Liberia War Spawns Child Starvation, Child Soldiers : Africa: Many survivors suffer brain damage. Thousands more face death unless a massive food aid program is launched.

Four-year-old Falah Saah, too weak from starvation to cry out, could only murmur listlessly as he lay in his mother’s lap.

“I want drink, drink, drink,” he said softly, nearly drowned out by the moans from other sick children in the ward at Island Hospital, one of only two hospitals still operating in Monrovia, the capital of war-wrecked Liberia.

His mother, Maita Solui, said he is one of only three of her seven children to survive the West African country’s yearlong civil war.

Hundreds of children have died of starvation, and doctors say that unless a huge food aid program is launched, thousands more will succumb.

Other youngsters, brutalized by seeing mothers raped and fathers, brothers and sisters killed, became child soldiers in the rebel armies. Falah’s eldest brother joined up, and was killed.

The physical and mental condition of the surviving children has raised fears about the future generation of this West African nation. Relief workers say the degree of starvation has been so great that many children who live will suffer brain damage.

The child soldiers suffer in other ways. At the rebel base in Caldwell, outside the capital, a young boy played with a remote-control toy car. Draped over his shoulder was a machine gun--a real one.

“I’m a man, I have killed like a man,” boasted another little boy. He looked 6 or 7 years old, with a gun nearly as tall as he was, but he refused to give his age.

For orphans who have watched their parents killed by Liberian troops, the rebel camp offered a substitute family, food--and an opportunity for revenge.

“They are still little children, but how are we going to convince them of that when it’s all over?” said Myrtle Gibson, a real estate agent who turned to relief work. “How are we going to make them real people again?

“After this war, we’re going to have a lot more wars to fight.”

Hunger is the most immediate problem. Starving Monrovians ate the city’s pet dogs and cats months ago. They ate zoo animals, including chimpanzees. Then they turned to the vegetation, eating weeds and slashing down palm trees to eat the filling but non-nutritious fiber under the bark.

A little food is on sale--bunches of green leaves and weeds, some stolen tinned goods, a few oranges, looted rice. But few can afford it.

The Belgian branch of the international aid group Doctors Without Borders started supplementary feeding now reaching 3,000 children with help from newly arrived U.N. workers.

U.N. representative Michael Heyn said the relief workers hope to soon feed 25,000 children. But he said 90,000 children in Monrovia alone need a special diet to recover.

“The world community has focused mainly on the political and military aspects of the crisis, but does not realize yet that the Liberian people are literally starving and dying, particularly the children,” he said.

Island Hospital has become a center for orphans of the war, children who have lost their parents in panicked rushes away from the fighting. Then there are the wounded, like a little girl whose leg had to be amputated, a boy who lost an eye.

Ellen James, a nurse at the hospital, goes out on the streets with other health workers to bring in starving children, but they can help only a few.

“We pick up 10, maybe 12; meanwhile, they are dying in the hundreds,” she said.

“It is difficult to find a child who is not suffering from severe malnutrition,” said Dr. Richard Ndamse, one of six volunteers working at the hospital for a token payment of six cups of rice a month.

The hospital has no running water and little electricity. A generator is turned on only for emergency operations because of a fuel shortage. Monrovia has been without running water, electricity and regular food supplies for six months.

The victims in the war have been mostly civilians. It is not known how many have died--certainly more than the 10,000 killed in the fighting that began on Dec. 23, 1989.

Monrovia was once a city of about 425,000 people, about one-quarter of whom remain. According to the United Nations, more than 750,000 Liberians have fled to neighboring countries.

The war began a rebellion against the corrupt and oppressive government of the late President Samuel Doe and turned into a tribal conflict with three warring armies.

They agreed to a cease-fire on Nov. 28, but an interim government and other provisions still remain to be negotiated.