The army has proposed disbanding a special counterinsurgency unit known as the Scout Rangers because many of its members supported the military uprising this month.

Instead of being arrested, he was replaced as commander and allowed to retain his band of fighters as an independent counterinsurgency unit.

United States officials said they had been told that the five soldiers, part of a counterinsurgency unit, were being detained at their base in the Peten.

The first territorial force freed for combat was the 101st Battalion, a predominantly black counterinsurgency unit frequently accused of brutality in its pursuit of guerrillas.

In another strategy, the army increasingly hunts guerrilla bands with professional counterinsurgency units rather than draftees and paramilitary death squads.

Last month, a judge charged Mr. Humala with human rights abuses related to his role in a counterinsurgency unit in the 1990s.

Until the arrival of some élite counterinsurgency units from the south, the Peruvian forces committed to the battle were composed mostly of young and inexperienced conscripts.

"The only people who can contain it are these special counterinsurgency units of the police," he said.

The BLCs were another type of counterinsurgency unit, first deployed in early 1986.

South Africa has agreed to cut the force from 8,300 to 7,100 and to abolish a counterinsurgency unit.