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, in what a UN expert called a growing new form of mercenary activity..."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,"...[said] José Luis Gómez del Prado, the Spanish expert who heads the five-member UN group...neither the United States nor Iraq had replied to the panel's letters...The report said that some companies had hired former military personnel and former police officers to serve as security guards, but some in fact became "private militarily armed soldiers."...Recruits from Fiji and Latin America sometimes complained of poor working conditions, partial payment or nonpayment of salaries and neglect of basic needs...Gómez del Prado said that he knew Blackwater had recruited soldiers and military veterans from Chile...