The United Arab Emirates has announced they are ready to deploy ground troops to fight against ISIS in Syria.

As AFP reports, Anwar Gargash, the Emirati state minister for foreign affairs, said the UAE would participate in any international effort that called for a ground intervention to combat terrorism.

"Regional countries must bear part of the burden," Gargash said. "The global strategy to fight terrorism is no longer fruitful or enough."

The UAE will likely be sending out Colombian mercenaries to fight against ISIS. As The New York Times reports, the UAE has covertly sent hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to Yemen to battle Houthi forces, which Saudi Arabia has been fighting for eight months.

The army of mercenaries has been created over the last five years and was initially installed to carry out primarily domestic missions, such as guarding pipelines.

In an effort to control the chaos that has routinely occurred since 2010 due to revolutions in the region, Arab nations have decided to engage in more aggressive military strategies and have come to rely upon these Latin American mercenaries to execute military tasks.

According to The New York Times, rulers in the UAE see their own military as inadequate and untrustworthy.

In 2011, Colombians entered the UAE posing as construction workers. In reality, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army that was originally managed by Erik Prince, the former Navy Seal who founded Academi, the security company previously known as Blackwater.

Calixto Rincón, a veteran of Colombia’s national police force, spoke of joining the operation as a way of providing for his family, as well as seeing a new part of the world. Rincón said that his fellow mercenaries practically constituted an army for the UAE, and they were desired for their expertise in warfare.

“They wanted people who had a lot of experience in countries with conflicts, like Colombia,” he said. Colombia has been embroiled in a decades-long battle with various rebel groups.

Sean McFate, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of the book “The Modern Mercenary,” explained the UAE's taste for mercenaries as an economic motivation.

“Mercenaries are an attractive option for rich countries who wish to wage war yet whose citizens may not want to fight,” McFate said.

The UAE is a member of the U.S.-led coalition, which is currently carrying out airstrikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.