Syria pushes back against Jordanian strikes on drug traffickers on Syrian territory
DAMASCUS (AP) — Syria’s foreign ministry in a statement Tuesday condemned recent presumed Jordanian airstrikes against suspected drug traffickers on Syrian territory, including one last week that killed women and children.
In response, Jordan accused the Syrians of failing to take action to halt smuggling across the border.
The Syrian foreign ministry statement, its first to address the issue, “expressed its deep regret over the strikes directed by the Jordanian Air Force,” which it said had been justified “as being directed at elements involved in drug smuggling across the border into Jordan.”
Smugglers have used Jordan as a corridor over the past years to smuggle highly addictive Captagon amphetamines out of Syria, mainly to oil-rich Arab Gulf states.
The Syrian statement said there was “no justification for such military operations,” adding that “since 2011 (Syria) has suffered from the influx of tens of thousands of terrorists and the passage of huge quantities of weapons from neighboring countries, including Jordan.”
An airstrike in the province of Sweida in southern Syria early Thursday killed at least nine people and was probably carried out by Jordan’s air force, Syrian opposition activists said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said nine people, including two children and at least three women, were killed in the strike.
The Jordanian foreign ministry in a statement of its own said that “the smuggling of drugs and weapons across the Syrian border into Jordan is a threat to national security, and that Jordan will continue to confront this danger and all those behind it.” The statement did not specifically mention airstrikes.
The ministry said that Jordan was ready to coordinate with Syria to stop the smuggling operations. It also said it had provided the Syrian government “with the names of the smugglers and the parties behind them, and the places of drug manufacturing and storage and smuggling lines, which are under the control of the Syrian government, but any real action to neutralize this danger did not take place.”
Jordan helped to facilitate Syria’s return to the Arab League last year, 12 years after the league suspended Damascus because of the harsh crackdown on anti-government protesters in an uprising that quickly descended into a brutal civil war.
At the time of Syria’s readmission, the league expressed hope that its reintegration would help push it to combat drug trafficking. Jordan and the Arab Gulf countries, in particular, have been concerned about the mass production of Captagon in Syria.
The Jordanian authorities have recently cracked down on smuggling attempts, including some in which smugglers used drones to fly the drugs over the border.
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Akour reported from Amman.