"No women, no beer, no fiesta," a Peruvian mercenary said gloomily as he manned his post inside the Iraqi capital's ultra-protected Green Zone.
Around a thousand of his countrymen along with a handful of Chileans make up a security detail in this immense fortified sector of Baghdad, which houses the Iraqi government's offices and the US and British embassies.
The South Americans comprise a "third rung" of security, behind Iraqi regular soldiers and a unit of Georgians, members of the US-led coalition forces from the former Soviet republic.
The Peruvians are employed by the private US security firm Triple Canopy based in Virginia.
About a year ago, the Peruvians replaced the famed Nepalese Gurkhas who had served in the British army, but not because the South Americans were judged more competent. They replaced the Nepalese because they were cheaper.
A Western private security operative from a modern army -- such as an American, a Briton or a South African -- can earn US$8,000 to US$16,000 per month, one private security official said. The Gurkhas were earning around US$3,000 per month. The Peruvians earn about one-third of that.
Other firms employ Colombians, Mexicans or Panamanians. The South Americans, who are all former soldiers aged between 25 and 40, mostly come from poor, rural areas. Their missions last one year, with a break after six months for home leave.
In their position as the third line of defense, the Peruvians are not typically exposed to grave danger. Most have never left the Green Zone and some ask: "What's the Red Zone like?" in reference to the rest of Iraq.
Indeed, their primary enemy is the heat, as most are posted in exposed guard posts. Boredom is their other key enemy.
"There is nothing to do here," one man said.
"We watch television," said another. "But we'd like to be able to go out a bit at night."
China is racing to quash a new COVID-19 flareup that risks spilling over into one of its most economically significant regions, raising the specter of disruptions that could roil global supply chains for solar panels, medicines and semiconductors. Infections have surged in Si County in the eastern province of Anhui, with officials reporting 287 cases for Sunday and nearly 1,000 since late last week. Authorities locked down Si and a neighboring county late last week to try and stop the virus from spreading to Jiangsu Province, the second-biggest contributor to China’s economic output and a globally important manufacturing hub for the
A flight test of a hypersonic missile system in Hawaii on Wednesday ended in failure due to a problem that occurred after ignition, the US Department of Defense said, delivering a fresh blow to a program that has experienced stumbles. It did not provide details of what took place in the test, but said in an e-mailed statement that “the department remains confident that it is on track to field offensive and defensive hypersonic capabilities on target dates beginning in the early 2020s.” “An anomaly occurred following ignition of the test asset,” Pentagon spokesman US Navy Lieutenant Commander Tim Gorman said in
OPPOSITION PROTESTS: Many people in Myanmar suspect China of supporting the military takeover, while Beijing has refused to condemn last year’s army power grab China’s top diplomat on Saturday arrived on his first visit to Myanmar since the military seized power last year to attend a regional meeting that the Burmese government said was a recognition of its legitimacy and opponents protested as a violation of peace efforts. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) is to join counterparts from Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam in a meeting of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation group in the central city of Bagan, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The grouping is a Chinese-led initiative that includes the countries of the Mekong Delta, a potential source of regional tensions
CERN UPGRADES: ompared with the collider’s first run that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012, this time around there would be 20 times more collisions Ten years after it discovered the Higgs boson, the Large Hadron Collider is about to start smashing protons together at unprecedented energy levels in its quest to reveal more secrets about how the universe works. The world’s largest and most powerful particle collider started back up in April after a three-year break for upgrades in preparation for its third run. From today it will run around the clock for nearly four years at a record energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced at a news conference last week. It is to send two beams of protons