Santo Domingo.- Retired officers of the Armed Forces and the National Police assured that the Dominican Army would face problems in a possible confrontation with Haitian armed groups, in case they decide to cross into Dominican territory.
The officers, who requested that their names be withheld, agreed that the armed groups operating in Haiti have better weapons than the Dominican Armed Forces.
For example, a retired police general assures that these groups have military support from foreign nations, for which they receive modern weapons, including grenade launchers.
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“The armed forces Dominicans do not currently have the military response capacity to confront those groups that operate in Haiti and that already have a presence in our country,” he said.
He explained that the Creole Army has five brigades, which practically do not have “operational capacity or response capacity” for a possible urban and rural war with Haitian gangs.
“We have five brigades. The first is at kilometer 25 of the Duarte highway, the second, in Santiago, the third, in Valverde, the fourth, in Barahona, and the fifth, in San Juan, in the east we have nothing,” he said.
He complained because many soldiers are carrying out work in favor of institutions and businessmen, “distorting the function of military bodies.”
“There are civil institutions that have enough soldiers to form a brigade. There is no sufficient operational force with the capacity to confront these Haitian groups », he insisted.
Likewise, officers from the different military bodies assure that the military institutions no longer have the combat capacity that they did 25 years ago.
“An example is that there are no longer 50-kilo bombs to attack and the AMX tanks that Trujillo (Rafael Leónidas) bought from France in 1952 were abandoned,” lamented one of the officers.
Dominican nationalist groups have expressed their fear that the armed gangs that operate in Haiti will enter Dominican territory, where the number of citizens of that country who enter Dominican soil illegally is increasing every day.
The nationalists assure that international organizations, sponsored by France, Canada and the United States, are orchestrating a plan to unify the two countries, promoting illegal Haitian immigration to Dominican territory.