By David Lewis GOMA, Congo, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Having just escaped the ranks of a Congolese rebel group for which he fought and pillaged for two years, a boy might have been keen to go home. Not Ismael. "I don't want to go back home. If I go back home, I will be killed. There is no question," the 16-year-old said after eating dinner in a centre for former child soldiers. Ismael's village near the border with Rwanda is controlled by gunmen loyal to Laurent Nkunda, a dissident general who heads one of a plethora of militia groups still roaming the Democratic Republic of Congo's lawless east. Despite three years of official peace after a 1998-2003 war, the holding of the first free and fair polls in 40 years and an imminent presidential run-off, local and foreign rebel groups still clash with government forces and U.N. peacekeepers. Children are continually sucked into the violence, which adds daily to the 4 million people already killed mostly by hunger and war-related disease, aid workers say. "Recruitment has never stopped," said Martin Muhindi, a child protection officer for the UK-based charity Save the Children in North Kivu province. "This is because nobody seems sure of what will happen next." Over 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers police Congo but peace remains fragile in the east, as well as in the volatile capital Kinshasa thousands of kilometres to the west. Figures vary but, according to the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, some 25,000 children were enlisted into armed groups during the war. The government says just under 20,000 have been demobilised since the official end to the conflict in 2003. STIGMA Ismael's story is one often told in Congo's mineral rich east, where Uganda and Rwanda backed various groups in clashes fuelled by the former Belgian colony's vast natural wealth. "They caught me when I was coming back from school. They made us carry maize to the headquarters. Once we were there, they made us stay for military training," he said. "I left it because I didn't like military life. I couldn't study, I didn't eat well and I was often sent to the front to fight ... I didn't like this." Millions of dollars of foreign aid have been set aside to help children restart their lives as civilians after they were allowed to leave or escape from the armed groups. But the results have been mixed, especially among the girls who made up 30-40 percent of the children in armed groups. "I was an escort for a major. I was his bodyguard," said Chantal, one of around 20 youths taken from her village in eastern Congo in 2001 as young teenagers. "I was given a gun and we were trained. Life was hard. When we didn't have something to eat, we just went and stole the maize and the manioc from the fields." "He made me pregnant so I fled," she said in a hut she uses as a workshop to try and scrape a living by making shirts. While international agencies can provide money for projects, the biggest challenge especially for girls is the stigma. "I went home but they chased me because I came back pregnant. They said they didn't want to look after a child from the war," Chantal said. "I know at least 10 girls who were demobilised and since rejoined. I still ask myself if I should go back to the military as life is so difficult and I am rejected by the family."
