British strategic thinking on counterinsurgency tactics in a jungle environment was passed on through BRIAM (British Advisory Mission) to South Vietnam headed by Sir Robert Thompson, a former Chindit and the Permanent Secretary of Defense for Malaya during the Emergency. The Americans further refined jungle warfare by the creation of such dedicated counterinsurgency special operations troops as the Special Forces (Green Berets), Rangers, Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols (LRRP), and Combat Tracker Teams (CTT). During the decade of active US combat involvement in the Vietnam War (1962–1972), jungle warfare became closely associated with counter insurgency and special operations troops. However, although the American forces managed to have mastered jungle warfare at a tactical level in Vietnam, they were unable to install a successful strategic program in winning a jungle-based guerrilla war. Hence, the American military lost the political war in Vietnam even though US forces, especially special operations troops, won almost every major military battle against the Viet Cong guerrillas and the North Vietnamese Army. With the end of the Vietnam War, jungle warfare fell into disfavor among the major armies in the world, namely, those of the US-ledNATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, which focused their attention to conventional warfare with a nuclear flavor that was to be fought on the jungleless European battlefields. US special operations troops that were created for the purpose of fighting in the jungle environment, such as LRRP and CTT, were disbanded, and other jungle-warfare-proficient troops, such as the Special Forces and Rangers, went through a temporary period of decline until they found their role in counterterrorism operations in the 1980s. Central American Crisis After Cold War The end of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s marked the beginning of the end of a number of proxy wars that had been fought between the superpowers in the jungles of Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. In the euphoria at the end of the Cold War, many Western nations were quick to claim the peace dividend and reinvested resources to other priorities. Jungle warfare was reduced in scope and priority in the regular training curriculum of most conventional Western armies. The nature of major military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia saw the need to put an emphasis upon desert warfare and urban warfare training in both the conventional and the unconventional warfare models. Conflicts in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru Chittagong Hill Tracts