File image.
On January 16, the Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF) announced that an officer was killed and three soldiers were wounded when drug traffickers trying to illegally enter the country from Syria fired at a Border Guard patrol along the border.
“At Sunday [January 15] dawn, traffickers opened fire on a Border Guard patrol on the northeastern borders before the troops returned fire and pushed the smugglers back to inside Syrian territory.
The incident left Captain Muhammad Khudayrat dead while three other soldiers were injured and were evacuated to a nearby military hospital. A search of the area where the incident took place found narcotics which the smugglers left behind,” an official statement by the JAF reads.
Last year, the JAF clashed with Syrian drugs and weapon traffickers on several occasions. The army even shot down a drone flying a large quantity of drugs across the border on one occasion.
On the Syrian side, authorities have been cracking down on drug traffickers along the border with Joran. On December 28, Syrian security forces seized a large shipment of tens of thousands of Captagon tablets in the southeastern governorate of al-Suwayda. The shipment was destined for Jordan.
Captagon, scientifically known as Fenethylline, is a is a codrug of amphetamine and theophylline. The drug is widely abused in the Middle East, especially in the Arabian Peninsula.
Struck by a disastrous economic crisis and a destructive war, Syria is today one of the main drug production hubs in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Jordan remains the shortest smuggling route to the lucrative drug market of Saudi Arabia and other Arabian Peninsula states.
