and grandchildren with knives. Adnan's ten-year-old sister Mirela recalls how lined up men were shot with machine-guns. In the concentration-camp she was told she would get killed if she cried. Ana has a recurrent dream of soldiers stripping the skin off her body and sprinkling salt and pepper on her. Adnan, Mirela and Ana are three out of an enormous number of children whose lives were cruelly disrupted by the war in former Yugoslavia. Two of the world's prominent child psychologists Magne Raundalen and Atle Dyregrov went to Croatia and talked to child refugees from Bosnia. They try to help the children deal with the atrocities they have experienced. Edisa, who witnessed her father being murdered but is haunted by the feeling that he is still alive, is encouraged to write a goodbye letter to him. Amira, who remembers how women in a concentration-camp were selected before being raped, notes down her memories hoping she will feel better when someone will understand what she has been through. Magne Raundalen estimates that about 1.5 million children in former Yugoslavia are traumatised by their wartime experiences. If action is not taken on an international level, their agony and that of children in other wars will only increase.