Key Highlights
- On Saturday, Jordan said it joined the United States to strike Islamic State’s personnel and facilities in Syria. Without going into the specifics, the Jordanian military said it “targeted a number of factories and workshops used by arms and drug dealers”, according to AFP. These strikes neutralised traffickers who were organising “arms and drug smuggling operations into Jordanian territory” and sites were “were destroyed based on accurate intelligence and in coordination with regional partners”, the Jordanian military said. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS ADSeparately, a resident of the border area in the southern countryside of Sweida told AFP that the Jordanian bombardment “was extremely intense and targeted farms and smuggling routes”. More from World ‘Tents in Gaza’: Pope Leo laments plight of Palestinians, raging wars in first Christmas sermon Last Christians gather in ruins to mark Christmas in Turkey’s earthquake-hit AntakyaJordan is part of the 90-nation coalition combating the Islamic State in the region.
- Syria under President Ahmed al-Sharaa has also joined the bloc and pledged ‘political support’.
- It is not known if the Syrian administration was involved in the Jordanian strikes. In a report, Syrian state broadcaster Al-Ikhbariya said the Jordanian military targeted “drug smuggling networks and storage farms in the southern and eastern countryside” of Sweida. Syria has been a drug trafficking hubIt is not yet clear if Jordanian strikes targeted personnel and sites belonging to any designated terrorist group or the narcotics network that worked under Syria’s previous administration of Bashar al-Assad. During the Syrian civil war that began in 2011, the ‘captagon’ drug (fenethylline) became the Syrian regime’s biggest export.
- Estimates suggest that captagon exports earnt the regime and its allies, such as Iran and its proxies like the Hezbollah in Lebanon, up to $2.4 billion a year. Quick ReadsView All‘Tents in Gaza’: Pope Leo laments plight of Palestinians, raging wars in first Christmas sermonLast Christians gather in ruins to mark Christmas in Turkey’s earthquake-hit AntakyaThe captagon has become infamous as the ‘jihadist drug’ in West Asia as jihadists use the drug as they believe it makes them fearless and ruthless. Captagon is an amphetamine-based stimulant that is supposed to heighten alertness, suppress fatigue, and reduce fear.
- While it was made in the 1960s to treat excessive and irregular sleepiness, it was discouraged and banned by 1980s.
