Recourse to Russia: Will Jordan Attempts To Stop Drug Smuggling From Syria Deter Iran and Hezbollah?

Jordan is still intensifying its political moves, with the aim of finding a decisive solution to prevent drug smuggling operations to the kingdom from Syria across the borders under the domination of Iranian militias.

Although Jordan renewed its official relations with the Syrian regime and opened a new page of joint relations, the file of drug smuggling across the border did not change but rather increased.

No progress has been made in border control since Jordan’s King Abdullah II received a phone call from the head of the Syrian regime, Bashar al-Assad, on October 3, 2021.

Experts believed that the end of the political and economic estrangement between Amman and Damascus would contribute to stopping drug smuggling to Jordan and, from there, to the Gulf states, but this has not happened yet.

 

Recourse to Russia

Amman found itself facing wide open borders for drug smuggling through specialized networks and modern technologies, such as smuggling with drones and highly equipped cars, at a great financial cost.

Hardly a month passes without the Jordanian army announcing that the border guards, which extend about 375 kilometers with Syria, have thwarted drug smuggling operations from Syrian territory and killed smugglers.

The last seizure of smuggling from Syria to Jordan was announced on December 11, 2022, when more than three million Captagon pills and 8,773 palms of hashish were seized.

Because it was unable to put an end to the smuggling file, Jordan turned to Russia, an ally of the Syrian regime, hoping to achieve a “positive breakthrough” in this path.

On January 25, 2023, a high-ranking security source affiliated with the Assad regime revealed to the Russian agency Sputnik that new logistical measures will be witnessed at the Syrian–Jordanian border, with the aim of controlling smuggling and reducing armed groups’ penetration of the border strip between the two countries.

The security source said that the Syrian–Jordanian border, specifically south of the city of Daraa opposite the Jordanian town of Ramtha, witnessed a tour of the Russian military police, accompanied by a number of officers of the Syrian security services.

It pointed out that the tour aims to examine field facts in preparation for setting new procedures that contribute to limiting smuggling operations, noting that a decision was taken to increase the number of border posts between the two countries.

The only official crossing between Syria and Jordan currently is the Jaber Nassib crossing, which was fully reopened to transit traffic in September 2022 after the restrictions imposed by Jordan due to the spread of the COVID pandemic. However, cross-border smuggling operations take place in general through illegal crossings.

The Jordanian king previously discussed the Syrian file with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during his visits on November 3, 2022, stressing the importance of “establishing stability in Syria, especially in the south.”

The two sides discussed “the burdens Jordan faces as a result of the Syrian crisis, including organized drug smuggling attempts.”

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi stressed, during his meeting with the Russian President’s Special Envoy for Syrian Settlement Affairs, Alexander Lavrentiev, on January 11, 2023, that “establishing stability in southern Syria and confronting the threat of drug smuggling and terrorism is a threat facing Jordan, which is taking all necessary measures to confront it and seeks to cooperate with Russia to end it.”

Safadi stressed “the importance of the Russian role as a stabilizing factor in southern Syria and a guarantor of stability in the de-escalation agreements and reconciliations reached in 2018,” according to the Jordanian Petra News Agency.

Russia has great importance in the Daraa Governorate through its sponsorship of the settlement agreements in 2018 and 2021 between the opposition fighters and the Syrian regime.

That is why it was noted that Moscow pushed some of these elements to the Syrian–Jordanian border in a clear message to Iran, which has often warned Jordan of the presence of its militias on its northern borders.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II confirmed that Jordan faces attacks on its borders on a regular basis from “militias linked to Iran.”

In an interview with the official Jordanian newspaper, Al Rai, on July 24, 2022, the Jordanian king spoke about “drug and arms smuggling operations,” which he said “target us as well as our brothers,” and about the need to establish an “Arab institutional defense system” to confront “common sources of threat.”

 

Organized Smuggling

Southern Syria, located on the northern borders of Jordan, which the Syrian regime has almost completely regained control of in mid-2021, is witnessing the growing activities of Assad’s regular forces and allied Iranian militias in smuggling and drug trafficking.

