Jordanian air raids on southern Syria are targeting a new breed of drug smuggler that emerged after the fall of Bashar Al Assad and reactivated the cross-border trade of Captagon using advanced balloon technology, sources say.
The kingdom's military said its predawn operation on Sunday was directed at factories, workshops and warehouses from which drugs were being sent into Jordan. Compared to previous Jordanian raids, the targets were deeper inside Syria, concentrated mainly on the Druze-majority Sweida province, parts of which lie outside the control of the Syrian government. Jordan has largely refrained from attacking areas near the border inhabited by Bedouin tribes with relatives in the kingdom.
A source in Jordan who monitors the illegal trade told The National that most of the drug lords in southern Syria have been killed or fled north to the Badia region after Mr Al Assad was toppled in December 2024, but “their younger relatives have taken over”.
“They do not have access to the large factories because those have been seized or destroyed,” the source said. “But they are using balloon technology.
The use of small, remote-controlled hot-air balloons that are difficult to trace had allowed smugglers to operate from a desolate and often rugged border territory called Al Hamad, stretching from Sweida to a triangle of land linking Syria to Jordan and Iraq. “They no longer need to be in inhabited areas and rely on help from locals,” the source said.
During the last six years of the Assad regime, Jordan's border became the main conduit for smuggling Captagon from Syria. The amphetaminelike substance is sold in pill form and has one of the highest profit margins of any illegal drug. The flow of Captagon is a regional security issue because its main destination is Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.
Mr Al Assad's downfall resulted in a sharp drop in the drug flow, Jordanian officials say, largely because regime forces and pro-Iranian militias involved in the trade disappeared from the scene.
“The smugglers are now a step ahead,” the source said. “The smuggling attempts are fewer but they are more successful.”
In February, Syrian security forces seized 75 balloons and more than two million Captagon pills from a gang planning to smuggle drugs to Jordan, said the Interior Ministry, although it did not disclose where. In the first quarter of last year Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq agreed to exchange information on the movement of illegal substances, after the Jordanian army killed four drug smugglers who tried to infiltrate the kingdom from Syria. They were the first such deaths on the border since the Assad regime was toppled and replaced with the government of President Ahmad Al Shara.
A Syrian source said two of the raids on Sunday were on a farm and residence in Sweida's Arman area belonging to Fares Saimoua, who is suspected of overseeing a Captagon network and may have been wounded. Raids also targeted two farms used by three other suspected dealers. At least four raids hit properties of individuals who did not appear to have any known links to drug networks, the source said.
Syrian state television said one of the raids was on a compound in Shahba belonging to “mutineer militias”, a reference to the National Guard, an Israeli-backed Druze militia formed after the Damascus government launched a campaign last June to assert control over Sweida. Israeli intervention thwarted the campaign, in which 1,700 people, mostly Druze civilians, were killed.
A statement issued by the National Guard said it had been a force for cleansing Sweida of the drug trade. It said Jordan had not co-ordinate on the attacks, some of which “targeted homes of civilians who are unrelated to this file”.
