This World: One Day Of War (BBC2): "A man who has a gun is not afraid," declared Muktar, a 14-year-old Somalian carrying a weapon almost as big as himself.

He was part of the Harborgidir Militia in Mogadishu, Somalia, and was featured here as one of 16 people around the globe who wake up every day in a war zone.

The documentary followed them over one day, March 22, in a reminder that the conflict in Iraq may make all the headlines but that war is a way of life for many people.

The statistics are grim - every minute two people die because of war. The reasons people put their lives at risk range from political convictions to financial gain.

Muktar has known nothing else. He was found in the ruins of a bombed-out house when he was four, by the side of his dead parents. He was taken in and raised by one of the militia. Ten years later, he's a gun for hire in Somalia, where the war officially ended in 1993 but where, with five factions fighting for control, the unrest continues.

The long-running nature of many of the wars was brought home on being informed that rebels in the Philippines have been fighting for a communist state for 30 years.

The Hmong, in Eastern Laos, have been fighting since 1975. They supported America during the Vietnam War and have been paying ever since. They live a life on the move. In the past year, they've moved 15 times. The sight of a father with a gun in his hand and a child slung over his shoulder was shocking. Thirteen-year-olds are taught how to detect ambushes and landmines.

Time and again, we saw children caught up in conflict. I was going to call them innocent but many, like Muktar, are worldly wise in the ways of war.

In Uganda, the threat is kidnap. The army is needed to protect children. Some 20,000 have been taken, by religious-cults-come-rebel-groups, and made to join in the killing and torture. Sometimes girls are raped and forcibly married to the rebels.

Women too are heavily involved in war. We met Shushila Nagar, a 24-year-old who'd been training for four years with the Maoist rebels. She was off on her first active mission, armed with an old flintlock rifle that was standard issue in Napoleonic times.

Eliana Gonzales Acosta is the highest ranking woman in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, having spent the past 30 years patrolling the jungle. She's 50 and a grandmother who, like many women, has never had a normal family life. A third of the fighters in the movement are female.

Iraq was not forgotten. The American soldier we met, Private Juan Alvarado, had joined up after doing time for drug offences and hoped military service would put his life back in order. He believed the people fighting them are Iraqi criminals, not terrorists.

As for Muktar, four days after participating in the film, he was shot and killed following an argument with one of his friends. It was a chilling end to a thoughtful documentary.

Published: 28/05/2004