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On June 13, the Jordanian military announced that it had downed a small drone carrying drugs over the border line with Syria.
In a statement, an army official said the drone was carrying 500 grams of crystal meth, which have been transferred to authorities.
“The Border Guard forces, in coordination with the military security services and the Drug Enforcement Administration, detected an attempt to illegally cross the border from Syrian territory to Jordanian territory by a drone, and it was shot down inside Jordanian territory,” the unnamed official said.
Struck by a disastrous economic crisis, a destructive war and tight sanctions by the West, Syria is today one of the largest illicit production hubs for amphetamine drugs, like crystal meth and captagon, in the Middle East.
This was not the first time Syrian traffickers have been documented using drones to smuggle drugs into Jordan, the main route to the lucrative drug market in the Gulf. Several similar smuggling attempts were thwarted by Jordanian border guards over the last two years.
Jordan blamed Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian-backed forces in Syria for smuggling drugs across its borders on several occasions in the past, without presenting any evidence.
“We are continuing to deal with, resolve and force any threat to our borders and any attempt to destabilize the security of the nation,” the Jordanian military concluded its statement.
Amman recently took a more strong stance against Syrian traffickers. On May 8, Marie al-Ramthan, a drug kingpin, was killed along with his wife and six children when a strike hit his home in the village of Shaab in the southern Syrian governorate of al-Suwayda.
Jordanian and regional intelligence sources confirmed to Reuters back then that Jordan was behind the killing of al-Ramthan, who was sentenced to death on several occasions in recent years in absentia by Jordanian courts for drug trafficking. According to the news agency, an abandoned drug factory located near the town of Khrab al-Shahm in the neighboring governorate of Daraa was also hit on the same day.
Combating drug trafficking was one of the main issues the Syrian foreign minister discussed with its counterpart from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq during a meeting that was held in Amman on May 1, just a few days before Damascus was readmitted to the Arab League. An understanding on the issue was reportedly reached.
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