Thousands of former UK troops now mercenaries in Iraq

Thousands of former British soldiers have signed up as mercenaries in Iraq since 2003, lured by the prospect of a tax-free £250 a day offered by "private military companies" making billions from the booming security industry.
A four-man ex-SAS team in Baghdad can command £2500 a day and live in the plushest villas in the most exclusive section of the Iraqi capital.
The UN estimates that 20,000 of the 126,000 known contractors in Iraq are hired guns. Those in most demand are ex-British, South African and American army personnel, although Russia, the Balkans, Nepal, Fiji and South America are also well-represented by experienced soldiers looking for work.
Most are paid for close protection, escorting diplomats, civil servants or oil industry officials and providing the deterrent firepower to ward off would-be criminal kidnappers or insurgent hostage-takers.
They earn up to £7000 a month tax-free - six or seven times the take-home pay in the British and US armies.
Their main value to both Britain and the US is that they perform tasks which would otherwise fall to overstretched regular military forces and they are expendable in terms of the political arithmetic of the body bag.
Soldiers arriving home in flag-draped coffins have a negative impact on voter confidence. Dead contractors - about 1000 over the past five years - are laid to rest unannounced.
Erinys, a British firm, fields an armed force of 14,000 guarding Iraq's vulnerable oil wells and pipelines. Its manpower, composed of Iraqis and "third world nationals", outnumbers the British Army outside Basra by almost four to one.
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