More than 600 soldiers left the Army last year. Brian O'Connellexamines what draws a minority of ex-soldiers to join a growing band of private military companies.

Central Baghdad, 2003, and Middle East correspondent Sam Kiley has just walked into the lobby of the Palestine Hotel. Around him are assembled a motley crew of shaven-headed, submachinegun-carrying ex-army personnel with a mix of American, British and the odd Irish accent. Their pockets are stuffed with radios, medical trauma packs and global positioning systems.

Webbing belts hold up rip-proof combat trousers. Spare clips of ammo, commando knifes and Glock 9mm pistols hang from their legs. Asked about their backgrounds, they all adopt a 1,000-mile stare, saying simply that they've "been about a bit". Drawn to Iraq and Afghanistan by daily salaries of between $500-$1,500 (€372-€1,115), these modern dogs of war have found rich pickings in the unfolding carnage. They are part of a growing hidden army, deployed worldwide, indicating it's a good time to be a gun for hire.

With the world's military increasingly reluctant to commit troops to volatile regions, private military companies (PMCs) are in increasing demand across the globe, and the offer of lucrative contracts is tempting many well-trained army personnel. Members of elite forces, such as the Rangers (the elite wing of the Irish Army) the SAS and Green Berets, are especially sought after.

The Irish Defence Forces estimate that more than 600 personnel left the military last year alone, a figure slightly up on recent years. While officially they maintain there is no concrete evidence of former Irish Army personnel taking up lucrative work in the Middle East, anecdotally they say that at least "five or six highly trained personnel have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 18 months".

"What they do as private citizens is their own choice," said an Army spokesman. "Opportunities with private security firms in volatile areas is a relatively new phenomenon, and came to the fore following the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The work is high risk, but also very lucrative. There is no arguing our soldiers are very well trained, but so far we haven't seen a bleeding of soldiers out of the Army. It's extremely dangerous work, attractive only to a minority."

One member of that minority is former Irish Army Ranger Paul Butler, who runs a private security firm called Executive Decision Services, from his base in the south of France. Butler set up the company more than a decade ago with other members of the Irish Army's elite anti-terrorist wing and specialises in close security protection for VIPs, royalty and millionaire businessmen all over the globe. He employs ex-Irish Army personnel on an ongoing basis. He says that members of the Irish Rangers are some of the most sought-after in the business.

"I'D GET UPWARDS of 50 CVs a week," says Butler. "Irish guys are really well trained and generally have a good head on them. They're hard lads but importantly are very knowledgeable. Irish people, especially the lads coming out of Special Forces like the Rangers, always get on well. They're hard to track down because phone numbers change from week to week - I had some guys here with me a few weeks back and I know for certain there are guys in the Middle East at the moment. Because of the nature of the work though it's not easy get hold of them and they don't like to broadcast their whereabouts."

Butler is well-respected by ex-Army personnel, having been one of the first members of the Irish Ranger Wing when it was formally established in 1980.

"I was in Beirut in 1979 with the United Nations. I met a lot of Irish guys there and when we came back we all started the Rangers wing," says Butler,

"When I left the Army some years later, I came over to France and began my own company. About four lads from the Rangers came over with me. Many of them have gone their own way now - some work in South America, others stayed in Europe, and I stayed on here in France, building my company."

The mainstay of Butler's work is in VIP protection, and he says while the work is highly paid, the modern-day bodyguard is a highly trained expert. While he won't be drawn on individual situations for fear of compromising his clients' confidentiality, he says he's been in a few hairy situations over the past decade and that preparation is the key to his work.

"This line of work is all about preparation. I mean if someone is willing to pay you €1,500 a day to protect them, the first question you have to ask is why? It's very hard to find out the truth on people sometimes, so often we are involved in counter surveillance in order to assess our client's risk. It's only then that you find they have done someone over for a million quid and have a line of guys tailing them ready to pull the trigger.

"Our work is different to the work in the Middle East. There are big contracts out there, and some serious money to be earned. I wouldn't operate out there myself - too many uncertainties. I've worked in places like Nigeria, Canada, Mexico, Malaysia and Tokyo, but not the Middle East. It's very hard to get into our line of work because it's so specialist, working with diplomats, movie stars or royalty and we value our reputation."

A lot of the recruiting of Army personnel is done when a sergeant or corporal leaves a unit and then encourages others to follow. Butler says that he would be slow to come out of the Army given the current climate.

"The industry has become very difficult. It's not the kind of work you can stay doing forever, especially now that the world is a more dangerous place."

That's an assessment shared by Middle East correspondent Sam Kiley. Having stumbled on the ex-military scene in Baghdad back in 2003, he subsequently made a series of documentaries for Channel 4 entitled Guns for Hire.

Kiley says that while the industry in general remains buoyant, work in Iraq has been heavily streamlined in the past two years. The free-for-all in places such as Fallujah may be over, yet other less volatile conflicts remain. Kiley points to a secret memo circulated through the SAS some weeks back, pleading with ex-members not to recruit directly from the unit, which suggests demand for the right type of person still exists.

While Kiley came across a number of former Irish Army personnel in Baghdad, none wanted to be identified on film. Many ex-British army personnel, with experience in Northern Ireland, were of similar outlook.

"It's a messy industry," says Kiley, "and you find that soldiers are tending to stay in the army longer nowadays. They get good benefits, especially in special forces such as the Rangers, where the work is interesting and diverse. Companies in the Middle East are looking to cheaper labour from South America as budgets are being squeezed. You hear stories of guys going out to Iraq for two years and coming back with buckets of money and running out and buying Porches and huge houses. A year or two later they find themselves burdened with huge debts and the lucrative contracts are not so easily got."

Kiley hasn't been back to Baghdad since 2003, and has no intention of ever returning.

"Not all the guys out there are loonies, the majority of them are in their early 40s and bored. They see the dollar signs and get lured, but the body-count is high. I've been covering the Middle East on and off since 1998, but I haven't been to Iraq in several years. It's just not worth the risk."