Columbia's Big and 'Bad' Military

Los Angeles Times article on Columbia
Key points:
"Seven years and $4.35 billion since the advent of a massive U.S. aid program, the Colombian military has been transformed from an outmatched "garrison force" that had yielded huge swaths of terrain to leftist guerrillas, to an aggressive force that has won back territory."

"The transformation, however, has had a dark side. Soldiers and police officers have committed rising numbers of human rights abuses, even as U.S. training intensifies, rights groups charge. During the five-year period that ended in June 2006, extrajudicial killings increased by more than 50% over the previous five years, according to figures compiled by human rights groups."

According to statistics compiled by the Colombian Commission of Jurists, a human rights group, the armed forces committed 1,035 extrajudicial killings in the five-year period that ended in June 2006, compared with 685 in the previous five years.