He told me that he was a trained physician and a member of a militia financed by the Pakistani Army, but he denied that he was an I.S.I. operative.

Unless more Pashtuns, Uzbeks and Hazaras can be recruited quickly, the national army is going to become just another ethnic militia, albeit one financed by the American taxpayer.

After falling out with the Gaddafi regime, Haftar set up his own militia financed by the CIA, according to the 2001 book Manipulations africaines, published by Le Monde diplomatique.

Antoine Lahd, commander of the South Lebanon Army, a mostly Christian militia equipped and financed by Israel, said his men were retaliating for a rocket attack against Jezzin.

Those paramilitary groups - right-wing, antiguerrilla militias financed by landowners and the cocaine trade - have long targeted unions, accusing their members of being rebels or working with Colombia's two leftist insurgent groups.

The United Self-Defense Forces, a 15,000-man coalition of militias financed by landowners and cocaine trafficking, has pledged to completely disarm by December 2005.

One potential arena is Iraq, where U.S. troops can barely handle the Sunni-led insurgency and would face the danger of being overwhelmed if there were serious attacks on them from either Shiite militias financed by Iran or Iranian irregulars.

Critics of Mr. Osorio, though, have said he misses a central reality of Colombia's conflict: the paramilitary militias, financed by the cocaine trade and wealthy Colombians as protection against the rebels, commit most of the killings in the country.

The party was formed out of the Awakening movements - Sunni tribal militias armed and financed by the United States Army to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Shiite militias, financed and armed by Iran and Syria, had great success in fueling this popular resentment.