Israeli drug gangs use drone-guided balloons to fill vacuum in Jordan after Assad's fall – report
The gangs are using drone-guided balloons to move crystal meth, amphetamines, and hashish across the border
Israeli gangs are filling the gap in the Jordanian drug market left by the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in 2024, according to a report in the Telegraph on Tuesday.
The gangs are using drone-guided balloons to move crystal meth, amphetamines, and hashish across the border.
The price of a kilo of hashish in Jordan has skyrocketed since the fall of Assad, with Israeli security forces believing the street value of hashish is now 15 times higher in Jordan than in Israel.
Jordanian officials told the Telegraph that the IDF is only concerned with stopping weapons being smuggled into Israel and is not preventing the smuggling of drugs into Jordan.
"There are reciprocal smuggling operations of drugs into Jordan. Jordanian border guards have been actively foiling several attempts to smuggle drugs from Israel in recent months," a source in the Jordanian military said.
The IDF said it was taking drug smuggling seriously and pointed to the new 96th 'Gilad' Division, which is stationed in the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea.
The division’s chief of operations told The Times of Israel in August that "Part of the problem before was we weren’t necessarily seeing everything. With the establishment of the division and with the building [of capabilities] and the bringing of new tools, it has allowed us to see and stop the smuggling."
Prior to the fall of Assad, the primary drug-smuggling routes involved moving the Assad-produced amphetamine pill Captagon from Syria through Jordan and into Israel or Lebanon, where it could enter international smuggling routes.
Since the fall of Assad, the Jordanian military has escalated its use of force against drug smugglers, launching air strikes along the border. Previously, the Assad regime considered the smugglers an economic lifeline and blocked Jordanian strikes against them.
Initially, Jordan expected to be able to shut down smuggling through military force, as the new Sharaa-regime had shown interest in fighting drug dealing.
This became significantly more complicated after Druze rebels seized control of Sweida Province on the border with Jordan. The Druze are closely aligned with Israel and fear that anti-drug-smuggling operations will be used to retake the province clandestinely.