ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Syrian and Jordanian officials met in Amman on Sunday in a new forum aimed at increasing cooperation to rein in the growing drug trade between along their border.
The meeting comes after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in May vowed to cooperate with neighboring countries to curb the flow drugs from Syria in return for the country’s return to the Arab fold. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi and Assad agreed on the formation of the forum during talks earlier this month.
A statement by the Jordanian foreign ministry said the Syrian delegation was led by Defense Minister General Ali Mahmoud Abbas, while Jordan’s was headed by Jordanian army head Lieutenant General Yousef Hunaiti.
The two sides discussed those responsible for organizing and carrying out the smuggling operations across Jordan’s border as well as the need to “combat the escalating danger to the region” of the drug trafficking out of Syria.
Jordan has become a transit point of drugs, particularly captagon, being smuggled out of Syria. Captagon is an amphetamine-type stimulant which has been spreading across the drug market in the Middle East, with Syria as the main supplier, and Gulf countries the primary consumers of the substance.
In early May, an airstrike killed a prominent drug dealer and his family in southern Syria, with a war monitor stating that the strike had been carried out by Jordan. Amman has not confirmed whether it was behind the strike.
Jordan has tightened its border with war-torn Syria in recent years to deal with the growing rate of weapons and narcotic smuggling.
Relations between Arab nations and Syria were broken in 2011 over Damascus’ crackdown on protests that grew into a civil war, but in May, Damascus was welcomed back into the Arab League.
Certain members of the Arab League, particularly Jordan, are seeking greater security cooperation with Syria to deal with the cross-border drug smuggling issue. Investigations by media outlets have labeled Syria as a “narco-state” following the emergence of a trade of captagon.
