Idle Hands for Export

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least 300 reservists have resigned since Global Risk came on the scene, says military spokesman Capt. Neumi Leweni. Among them were Cinavilakeba, who served in Lebanon but couldn't find an army job when he got back; Tuks Kuliniyasi, 23, who saw a tour in Iraq as "a lifetime opportunity"; and two of Tuks' uncles. "I think most of the people in the reserve would like to go," says Cinavilakeba. Ex-British officer Naceva isn't surprised: "In these modern days, our warriors cannot find the resources to look after their families. If there is a greener pasture there, they will automatically resign and try for it."

"For a time we will be short of skills," says the Labor Department's Waqa. But the departure of soldiers and workers will create openings for the unemployed, and "we are studying ways to upskill them." When the emigrants return, he adds, "many will start small businesses and generate jobs." The exodus of men from rural areas is raising fears as well as hopes. "When they are away," says Ratu Josateki Nawalowalo, a member of the Council of Chiefs, "who will teach our younger generation the Fijian culture?" But Waqa says most workers will be gone only a year or two. He and other officials believe society will benefit overall: tax receipts will rise, more families will be able to send their children to school, rural women will break out of traditional roles, and crime will be reduced as fewer men "with skills and brains" sit idle.

"It's just a question of time before more people are killed," says economist Wadan Narsey, who studies emigration and remittances. And a Fijian presence in Iraq "increases the risk of a terrorist attack against Fiji, which would hurt our tourism industry." Tuks and Cinavilakeba say they weighed the risks carefully. "There were doubts of coming back in one piece," says Tuks, who returned last March. "But the media give an inaccurate picture of what Iraq is like. They show it as dangerous all the time and everywhere, but this is not the case."

"We cannot stop people exercising their right to move and seek work," says Waqa. "We are adopting an open-market policy. But we are advising people, instead of sending money home every week, to invest it wisely so they will have a more long-term future." The tropical paradise and the violence-racked former dictatorship could hardly be more different - or further apart. But every worker boarding a flight for the Middle East ties Fiji's future a little more closely to that of Iraq.