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Jordan Detects 160 Drug Smuggling Groups Operating behind its Border with Syria

A drone monitors the Jordanian-Syrian border. (AFP)
A drone monitors the Jordanian-Syrian border. (AFP)
    Amman, London - Mohammed Khair al-Rawashdeh and Asharq Al-Awsat
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Jordan Detects 160 Drug Smuggling Groups Operating behind its Border with Syria

A drone monitors the Jordanian-Syrian border. (AFP)
A drone monitors the Jordanian-Syrian border. (AFP)

Jordan’s army announced that 160 groups of traffickers are operating in southern Syrian, near the border with Jordan. It also confirmed that security channels for communication are up and running with the Syrian regime regarding the matter.

Drug trafficking from Syria into Jordan is becoming “organized” with smugglers stepping up operations and using sophisticated equipment including drones, Jordan’s army said Thursday, warning of a shoot-to-kill policy.

Since the beginning of this year, Jordan’s army has killed 30 smugglers and foiled attempts to smuggle into the kingdom from Syria 16 million Captagon pills -- more than they seized in the whole of 2021 -- the military said.

Speaking to reporters, senior officer, Colonel Mustafa Al-Hiyari, said Jordan is “fighting an undeclared war” and that drug smuggling from Syria has forced stricter rules of engagement.

Hiyari noted that communications with the Syrian side have not been fruitful for a long time, which prompted Jordan to change its engagement policy.

“We got a very positive response from the Syrian government... but on the ground that does not last for long,” he added.

“We have confirmed information that some Syrian checkpoints cooperated with some smugglers in some cases... some checkpoints affiliated with the Syrian army helped smugglers and provided protection,” he revealed.

“But we cannot be certain that this was done on instructions from the Syrian army -- perhaps these are cases of corruption in these checkpoints,” Hiyari said.

On January 27 the army said it killed 27 traffickers in a clash as they tried to enter the kingdom from Syria.

It was the deadliest confrontation yet in the army’s fight against smugglers. Three other alleged traffickers have been killed in separate operations this year.

Hiyari told reporters that large amounts of illegal drugs have been seized since the beginning of the year.

This included 17,348 packs of hashish and more than 16 million Captagon pills -- compared to 15.5 million pills for all of 2021 and 1.4 million pills in 2020.

“Jordan is waging an undeclared war along the border against drug traffickers and those who back them,” Hiyari said.

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Syrian Opposition Fighters Take the Homes of Assad's Officers

A family member waits for workers to move his family's belongings, following evacuation orders from factions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), after Syria's Bashar Assad was ousted, on the outskirts of Damascus, in Syria, December 29, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
A family member waits for workers to move his family's belongings, following evacuation orders from factions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), after Syria's Bashar Assad was ousted, on the outskirts of Damascus, in Syria, December 29, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
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Syrian Opposition Fighters Take the Homes of Assad's Officers

A family member waits for workers to move his family's belongings, following evacuation orders from factions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), after Syria's Bashar Assad was ousted, on the outskirts of Damascus, in Syria, December 29, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
A family member waits for workers to move his family's belongings, following evacuation orders from factions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), after Syria's Bashar Assad was ousted, on the outskirts of Damascus, in Syria, December 29, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Families of military officers who served under Syria's ousted Bashar Assad are being evicted from their subsidized housing at a compound outside Damascus to make way for victorious former opposition fighters and their families, residents and fighters there said.

The Muadamiyat al-Sham compound housing hundreds of people in over a dozen buildings is one of several such areas set aside for officers under Assad's rule, according to Reuters.

As the military is being restructured around the former opposition forces, with Assad-era officers demobilized, the evictions from military housing are not a surprise.

But their rapid replacement in the accommodation by fighters who spent years in impoverished, rural opposition-held territory shows the sudden reversal of fortune for supporters of each side in the conflict.

Names of factions under the main victorious group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which captured the capital on Dec. 8, are scrawled in spray paint on the entrances to buildings, apparently marking them out for fighters from each entity.

Three fighters at the compound, four women who have been residing there and a local official providing documents to those leaving said officers' families had been given five days to go.

“We will start moving our children's schools, starting our lives over. I am very sad, my heart is broken, it's our lives, my children's lives,” said Budour Makdid, 38, the wife of a former military intelligence officer living in Muadamiyat al-Sham.

Makdid's husband, who has signed papers recognizing the new authorities and handed over his gun, has already returned to his family home in Latakia province, a former Assad stronghold, and Makdid and their children would join him there, she said.

Like other families leaving the area, she needed a document from the municipal authorities to say the family was leaving the accommodation and giving permission to remove their belongings.

Local administrator Khalil al-Ahmad, 69, said families had started approaching him several days ago seeking the document and that around 200 requests for one had been made so far.

Ahmad said he had not been officially contacted by the new administration about the change, and was only made aware of it when residents began to ask him for the documents.

Displaced

Any sign of how Syria's new administration intends to handle former Assad officers, as well as property rights, will be closely watched in a country where millions of people have been displaced since civil war erupted in 2011.

Earlier this month, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa was filmed requesting the residents of his family's former home in Damascus to leave and allow his own family to move back.

Some former military families living near the Muadamiyat al-Sham compound but not in the subsidized units from which officers are being evicted are also leaving.

Eidye Zaitoun, 52, was packing her belongings into black plastic bags as she prepared to leave her two-room apartment for the coast. She said her son in the military had moved to the coast too and there was no reason for her to stay.

HTS fighters at the compound were not sympathetic, according to Reuters.