ASMARA, Eritrea — Qudusam Sile was only 15 when she fired an AK-47 assault rifle for the first time. The tiny, ponytailed Eritrean was not much older when she killed the first of a dozen Ethiopian troops. During Africa's longest war of independence, Sile in turn took bullets in the back, leg and hand.
"I was willing to do anything, to kill and even to die, to free Eritrea," she said with neither bravado nor guilt.
Yet when the three-decade conflict against Africa's largest army finally ended in 1991, Sile was among thousands of guerrillas who suddenly had a country--but no future.
"I should have been celebrating, but peace scared me more than war," she said. "My skills were all about fighting."
The war-ravaged economy in Africa's newest state, where the per capita annual income was $149, offered few alternatives.
Then an innovative scheme helped Sile help herself.
By creating employment options for disabled troops, female vets, unskilled men and youths with little education, the government project has in turn fostered the birth of a nation.
Now 31 and a mother of two, Sile sells homemade "I Love Eritrea" T-shirts and colorful baby clothes with animal motifs at a shop she and 11 other female fighters opened in 1994. Each takes home about $430 a year, with the remaining revenue going back into the business.
As the program converts warriors into workers, it also addresses a major global challenge of the 1990s: With the end of the Cold War and several little hot conflicts, oversized, big-budget armies are being downsized or demobilized. And governments from Maputo to Moscow are scrambling to figure out what to do with the soldiers.
Little Eritrea, about the size of Pennsylvania and with 3.6 million people, has proved to be a model--especially compared with highly publicized efforts in Cambodia and Angola, where the United Nations spent millions to restore peace and sent thousands of troops to keep it. Both efforts eventually imploded.
With the biggest troop cutback in history still underway, the challenge is global. Over the past decade, military manpower worldwide has been slashed about 25%--from a Cold War high of 30 million to 22 million, Pentagon officials say.
China, Iraq and Russia have each cut about a million troops, according to the Bonn International Center for Conversion, which monitors military reforms. U.S. defense cutbacks have totaled 694,000 positions. Bulgaria, Cuba, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Vietnam are among 15 countries that have halved their armies.
