Nearly five months after Arab nations offered an olive branch to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, there are signs that some of the initiative’s key architects may be increasingly skeptical about his commitment to the deal.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi said this week that trafficking of the amphetamine Captagon from Syria to Jordan only increased after normalization talks led to Assad’s return to the Arab League. in May.
Syria was expelled from the Arab League in 2011, following a brutal regime crackdown on opposition forces seeking to overthrow Assad.
Jordan has been one of the biggest supporters of his rehabilitation, having been one of the main victims of Syria’s drug trade, but now feels the regime is unwilling or unable to calm down. suppress this trade.
“Jordan is fighting on the border to make sure drugs do not enter the country,” Al-Monitor quoted the king as saying last week. “Bashar (al-Assad) doesn’t want conflict with Jordan… I don’t know if he’s in complete control.”
One of the Arab states’ main demands of Syria in exchange for its recovery was that Assad help stop the trade in Captagon. Most of the global supply for the $57 billion Captagon industry is believed to come from Syria, with neighboring countries and the Gulf region being the main destinations.
This trade turned Syria into a narco-state that allowed the Assad regime to replenish its coffers after years of war and sanctions, and gave it enormous leverage over the neighboring countries and was partly responsible for bringing them to the negotiating table with Assad.
In another sign of Arab discontent with Assad, Saudi Arabia’s Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported this month that the Arab ministerial committee responsible for overseeing the normalization of Syria- The Arabs suspended meetings with Damascus due to lack of response to the developed roadmap. normalization of Arab-Syrian relations.
However, Arab League Deputy Secretary General Hossam Zaki denied this information. “They are not real,” Zaki told CNN on Friday.
Emile Hokayem, director of regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, said it was not surprising that Syria’s reintegration efforts were facing setbacks.
“Nothing significant was achieved while Assad achieved a symbolic victory that limited Arab participation for years to come,” Hokayem told CNN, adding that it was difficult to see how the May decision “could be overturned and how the stick could be used to force them to comply.” .
In an interview with Sky News Arabia last month, the Syrian leader sounded confident and said he would not rush to reconcile with his neighbors until they changed. He blamed the lack of progress in normalizing relations with Arab countries on poor Arab politics. Arabs, he said, were good at “optics” but not “execution.”
Assad said the drug trade had gotten worse after the war and therefore responsibility for Syria’s Captagon problem belonged to “the countries that contributed to the chaos in Syria, not not the Syrian state”. He added that it was Syria, not its Arab neighbors, that had offered to resolve the drug crisis because it was “win-win”.
Experts say that Syria’s recovery process has many shortcomings.
“The problem is that there really is no accountability mechanism for the normalization initiative,” said HA Hellyer, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“If Assad simply ignored the demands of the Arab countries, even though he initially appeared to take them seriously, there would be no process to punish him,” Hellyer told CNN. for any violation.” “It’s all quite ad hoc and arbitrary.”
According to Jordan, the Captagon trade is booming as smugglers use increasingly advanced technology to smuggle amphetamines out of Syria and into neighboring countries. “The Syrians have promised to cooperate with us to resolve this challenge, but the situation on the ground remains extremely difficult,” said Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi. “We are seeing an increase in activity and as a result we are doing what we need to do.”
Safadi describes the Captagon trafficking operation as a “highly organized operation” in which drug traffickers “have access to very advanced technology,” including drones and goggles night. For every two or three arrests, two or three more people cross the border, Safadi explained.
Jordan, which shares a 378 km border with Syria, views instability with its neighbor as detrimental to its national security.
Gulf states and Jordan regularly report drug seizures with large quantities of drugs found in everything from construction signs to baklava shipments. This month, the United Arab Emirates said it had foiled a plot to smuggle 13 tons of Captagon – worth more than $1 billion – hidden in a shipment of doors and building decorative panels. Jordanian armed forces regularly shoot down drones coming from Syria and carrying irritants.
Experts believe that the two parts of the Arab-Syrian normalization treaty did not meet people’s expectations. Assad may not have found a strong enough incentive to abandon his lucrative drug trade. And what he wants can be difficult to achieve. “What Assad has always wanted is not what the Arab countries can or will offer:
unconditional political support, huge financial aid, as well as Arab pressure to lift Western sanctions,” Hokayem said.
Arab countries are now at risk of falling into a state of deadlock.
“Their mobility is limited,” Hokayem said. “Direct and direct coercion is not an option and some countries do not care enough to devote effort and political capital to Syria,” he said, adding that stubborn policies of Assad may even motivate “some countries.”