Tourists landing at Fiji’s Nadi International Airport mostly don’t notice the quiet little tragedies unfolding with their luggage in the aircraft cargo holds.
Dead Fijian mercenaries are coming home in body bags from Iraq . In the last six weeks alone, 14 have been killed. Last week three died when a roadside bomb blew up alongside their convoy near Baghdad .
More than 300 foreign contractors are believed to have been killed in Iraq since the outbreak of the war but the cost for Fiji , with a population of just over 900,000, the per capita death rate comes close to exceeding that of Iraqis.
The risks are high and so is the money; the Lloyds insurance payments – NZ$252,000 for each dead individual’s family - are seen in the villages as startlingly high. If they survive, mercenaries collect around NZ$65,000 per annum.
The money and the deaths reach into Fiji ’s rural heart, places like Nukuni on the achingly beautiful Ono-i-Lau islands where Vilisoni Gauna, 44, came from before joining.
When news reached them that he had been killed, they were burying his grandfather.
Senitiki Lewatu had emailed her brother Vilisoni asking him to send money for her grandfather’s funeral and he asked for the bank account number.
’’But after that, I didn't hear anything from him again and when I checked on Thursday and Friday morning, there was no reply from him," Mrs Lewatu told the Fiji Times. ‘’I didn't know that he had already left us.’’
Mr Gauna, a bachelor, and Penaia Vakaotia, 32, and Mikaele Banidawa, 45 and father of three, were killed when a bomb went off near their convoy 300 kilometres north of Baghdad .
Fiji Military Forces spokesman, Captain Neumi Leweni, says the military sees the demand for Fiji soldiers as a "positive indication of the reputation of the skills of Fiji soldiers."
Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase has appealed for people to stop going and instead stay home and farm the land.
“If they make good use of their resources, surely they will earn the same amount they work for in Iraq .”
But the money is too good and jobs too short and now over 2000 Fijians serve with the British Army, mostly in southern Iraq , with another 1000, mostly ex-Fiji army soldiers, working in Iraq as mercenaries for security firms.
Remittances from them make up seven percent of gross domestic product and exceed NZ$272 million a year, second only to tourism and exceeding sugar earnings now.
University of the South Pacific economist Dr Manoranjan Mohanty says mercenary work had transformed Fiji into a “remittance economy” like Tonga and Samoa .
A substantial volume of personal remittances was transferred to Fiji informally.
"In Fiji the total volume of both the formal and informal transfer of remittances put together is estimated to be between NZ$374 – NZ$416 million.''
Iraq ’s mess swallows up as many unemployed young men Fiji can provide and two or three times a year British Army recruiters take over a wing of the Holiday Inn to process the hundreds of hopefuls. Middle Eastern peace would be Fiji ’s worst economic nightmare.
Although many of the mercenaries are ex-Fiji military, a significant number are just unemployed civilians who have got to Kuwait and Iraq and signed up. Fijians are everywhere in Iraq . One, Josevata Tuisavalu, guarding witnesses in the trial of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, claimed that he and four others had been offered over NZ$3 million for information about the witnesses so that they could be killed.
Security Employers Association president Vilikesa Raqio says many of the men do not get proper training for what they do and he wanted the government the government to fund training. He complains too that the international companies pay peanuts for ‘’ the amount of risk they face out there in Iraq ’’.
Global Risks Strategies Fiji-based recruiter and former Fiji Lieutenant Colonel Sakiusa Raivoce predicts more causalities, saying the Fijians were playing a big role in escorting convoys from Kuwait to Baghdad .
Global Strategies, from London , has hired 560 Fijians, mostly operating in Baghdad ’s Green Zone and at the airport. They’ve lost six Fijians since 2004.
‘’They are targeting the Americans and a long convoy of trucks passes off as American. Any foreigner in Iraq is an enemy at the moment.’’
He says as long as Fijians work with convoys they will suffer heavy fatalities.
Anasa Navukaro, Kelemedi Dreuvakabalawa, Malakai Sekibureta and Iosefa Cagi were on a convoy to Kirkuk when they were ambushed. As they sheltered in a truck, a rocket propelled grenade killed them. A couple of days later in a convoy from Kuwait , Josaia Seniyasi, Sevuloni Nawaduadua and Alifereti Cereilagi were killed in a roadside bomb.
Two Fijians, father of five and former police officer Waisea Jim Atalifo and Timoci Lalaqila, were killed when the Bulgarian crewed Russian helicopter was shot down. Atalifo’s wife went to Nadi airport to pick up his body but when they opened the bag it was not him. His body had been sent to the US by mistake.
Social Welfare chief executive Emele Duituturaga said families were suffering from fathers going overseas or being killed.
"What is a concern is the generation of children who will be growing up without a father or loved ones who have died while working overseas," she told reporters.
She admitted most of the families survive on the remittances sent back.
Fiji Women's Crisis Centre co-ordinator Shamima Ali told the Fiji Times they were concerned at the way young families were being left, following deaths, with no income.
"We shouldn't be proud of the fact that these men are forced to go to war-torn countries as Iraq because it offers good wages," said Ms Ali.
"These men wouldn't have to go if employment opportunities at home were better but it is a sad reality," she said.
A secret Fiji Government Defence White Paper, published in part in the Fiji Sun last week, discounts any potential threat to the country’s internal security from Iraq mercenaries.
But it was concerned that the returning men could fail to find employment in Fiji and become a security risk themselves.
The men will ‘’ have witnessed the political power of the gun at home so will not be exposed to anything new there either”.
One of the odder critics of the mercenary recruiting is nationalist Iliesa Duvuloco who has tried five times to become an MP and failed. In 2000 he played a key role in George Speight’s coup and was jailed.
“We can not allow more Fijians continue to die in Iraq ,” said Mr Duvuloco.
“We cannot afford young wives to lose their husbands and children to lose their fathers.”