Airstrike Kills Syrian Drug Smuggler and 6 Children
An early Monday airstrike believed to have been conducted by the Jordanian Air Force on the home of a prominent drug smuggler in southern Syria killed the smuggler, his wife and their six children.
Syrian opposition activists and state media identified the smuggler killed as captagon (Fenethylline) smuggler Merhi al-Ramthan, following the airstrike on his home in the village of Shuab, located in Sweida province near Syria’s border with Jordan. Opposition activist Ahmad al-Masalmeh told the Associated Press that a second airstrike before dawn on Monday struck a facility in Daraa province used by Iran-backed groups to produce and store drugs before they were smuggled to Jordan, setting the facility on fire.
Two regional intelligence and a Western diplomatic source told Reuters that Jordan was responsible for the two airstrikes, with its sources in the Jordanian judiciary saying that Jordanian courts had sentenced al-Ramthan to death in absentia several times for his involvement in smuggling drugs into the kingdom.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi did not directly answer whether Jordan had been involved during a press conference on Monday, saying that “Whenever we take any steps to protect our national security and facing any threats towards it, we announce it at the appropriate time”.
Last week, the minister had stated that Amman was willing to resort to military action inside Syria if captagon smuggling from Syria continued. On Sunday, Jordanian authorities announced that they had confiscated 1.5 million captagon pills from two smuggling attempts on the country’s northern and eastern borders with Syria. Jordanian border guards are reported to have fired on the smugglers, following a series of firefights with other captagon smugglers attempting to breach the border.
Notorious for its use by fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, production of captagon has become one of the main sources of income of Bashar al-Assad’s family members and close allies following the collapse of the Syrian economy, due to the widespread destruction caused by the Damascus regime’s brutal campaign to retake Syria and resulting international sanctions. The Newlines Institute has estimated the retail value of the Syrian captagon trade in 2021 as worth $5.7 billion, with the main markets for the synthetic amphetamines being the Middle East and Mediterranean regions.
The airstrikes also follow the Arab League’s decision to readmit Damascus on Sunday, following a 12 year suspension. The move is the latest development in a series of steps by Middle Eastern countries to normalize relations with Bashar al-Assad’s government, with Arab governments alleged to be seeking a crackdown on the captagon trade by Damascus in exchange for diplomatic normalization.