Honduras

Military Ties with Other Countries

Honduran fighter pilots during joint United States-Honduran military maneuvers
Courtesy Department of Defense, Still Media Records Center

Honduran air force security policeman with Uzi machine gun
Courtesy Department of Defense, Still Media Records Center

Although not nearly as important to Honduras as is the United States--which alone supplied 73 percent of the arms that Honduras imported from 1984 to 1988--Israel has also been a noteworthy provider of training and sophisticated weaponry to the Armed Forces of Honduras. A 1982 visit by a high-level Israeli delegation headed by (then) Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Air Force General David Ivry, was followed by an increase in arms deliveries and training for Honduras. A dozen Israelis trained the Cobras (the elite counterinsurgency unit) and the personal security guards of former Honduran presidents Roberto Suazo Córdova and José Azcona Hoyo (see Public Security Force , this ch.). In mid-1983 the New York Times reported that significant quantities of weapons captured from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) by Israel in their 1982 invasion of Lebanon were passing through the Honduran armed forces to the Contras.

Brazil, France, Britain, and the former West Germany supplied about US$70 million worth of arms to Honduras between 1984 and 1988. The total in weapons sales deliveries from both foreign government and commercial sources was US$331.7 million during the years 1981 to 1990.

Data as of December 1993