5th Division - Quinta División

On 01 December 1995 the Ministry of national defense activated the army's fifth Division, based in the city of Santafé de Bogotá through the provision no. 00011 on 2 October 1995, under the command of General Fernando Tapias Staehelin, who remained until December 1996, with the following organization: a command and general staff, the Tenth Brigade Decimatercera Brigade and 15th Brigade, on 20 December 1995 starting work with 47 men and women.

After July 2005 the army had seven divisions assigned to territorial regions. At that time the 5th Division was assigned to Bogotá, with jurisdictional control over Cundinamarca, Tolima, Huila, and Boyacá. It was composed of the 1st Brigade in Tunja, the 6th Brigade in Ibagué, the 9th Brigade in Neiva, and the 23d Brigade in Bogotá. The 8th Mobile Brigade, six counterguerrilla battalions, the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th Afeur units, and the Plan Meteoro 6th Company are also part of the 5th Division.

As of 2005 the army had seven divisions assigned to territorial regions. At that time the Fifth Division had jurisdiction in the Departments of Cundinamarca, Tolima, Huila, and Boyaca. The division's component brigades were the Ist (Primera Brigada), VIth (Sexta Brigada), VIIIIth (Novena Brigada), and XIIIth (Décimotercera Brigada), headquartered in the cities of Tunja, Ibague, Neiva and Bogota, respectively.

The plan of development of the national army planned the necessity of creating the fifth Division with the purpose of grouping all military units existing in the center of the country, combat terrorist action which acts within the jurisdiction and grouped into a larger operating unit eminently academic, the school of education and training. This way she would star together in the search for the security and well-being of the community.

On 01 December 1995 the Ministry of national defense activated the army's fifth Division based in the city of Santafé de Bogotá through the provision no. 00011 on 2 October 1995, under the command of General Fernando Tapias Staehelin, who remained until December 1996, with the following organization: a command and general staff, the Tenth BrigadeDecimatercera Brigade and 15th Brigade, on 20 December 1995 starting work on 47 men and women.

The Court framed in the Department of Cundinamarca with the exception of the towns of Medina and Paratebueno belonging to the Fourth Division, Simijacá, Susa and Fúquene belonging to the second division and the town of Madrid and Puerto Salgar belonging to the air force. Of the Department of Tolima are annexed with municipalities from Flanders, Melgar, Icononzo, Carmen Apicalá, Cunday and Villa Rica.

Decimaquinta Brigade, by provision 00015 of 28 December 1995, arranged the creation purposes purely teachers. Through resolution Ministerial No. 1343, dated 1995, 15 training command at the schools is assigned then the Lord Colonel Eduardo Antonio Herrera Verbel.

The Tenth Brigade, had its origin in 1953, when began construction on the former hacienda called Tolemaida, what today is known as a "Strong military of Tolemaida". In 1957, was created a unified command center of the army, which operated until the 7 January 1961, when by Ministerial decision established the military garrison of Tolemaida, which sheltered the following units: a logistic command, school Lancers, infantry battalion, Colombia, battalion of engineers Caldas and the company of Lancers, all of them from the Brigade of military institutes. The Organization of the Tenth Brigade began later in 1966. In July 1968 he was assigned the responsibility of set up as army reserve.

Decimatercera Brigade was created to assume responsibility for maintaining public order control in Cundinamarca and ensure the functioning of the economic, political and social Center of the country.

Mobile Brigade No. 1. This minor operational unit was operationally added from the creation to the fifth Division, their beginnings go back to 1991 where it was founded for the purpose of combating terrorism in different regions of the country. He has his command post in Caqueza (Cundinamarca) and began its operations by deploying troops to the East of Cundinamarca and the municipalities of el Calvario and San Juanito in Meta. Acting with the counter-guerrilla battalions: Cacique haze, Cacique Sugamuxi, Lancers of the plain above and first line.

The Colombian military tarnished its newly burnished image as a result of a scandal that began to emerge in September 2008. An investigation linked dozens of army personnel, including three generals, to an alleged army practice since 2002 of killing mostly homeless young civilian men in order to inflate the number of supposed insurgents or drug traffickers killed in combat by security forces. In 2002 the army commander, General Mario Montoya Uribe, himself was allegedly involved in covering up a case of what in Colombia is termed false positives.

The scandal, which affected mostly the Bogotá-based 5th Division, revealed that civilian control of the military and security forces under President Uribe had not been as effective in respecting basic human rights as some Uribistas had claimed. Trying to remedy this lack of control and to repair the damage done to his own national standing, President Uribe on October 29, 2008, dismissed 25 army officers, including Montoya and two other generals and four colonels, over the extrajudicial executions of at least 11 civilians who disappeared from Bogotá in early 2008. He also announced in early November that every military unit down to the battalion level would have an appointed official to monitor allegations of abuse.