I decided to check the first nation on the list and here's what I came up with. Hardly a pacifist country... I suspect I would find similar stories from the rest of the list.
COSTA RICA'S PEEKABOO ARMY
Breathtaking mountain vistas. An idyllic climate. Unspoiled rain forests. Golden beaches stretching along two coasts. A rich fauna and an exuberant flora. Costa Rica has it all, and then some. But what makes Costa Ricans proudest of all, what they enjoy reminding the world, is that their small Central American nation has had no army since its abolition in 1948. Look again.
A document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act lists nearly 2,500 Costa Rican soldiers and officers who have trained at the SOA since 1949. Among the courses taken: military intelligence (the second most popular specialty after military police and infantry training), psychological warfare, sniper and commando tactics, airborne, engineering combat and construction, jungle operations, mortars, "irregular warfare," counterinsurgency, "nuclear war and military pedagogy," mine-sweeping, basic weapons and combat trauma medicine.
Costa Rica has also contributed instructors to the SOA, most recently Lt. Wilbert Mora and Capts. Juan Calvo, Jorge Alfaro Nunez, Luis C. Calvo Calvo and Carlos Alberto Castro. The last two ended a two-year stint in January. Lt. Col Walter F. Novaroo Romero, SOA Class of 1989 (Psychological Warfare) a Costa Rican, is the SOA base sub-commandant.
Asked to comment, Maj. Gordon Martel, SOA Public Affairs Officer, who pinch-hit for base commandant Col. Roy Trumble, dismissed any inference of impropriety in the existence of a military presence in Costa Rica. "This is a kind of police force not unlike the [US] National Guard. Its members are trained to perform civil and rural guard duties. They also go on drug interdiction missions."
Understandably, Maj. Martel must have recited SOA's standard catechism. The rationale, however, is tenuous. In Costa Rica, as in the rest of Central America, police and army are indistinguishable and interchangeable. One is tempter to speculate--given the nature, complexity, and sophistication of the courses taken by Costa Rican students at an elite combat school such as the SOA--that "civil and rural guard duties" are clever euphemisms crafter for public consumption. For this nation of three million, such intensive training looks more like a state of continuous mobilization and combat readiness than an attempt to keep peace in the streets or to preseve nature's virgin beauty against human predation. Moreover, a narcotics surveillance radar network donated and installed by the USA has since fallen in disuse, allegedly the victim of cost cutbacks. Creditable sources suggest that the facility may have been shut down because it threatened to drastically diminish the flow of drug money into the private coffers of high-ranking government officials. Such action, at a time when Costa Rica has been cited as a benevolent land bridge between Colombia's cartels and North America, invalidates Maj. Martel's argument and raises legitimate suspicion. Out of 2,500 graduates, fewer than a dozen took the so-called "counter-narcotrafficking" course. Measured against the hundreds of students who have trained in intelligence, counterinsurgency, infantry and military police, drug interdiction does not appear to be a burning preoccupation in Costa Rica at this time.
Costa Rica's reputation as nature conservator and premier tourist attraction has obscured a less than sterling human rights record. As recently as 1993, the Cobra Commando, a shadowy paramilitary group, was keeping the narcotics pipeline open and terrorizing indigenous Indians in the Talamanca jungles. Once a thriving and proud people, caught between the sword and the cross, Costa Rica's Indians have dwindled to a precious few and may be headed for extinction. This could explain Costa Rica's reluctance to acknowledge the very existence of an antecedent civilization.
"The SOA is seriously hindering the establishment and strengthening of democracy in Latin America," charges Father Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest who spent two years in prison for spearheading protests against the school. Bourgeois, who heads SOA Watch, a grassroots organization that keeps close tabs on the school claims that "the SOA does not screen soldiers who are assigned to it. Known perpetrators of serious war crimes come and go as they please." Indeed, a number of officers cited in the 1993 UN Truth Commission attended the SOA after they had committed atrocities. "Funded by US tax dollars," Bourgeois argues, "the SOA steals from the poor. Graduates return to their countries to enrich the rich and to keep the poor in their place."
Defenders of the SOA, which operates on a $42 million-a-year budget (the school recently underwent a $30 million renovation), insist it is getting a bum rap. Maj. Martel rejects all criticism. "The SOA is a legitimate military institution where legitimate military skills are taught. It is not the school's fault that a fraction of graduates has engaged in reprehensible behavior"--a plea echoed by Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Sam Nunn (D-GA). Congressperson Sanford Bishop (D-GA), who represents the Fort Benning area, goes a step further. He argues that the SOA has actually promoted democracy in Latin America. These are by and large obscurantist arguments that even the Pentagon stops short of endorsing. Guaranteed anonymity, a senior analyst told this writer that the SOA "has systematically encouraged the transplantation of military structures into, and facilitated the propagation of military power and objectives against, legitimate civilian governments."
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