Security Forces To Curb Fuel Smuggling from Syria to Lebanon

A picture taken on December 14, 2017 shows a general view of people standing at the Al-Qaa border crossing in Lebanon and Jussiyeh in Syria. [STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images]

Syrian authorities have closed the smuggling crossings along the border with northeastern Lebanon, in an effort to curb increasing smuggling of fuel, vegetables and livestock from Syria.

Smuggling activities from Syrian territory to Lebanon have increased over the past months due to the difference in the prices of basic commodities.

Twenty liters of diesel fuel costs about LBP 250,000 in Syria, compared to LBP 350,000 in Lebanon where the material is scarce and has been lately sold in the black market.

The Syrian military tightened its control over the Syrian side of the border, closing the illegal routes and adopting strict security measures to prevent the crossing of Lebanese vehicles into Syrian villages inhabited by Lebanese in the countryside of Al-Qosair (southwest of Homs). It also prevented cars from crossing the border into Lebanon.

The measures “led to a complete cessation of smuggling operations from both sides at the illegal crossings in the northern Bekaa,” field sources in Hermel told Asharq Al-Awsat.

The closure included all smuggling routes in the Hermel area, adjacent to the Syrian territory.

The source said the new measures came as a result of “revived smuggling from Syria to Lebanon,” explaining that the opposite-smuggling wave “increased with the decline in prices in Syria and their rise in Lebanon.”

The Syrian measures come in parallel to efforts by the Lebanese security forces to combat smuggling and to chase car-stealing gangs.

A Lebanese military source told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Lebanese Army’s Second Land Border Regiment has intensified its security measures on the Lebanese-Syrian border, arresting gangs involved in smuggling and transporting stolen cars from Lebanon into Syria.