Under a fierce midday sun, Nicole Ibrehim clutches her semi-automatic rifle, cracked purple fingernail polish glinting in the light and a red beret perched over pierced ears. She waves her gun towards a group of nervous boy soldiers standing nearby and shouts an order in a low, booming voice, sending the boys scuttling. "Don't you have girl soldiers in your country?" the Democratic Republic of Congo rebel asks in French, surprised at the attention she is receiving from a cluster of foreign journalists. "Here there are many." New research shows that girls and women are active combatants in wars across the world. According to Tufts University researcher Dyan Mazurana, over the last decade, girls have fought in conflicts in at least 54 countries, most of them in the developing world.