The United Arab Emirates has deployed a team of Colombian mercenaries to fight in Yemen

[Judi Lynn]

9. For a mere $9 billion plus since 2000, the U.S. has bought Colombia. From the article:

For the U. S. government to pay the cost of housing, feeding, and equipping foreign trainees is less onerous than paying for “a U. S. “squadron of instructors” abroad. U. S. Assistant Secretary William R. Brownfield regards help from the Colombians as payback: “It’s a dividend we get for investing over $9 billion in support for Plan Colombia.”

Importantly, there is the notion that if trainees violate human rights, the U. S. government is blameless inasmuch as the military and police instructors are Colombian. The dismal human rights record of police, soldiers, and paramilitaries in U. S. client states in Latin America provides a rationale for expecting trouble.

Testifying before Congress, U. S. Southern Command head General John Allen spoke of “The beauty of having a Colombia – they’re such good partners, … When we ask them to go somewhere else and train the Mexicans, the Hondurans, the Guatemalans, the Panamanians, they will do it almost without asking, (And it’s) important for them to go, because I’m–at least on the military side–restricted from working with some of these countries because of limitations that are, that are really based on past sins. And I’ll let it go at that.”

The Leahy Law of 1997 prohibits the “furnishing of [military] assistance … to any foreign security force unit where there is credible information that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”