South of the Syrian village of Zita, armed personnel take up position on a berm next to an abandoned red and cream coloured house.
In this rugged corner of western Syria, security forces have, in the past month, ambushed smugglers attempting an illegal trade of weapons into Lebanon. Beyond a rocky mud track and orchards, a mosque stands inside the neighbouring country a few hundred metres away.
A senior security official showed The National how forces ambushed smugglers from a nearby low grey building, intercepting a cache of weapons stashed in the red and cream house as middlemen did their work.
It was one of many raids and grabs on weapons and drugs in this remote border area over the past year, where human life is sparse and the hollow walls of abandoned, bombed-out homes ring with silence.
Beefed-up patrols, route closures, and financial penalties for less egregious offences have helped security forces tackle smuggling attempts, Mohammed Al Qudsi, security directorate chief for the Al Qusayr area, told The National. Levelling out fuel prices with Lebanon to reduce incentives for refined oil product contraband have also helped.
“With the use of force in some cases, these factors ultimately led to the cessation of smuggling and the control of the border to a degree of more than 90 per cent,” he said.
But, motivated by money, traders in illegal drugs and weapons are still trying to cross this porous border. There have been fatal clashes in the area this year as security forces crack down on smugglers.
"Their [smugglers’] activities are still continuing because of the huge returns,” Mr Qudsi told The National.
For years, Al Qusayr region, part of Homs province, was used by fighters from the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as a training and weapons supply base, according to Syrian military and security officials and analysts.
They propped up Bashar Al Assad for more than a decade during the country’s civil war, and fled when rebels from Hayat Tahrir Al Sham drove him from power and out of Damascus last December.
The National was the first foreign media to visit Al Qusayr days after the fall of the regime last year. Hezbollah fighters left behind weapons training manuals, caches of ammunition and posters of the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated last year in an Israeli strike in Beirut.
All that has changed now, and Syria’s army and internal security forces have taken over control of the area. But it has long been a smuggling route for weapons, drugs, fuel, consumer goods and humans, according to both Lebanese and Syrian officials, and the fight against illegal trade is continuing.
Raids and seizures are carried out by Syrian Interior Ministry units, including a special drugs control team and the internal security forces, who accompanied The National in Al Qusayr.
A senior Lebanese security official told The National that “things spiralled out of control” after the fall of the Assad regime, but the army later imposed its authority and began closing newly opened smuggling routes. Forces are using cameras, sensors and patrols in an attempt to quash contraband.
“Since midyear, smuggling activity has declined, but it remains significant,” the official said.
Relations between Syria and Lebanon have long been strained, and while there is some co-operation on counter-smuggling activities, it is not fully fleshed out, the official added.
A continuing challenge is that the border remains unmarked in the Al Qusayr area, despite an agreement in March between Lebanon and Syria for negotiations over demarcation. The scale of the economic and security challenges facing both countries, and differing priorities, means that the issue has stalled, analysts say.
Lebanon was occupied for 28 years by the Assad dynasty, and an influx of Syrian refugees during the civil war heightened social tensions. Since the Assad regime’s fall, Damascus has been pushing Beirut for the repatriation of thousands of Syrians held in Lebanese prisons.
This month, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said the country was ready to start the process of demarcating the 330-kilometre border with Syria.
A Syria Foreign Ministry official did not respond to a request for comment.
Demarcation is a higher priority for Lebanon than it is for Syria, for whom the return of citizens in Lebanese jails is higher up the list, said Mohanad Hage Ali, a Beirut-based senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East institute.
Some prisoners have strong HTS links, while also, "on the popular level, we're talking about thousands of Syrians in Lebanese jails, and these are members of different Syrian societies, and impact the Syrian public more than the demarcation issue," he told The National.
As it stands outside the village of Hweek, the Syria-Lebanon border is represented by nothing more than an olive grove and a rusting metal door that sits on its side on the ground.
Beside it is an enormous villa, complete with turrets and a balcony, that Mr Al Qudsi said used to belong to a drug lord. It is now being used as a military post by the Syrian army, and a couple of soldiers sit at its entrance.
The village was under the influence of the Zaiter clan, which has long been involved in smuggling, Syrian officials said. Last month, the Lebanese army arrested Nuh Zaiter, who is accused of running a vast narcotics network spanning several countries.
Hezbollah has denied links to the drug trade in Syria during the Assad regime. At that time, figures close to the former president grew immensely wealthy from an empire of narcotics production and trade.
Despite the crackdowns, smugglers are still attempting to trade illegal drugs. In October, security forces in the southern Homs area intercepted an attempt to smuggle 11 million Captagon pills from Lebanon into Syria.
Figures obtained by The National from Syrian officials showed that between May and October this year, security forces in Homs province arrested 202 people allegedly involved in smuggling, and seized 120 attempted drug shipments, including “pills”, hashish, and crystal meth. They also intercepted 19 other smuggling attempts of rifles and machine guns.
In Lebanon, the army also continues to report frequent drug busts near Syria. In October, a military unit seized 52,000 Captagon pills at Masharih Al Qaa, about 12km from the border.
According to Syrian security officials, drugs are mostly smuggled from Lebanon into Syria, for trade on to Jordan and the Gulf – assertions backed by Lebanese Army reports of contraband moving in this direction.
Weapons go the other way, from Syria into Lebanon, having been looted by locals from military barracks belonging to the former Syrian regime's army.
Syrian security forces have seized many of these weapons, Mr Al Qudsi said, but added there were still “frightening” amounts of arms in some villages. Hezbollah was willing to pay for them on the other side of the border, he claimed.
“The people who have these caches [in Syria] are now afraid that the state will find them and punish them, so they sell them, and of course, Hezbollah pays a high price for them,” Mr Al Qudsi explained.
Shortly after the fall of the regime, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem admitted that his group had “lost the supply route coming through Syria,” but would look for alternatives, or see if its Syria route could be restarted under “a new regime”.
Syrian officials support continuing efforts in Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah. Beirut is under significant international pressure to disarm the militant group, as part of a fragile ceasefire with Israel following the conflict last year. The group is resisting the demands to set down its weapons while Israel continues to attack Lebanon.
Hezbollah is “politically smart” and sees that it cannot rebuild an “organised” presence in Syria, Mr Al Qudsi said. Nevertheless, he accused the group of trying to recruit Syrians, “to carry out some mischief or cause trouble by planting a bomb here or there, to stir up strife”.
In September, security forces in the capital Damascus, arrested alleged members of Hezbollah and seized rocket launchers and ammunition.
When The National visited a year ago, Al Qusayr was a ghost town, most of its once Sunni and Christian majority population having fled. As displaced people have started to return, the area as a whole is now home to more than 170,000 people, according to figures provided by the government media office in Homs.
In the town streets, shops selling building materials cater to people rebuilding their damaged and destroyed homes. Caramel sells home decor for the finishing touches, and the Freedom Restaurant serves grilled meat.
But there are still scores of bombed-out buildings. A destroyed bridge – bombed by Israel last year, security officials said – has not been repaired, forcing drivers on to an adjacent mud track detour.
Poverty in the Al Qusayr area is an obstacle to further reducing smuggling, and government authorities need to provide job opportunities to wean residents off illegal activity, Mr Al Qudsi said. More than 90 per cent of Syria's population live in poverty.
“I can't just tell them [local people] to stop smuggling and stay at home and take care of themselves,” he said. “They want to steal and do illegal things just to make money.”
For both Lebanon and Syria, the fight against smuggling is like a game of whack-a-mole, with illegal traders innovating.
“Whenever the army arrests smugglers and shuts down a route, another one is opened,” the senior Lebanese security official said.
