Under the eye of the cameras deployed along the border which separates Jordan from Syria, a traditional smuggling zone in the middle of the desert, it is a curious ballet that the Jordanian security forces have been observing for months.
“We have videos that prove cooperation between drug smugglers and Syrian border guards,” says Colonel Mustafa Heyari. They show smugglers taking refuge in border crossings when Jordanian border guards open fire. Cameras filmed the arrival at these facilities of men in unidentified vehicles, suspected of belonging to militias, to fly drones loaded with drugs to Jordan. Since the reconquest of southern Syria by forces loyal to President Bashar Al-Assad in 2018, the smuggling of narcotics has exploded along this border of nearly 400 kilometers.
At the heart of this traffic, fueled by the war that has been raging in Syria since 2011 and by the economic crisis, is Captagon, an easy-to-produce and cheap amphetamine. “Syria has become a center for the production of drugs, both Captagon and hashish. And the border region is a gray area, between war and peace, where people are recruited by traffickers and militias,” regrets Colonel Heyari.
Drug use is on the rise in the Hashemite kingdom amid soaring unemployment, but the country is mainly used as a transit route to Saudi Arabia, the main destination for Captagon trafficking from Syria. The “cocaine of the poor”, very popular with Saudi youth, is sold there at least ten times more expensive (about 15 euros per tablet).
Syria, a “narco-state”
The magnitude of the phenomenon is such that experts describe Syria as a “narco-state”. The narcotics trade has become a main source of income in a country whose economy has collapsed under the weight of war and sanctions. “Although Captagon trafficking was once among the sources of funding used by anti-state armed groups, the consolidation of territorial control by the Assad regime and its regional allies has allowed them to become the main beneficiaries of narcotics trafficking,” noted the Cyprus-based Center for Operational Analysis and Research (COAR) in a report published in 2021.
Since 2017, large-scale seizures have been made in neighboring countries (Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey) and the Gulf, but also in ports in Italy and Greece. Based on the catches made public in 2021, the American institute New Lines estimates, in a study published in April, the potential value of Syrian drug exports at more than 5.7 billion dollars (about 5.1 billion euros).
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