July 11, 2025
For days, the message circulated on WhatsApp chats, warning of an imminent attack. The message, which claimed to be from Jeff Laros, the sanctioned leader of Haiti’s so-called Taliban gang, didn’t specify when or where. But residents of Lascahobas, an important trading point between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, stood their guard.
Shortly after dawn on July 3, a bloody surprise assault began. Armed men on motorcycles and in vehicles from the gang based in Canaan, north of Port-au-Prince, stormed Desvarieux, Savane La Coupe and Sarrazin near Lascahobas.
A Haitian police officer deployed to defend the mango and coffee growing region was killed, as were seven others. “This was an area that never had any problems; it was always safe,” Lascahobas Mayor Fredener Joseph told the Miami Herald. “These guys carried out a lot of destruction, a lot of homes have been burned, destroyed.”
While the attack on Lascahobas may seem like just one more horrific blow in Haiti’s ongoing gang warfare, it has raised alarms in and outside the country because of what it signals about the evolving gang threat: Criminal armed groups are no longer just consolidating power in Port-au-Prince, but are rapidly expanding north—a point underscored Friday in a new United Nations report.
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Fears of border conflict
Lascahobas mayor Joseph believes gangs are after two things in the area: control of the Peligre hydroelectric dam, and access to the Haiti-Dominican border. “If the government doesn’t put its head together to push back the gangs they will head toward Belladère and then we will be at war, because the Dominicans will never accept this,” Joseph said of Haiti’s contentious neighbor, which has been beefing up patrols on its side of the border. “Belladère and Lascahobas are both border towns.”
The U.N. report notes that the Belladère border post, located 62 miles from the capital has for several years been a transit zone for trafficking in arms, drugs and other contraband coming from or heading to the Dominican Republic. As a result, controlling the roads crossing the center region is strategically important for the gangs and their supporters in trafficking networks.
William O’Neill, the U.N.’s independent human rights expert who raised concerns about the border after a recent visit to Haiti, said gangs that gain access to the important trading route leading to the Dominican Republic border could see their income rise. “They could extort lots of money from vehicles and people moving through,” he said…
Source: The Miami Herald
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