Transforming Dominican Border Army

Table of Contents

Introduction3

Discussions3

Role of Dominican Border Army3

Drugs Trafficking Organizations in Dominica5

Drug Trafficking Laws in Dominica6

Dominican Border Army Structuring for Drugs Control7

Coordination between Law Enforcement Agencies7

Operation Alliance7

The Information Sharing System on Regional Level8

Monitoring of illegal drugs laboratories8

Strategies for Street level enforcement9

Discrete and Non Discrete Markets9

Undercover Operations10

Other Concerns10

The Goals of Border Army12

Conclusion12

Endnotes14

Transforming Dominican Border Army

Introduction

The Dominican Republic is an island in Hispaniola that lies in the Caribbean region. The western side of the island is occupied by Haiti. The Dominican Republic has the population of about 10 million people and the area of about 48,442 square kilometres. The republic of Dominica is considered as a nation with limited amount of resources. The nation is suffering from several problems; one of the problems is drugs trafficking or drugs trading on the Dominican-Haiti border. The monitoring of the border comes under the army of Dominica. The border army controls the activities of the border and historically they are unable to control drugs trafficking between the borders. The study aims to identify the drugs trafficking issues in Dominica and the changes that can be made in structure of the border army to control the drugs trading.

Discussions

Role of Dominican Border Army

In 2002 the Dominican military created the Unified Special Forces Command, made up of elite units of the different military branches and the police, to reinforce patrolling along the border zone. Major General Carlos Diaz Morfa stated that "border control belongs to the National Army”. Added to this was the decision of Southcom to send soldiers to the Dominican-Haitian border in fifteen groups of 900 soldiers each to participate in joint military exercises. The presence of such a large number of U.S. soldiers in the Dominican Republic was a new development and most likely reflected security concerns regarding neighbouring Haiti. Although DNCD documents talk about the National Army as a force independent of the military, the relationship between the military and police forces is symbiotic.

This is reflected not only in the practice of naming military officers to run the National Police but also in other forms of collaboration that bring into question the autonomy and civilian character of the police. One recent study states that clear limits between the police and the military do not exist. Another highlighted recent progress made by the Dominican military in democratizing the institution but added the caveat that police tasks continue to be an area reserved for military control. There are important additional factors in the Dominican case. The growing role of the armed forces in controlling the border with Haiti has to do in part with concerns about drug trafficking and illegal immigration. Haiti's inability to exercise control of its national territory and the impunity, with which drug traffickers operate, at times with the open complicity of police officers, led Haiti to be labelled a "narco state”.

Dominican DNCD authorities used this term to describe Haiti, noting that drugs cross the border by land, sea, and air. Nevertheless, the largest illicit drug seizures in ...