LIMA (Peru): Poor Latin American security guards are flocking to Iraq and Afghanistan to work for US companies desperate for relatively cheap employees with the type of military know-how gleaned in a region once run by generals.

Lured by wages up to 10 times higher than they earn at home, at least 1,200 Peruvians with military or police training have worked in the war-torn countries since 2005, according to security companies and human rights groups.

“We can easily find people in India or Pakistan willing to work in Iraq or Afghanistan for less money, but we prefer men from Latin America for their (military) background,” Mike Dodd, vice president of operations at US-based recruiting company 3D Global Solutions, said in a telephone interview.

Another US security company, Triple Canopy, hires guards through a Peruvian recruiter and the sister of a guard said he was recruited by a third US company, MVM Inc. Such companies pay Latin American workers in the war zones salaries that range from $1,000 to $2,000 a month.

Dodd said his company had sent Peruvian guards to Iraq and was recruiting in Costa Rica. Guards from Chile have been to the regions and placements of guards from El Salvador and Honduras have been widely reported in those countries’ media.

European and US security agents can earn up to $10,000 per month in the two hot spots, according to the companies, although they said that in contrast with Latin Americans who largely guard facilities, those top earners were usually extremely highly trained, often with special services experience.

With coalition troops failing to quell spiralling violence after invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, protecting embassy and contractor facilities can be perilous.

Much of Latin America was under military rule in the 1970s and 1980s and many armies are still primed for action.

Many unemployed soldiers have been toughened up at home, fighting guerrilla movements in earlier decades, or crime more recently.

“A Peruvian in Baghdad will not panic if he has to face a blast or a blackout because he has already experienced that on the streets of Lima,” said Alejandro Fernandez, general manager at Defion Internacional.—Reuters