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Puamau cinavilakeba got married last May. A week later, he kissed his wife goodbye and set off on the long trip from home, in suburban Suva, to his new job, in Mosul, Iraq. Escorting convoys of trucks and oil tankers along lawless roads isn't the safest work in the world. But, back home for a month's leave, Cinavilakeba is already planning his return. "It's exciting," he says with a grin. "And with our military background" - he and his fellow security guards are all former soldiers - "the threat to our lives is not that big." The rewards, however, are huge. Global Risk International, the security company he works for, pays its Fijian employees upwards of $1,500 a month, 10 times what they'd earn as security guards at home. "After another six-month tour," says the trim 47-year-old, "I will probably retire for good."

More and more Fijians are following Cinavilakeba's path, seeking their fortunes in a war-torn land half a world away. The companies helping to pacify and rebuild Iraq need workers, and Fijians need work: there are four school leavers for every available job. When British firm Global Risk opened an office in Suva 18 months ago, it was looking for ex-soldiers. Fiji has plenty. They're well trained and, all too often, unemployed. And they lined up by the score to apply. So far, Global Risk has sent more than 1,000 men to Iraq. Three have been killed there, and one badly injured. But local director Sakiusa Raivoce says his recruits know and accept the risks. "There are a lot of people here who want to work in Iraq," says the former Fijian Army colonel, whose office is decked with mementoes of his service in Kuwait, Sinai and Lebanon. "My pool can never run dry."

The soldiers' good luck set many civilians dreaming of Middle East riches. They soon got their chance: last November, newly formed Meridian Services began hiring truck drivers, mechanics, storemen and computer operators for the Kuwait-based Public Warehousing Company, which transports into Iraq "everything from frozen food to vehicles and construction materials," says Meridian director Timoci Lolohea. Salaries start at $1,700 a month, and "the response from the public has been overwhelming." Nine hundred men are already in Kuwait, and Meridian staff are touring rural villages in a drive to sign up another 4,000 workers, including women, by the end of March. PWC is now talking about hiring 15,000 Fijians over the next five years, says Taito Waqa, acting head of the Department of Labor. The government is all for it, he adds: "We are very happy, because it helps to solve our unemployment problem and brings in remittances."

People are now a more valuable export for Fiji than sugar or clothing - and both those industries are in decline. The sums migrant workers send home have surged by 28% in two years, to $179 million, Waqa says. Half of that total now comes from Iraq - "and it's growing." The effects can be seen all over Fiji, as corrugated-iron huts give way to concrete houses, often with new cars outside. Cinavilakeba and his wife Ceriana put a deposit on a house before their wedding. "His job will help us pay for it," she says. Fijian soldiers have been taking risks to get bigger paychecks for decades. Almost 2,000 serve in the British Army, where their martial skills are prized only slightly more than their rugby talent. Two hundred of them are in Iraq; one was killed there last year. But Romanu Naceva, head of the British Ex-Servicemen and Family Association of Fiji, says entry tests are getting tougher: "Most of our sons who would like to join can't meet the standard, so they are looking for other employment." Men who join Fiji's 3,000-strong military can double their meager salaries by serving with U.N. peacekeeping missions abroad. Some 600 are currently doing so, 134 of them in Iraq. Fijian blue helmets in the Sinai and Lebanon - where 36 were killed during a 24-year deployment - "were well regarded," says defense analyst Jim Rolfe, of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, in Hawaii. "But those commitments have wound down or ended, so you have a large pool of trained people with nothing to do." Add 3,000 reservists, most of whom don't have regular jobs, and there's an even bigger pool of men eager to turn their training into cash. At least 300 reservists have resigned since Global Risk came on the scene, says military spokesman Capt. Neumi Leweni. Among them were Cinavilakeba, who served in Lebanon but couldn't find an army job when he got back; Tuks Kuliniyasi, 23, who saw a tour in Iraq as "a lifetime opportunity"; and two of Tuks' uncles. "I think most of the people in the reserve would like to go," says Cinavilakeba. Ex-British officer Naceva isn't surprised: "In these modern days, our warriors cannot find the resources to look after their families. If there is a greener pasture there, they will automatically resign and try for it."

"For a time we will be short of skills," says the Labor Department's Waqa. But the departure of soldiers and workers will create openings for the unemployed, and "we are studying ways to upskill them." When the emigrants return, he adds, "many will start small businesses and generate jobs." The exodus of men from rural areas is raising fears as well as hopes. "When they are away," says Ratu Josateki Nawalowalo, a member of the Council of Chiefs, "who will teach our younger generation the Fijian culture?" But Waqa says most workers will be gone only a year or two. He and other officials believe society will benefit overall: tax receipts will rise, more families will be able to send their children to school, rural women will break out of traditional roles, and crime will be reduced as fewer men "with skills and brains" sit idle.

"It's just a question of time before more people are killed," says economist Wadan Narsey, who studies emigration and remittances. And a Fijian presence in Iraq "increases the risk of a terrorist attack against Fiji, which would hurt our tourism industry." Tuks and Cinavilakeba say they weighed the risks carefully. "There were doubts of coming back in one piece," says Tuks, who returned last March. "But the media give an inaccurate picture of what Iraq is like. They show it as dangerous all the time and everywhere, but this is not the case."

"We cannot stop people exercising their right to move and seek work," says Waqa. "We are adopting an open-market policy. But we are advising people, instead of sending money home every week, to invest it wisely so they will have a more long-term future." The tropical paradise and the violence-racked former dictatorship could hardly be more different - or further apart. But every worker boarding a flight for the Middle East ties Fiji's future a little more closely to that of Iraq.

• Elizabeth Keenan / Suva
• Thousands of Fijians are leaving home to work in Iraq and Kuwait. Their exodus could transform the country