Unlike the ZNA's other four brigades, this unit was to be armed and trained by a special North Korean military mission. The 5th Brigade was not structured for conventional military operations but rather as a specialized counter-insurgency unit. Ex-ZIPRA and Rhodesian troops resented the brigade for its apparent exclusiveness and the fact that it was permitted to operate independently from the ZNA's normal command structure, being subordinate only to the Chief of the Army. The 5th Brigade was trained from August 1981 to June 1982 at Inyanga, an isolated mountain base near the Zimbabwean-Mozambican border. It was then moved to its permanent base in Gweru.