The Assad regime has turned Syria into a “drug state” and has developed large networks to manufacture drugs locally and smuggle them to various countries, especially Arab ones, to replenish its empty treasury with dollars.

The areas controlled by Assad constitute an environment equipped for manufacturing narcotics, under the supervision of senior officers of the regime, and exporting them in innovative ways to world ports, according to many press investigations.

The matter is now not limited to the production of Captagon by the Assad regime, but rather to the formation of it and its allies, the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran, a network of local mediators with “octopus arms” in this “dirty trade” in their countries.

Jordan is the most prominent destination for drug smuggling, being adjacent to the Gulf states, and this prompted Amman to complain about the Assad regime after the latter made the Syrian–Jordanian border the largest platform for drug smuggling, despite the normalization of relations.

Even King Abdullah II visited the border area with Syria on January 17, 2022, and demanded that the army personnel be “a red eye in dealing with smugglers.”

However, the Syrian regime’s failure to respond adequately to curbing drug smuggling prompted the Jordanian army to launch an operation under the name (Falcon Strike) on February 21, 2022, to conduct military exercises that simulate the scenario of eliminating “terrorist elements and drug smugglers” at the Jordanian–Syrian border.

On January 27, 2022, the Jordanian army announced that it had killed 27 smugglers as they tried to cross the border from Syria into the kingdom with the support of armed groups, which is the largest number of deaths in thwarting drug smuggling across the border.

The General Command of the Jordanian Armed Forces stated at that time: “The Border Guard forces detected, through observations, an attempt by a group of smugglers to cross the border illegally from Syrian territory, and the rules of engagement were applied with direct shooting at them, which led to injuries.”

On February 17, 2022, the Jordanian army announced that attempts to smuggle drugs across the Syrian–Jordanian border had become an “organization” that uses drones and is protected by armed groups.

The army said at the time that the Jordanian authorities thwarted, within about 45 days in early 2022, the entry of more than 16 million Captagon pills, equivalent to the quantity seized throughout 2021.

The kingdom confirms that 85% of the drugs seized are intended for smuggling out of Jordan, especially south to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

 

‘Isolating Area’

Syrian analyst and military expert Colonel Ismail Ayoub confirmed to Al-Estiklal that “controlling the Syrian–Jordanian borders has become difficult even if Russian police patrols are conducted periodically or the number of outposts affiliated with the Assad regime or by the Jordanian side increases.”

Ayoub added: “This is due to the fact that most drug smuggling operations take place through small drones that carry narcotic substances in varying quantities, from two kilograms to 10 kilograms.”

However, the military expert said: “This requires measures to control smuggling operations through the presence of forces within the Syrian borders at a depth of no less than 10 kilometers.”

Ayoub believed that “the new Russian patrols on the Syrian side are facing major corruption operations, as the Russian forces are not trustworthy because of the high possibility of penetrating them with money by the Iranians and the Lebanese Hezbollah elements, who are there in southern Syria in militia forces, managing the smuggling operations.”

He added: “The important point is that the process of blinding Russian forces and bypassing them is very easy near the Syrian–Jordanian border, so I do not think that increasing Russian patrols to control drug smuggling operations from inside Syria will lead to curbing drug smugglers from the Iranian factions and Hezbollah.

“The only solution to control the Syrian–Jordanian border against drug and weapon smuggling is to establish a buffer zone, as Turkiye did in northern Syria, which is outside the control of the Assad regime.”

Ayoub added: “Because the Iranian militias, Russia, and the Assad regime forces, which take the Syrian side as their stronghold, are behind the drug smuggling operations to Jordan.

“Therefore, in my opinion, there is no confidence in these forces to prevent smuggling operations, which are mainly a source of livelihood and income for him in foreign currencies that he derives from this cross-country trade.”

He concluded, stressing: “Hence, I can say that the step is a routine procedure and is not decisive on the way to ending the smuggling file that is bothering Jordan and behind it the Arab Gulf states.”