AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Interior ministers from four Arab countries held talks in Jordan on Saturday to discuss ways to combat the region's illicit drug trade and agreed to set up a joint regional telecommunications cell to share information.
At the meeting between the interior ministers of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, the four officials acknowledged that “there is a big problem, which is drugs, and all our societies suffer from it,” Jordan's interior minister, Mazen Al, told the press -Faraya, after the meeting.
Drug trafficking has caused tensions between Jordan and Syria, and the Jordanian air force has reportedly carried out strikes against suspected drug traffickers and factories in southern Syria. In recent years, drug traffickers have used Jordan as a corridor to smuggle Captagon's highly addictive amphetamine pills out of Syria, particularly to the oil-rich Gulf states.
The vast majority of the world's Captagon is manufactured in Syria, with a small portion in neighboring Lebanon. Western governments estimate that Captagon has generated billions of dollars in profits for President Bashar al-Assad and his Syrian partners and allies. Damascus has rejected these allegations.
The meeting in Amman came almost a month after Syria's foreign minister condemned alleged Jordanian airstrikes against suspected drug traffickers in Syrian territory. In response, Jordan accused Syrian authorities of failing to crack down on border trade.
On January 18, a suspected Jordanian airstrike in southern Syria killed at least nine people, including women and children.
Jordanian authorities have managed to stop several drug trafficking attempts, including some in which drug traffickers used drones to funnel drugs across the border.
“Today we agreed that without joint cooperation between the countries participating in the meeting, there will be no results like the ones we seek,” Al-Faraya said.
“Today we agree that this problem exists,” Al-Faraya said, adding that the ministers agreed to continue meetings at ministerial and technical levels.
He pointed out that the main aim of establishing the joint telecommunications cell is for the authorities of the four countries to exchange experiences and, more importantly, to track drug shipments coming from the countries to their final destination.