Private contractors boost mercenary trend

Private contractors boost mercenary trend
The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Oct 16, 2007 16:06:17 EDT

GENEVA — Private contractors like those implicated in the shootings of civilians in Iraq are part of a global trend of hiring recruits from one country to perform military jobs in another — a growing new form of mercenary activity, a U.N. expert said Tuesday.

The independent human rights experts, who wrote a U.N. report obtained by the Associated Press, see the slaying of 17 civilians by Blackwater USA last month as underscoring the risk of using such contractors in a country where they have immunity, their chairman said.

“The trend toward outsourcing and privatizing various military functions by a number of member states in the past 10 years has resulted in the mushrooming of private military and security companies,” the panel’s 25-page report said.

The “tremendous increase” in the number of such companies — including those working for the U.S. State and Defense departments — has occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the report, which is to be presented to the U.N. General Assembly next month.

A joint U.S.-Iraqi panel has been created to review the practices of security companies, and Congress has opened inquiries into the role of the contractors. Multiple U.S. investigations into the Blackwater shooting are underway.

Jose Luis Gomez del Prado, the Spanish expert who heads the five-member U.N. group, said the panel has been studying the use of contractors for two years.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/10/ap_privateguards_071016/