The Jordanian army said that members of its border guard on Sunday foiled an attempt to smuggle 900,000 Captagon tablets from Syria.
The troops seized the pills after "a group of people coming from the Syrian territory tried to cross the border illegally".
Captagon is a highly addictive, cheaply produced alternative to amphetamines and methamphetamines. It has become in recent years the most in-demand drug in the Middle East.
Arab security officials say the main centres of production are regime areas of Syria, where hundreds of millions of pills are produced each year by cartels linked to the Syrian regime and pro-Iranian militias supervised by Hezbollah.
A large proportion is smuggled through Jordan to the Gulf. Since last year Jordanian authorities have regularly announced drug busts on the border with Syria, often involving gunfights with smugglers.
Iran and Hezbollah deny any involvement.
Jordanian authorities said last month that Syrian army units and militias supported by Iran are behind a sharp rise in attempts to smuggle Captagon and other drugs over the border.
It was the first time that Jordan publicly implicated the Syrian regime and Tehran in the growing regional narcotics trade, estimated to be worth billions of dollars a year.
Jordan has sought in the past two years to normalise ties with the government of President Bashar Al Assad in Damascus.
Those relations had cooled since the uprising against five decades of Assad family rule in March 2011.
Senior Jordanian army officers met Syrian military commanders in Amman at the end of last year to try to secure Damascus's co-operation in curbing the illicit trade.
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How to invest in gold
Investors can tap into the gold price by purchasing physical jewellery, coins and even gold bars, but these need to be stored safely and possibly insured.
A cheaper and more straightforward way to benefit from gold price growth is to buy an exchange-traded fund (ETF).
Most advisers suggest sticking to “physical” ETFs. These hold actual gold bullion, bars and coins in a vault on investors’ behalf. Others do not hold gold but use derivatives to track the price instead, adding an extra layer of risk. The two biggest physical gold ETFs are SPDR Gold Trust and iShares Gold Trust.
Another way to invest in gold’s success is to buy gold mining stocks, but Mr Gravier says this brings added risks and can be more volatile. “They have a serious downside potential should the price consolidate.”
Mr Kyprianou says gold and gold miners are two different asset classes. “One is a commodity and the other is a company stock, which means they behave differently.”
Mining companies are a business, susceptible to other market forces, such as worker availability, health and safety, strikes, debt levels, and so on. “These have nothing to do with gold at all. It means that some companies will survive, others won’t.”
By contrast, when gold is mined, it just sits in a vault. “It doesn’t even rust, which means it retains its value,” Mr Kyprianou says.
You may already have exposure to gold miners in your portfolio, say, through an international ETF or actively managed mutual fund.
You could spread this risk with an actively managed fund that invests in a spread of gold miners, with the best known being BlackRock Gold & General. It is up an incredible 55 per cent over the past year, and 240 per cent over five years. As always, past performance is no guide to the future.
