2023-05-19 22:37:58
On May 7, the Arab foreign ministers voted for Syria to return as a full member of the Arab League, which had been delaying the controversial decision for years, finally taken without the unanimous support of its 22 members.
The Sunni Arab countries, which have opened the door to Al Assad after years of isolation and demonization of the dictator, not only demand a “solution” to the Syrian conflict, but also that Damascus begin to act against those who produce and export captagon, a stimulant based on amphetamines. A good part ends up in Saudi Arabia, which this week announced that it had seized a shipment of more than 1.3 billion pills, hidden in a ship that arrived at the port of Jeddah, in the Red Sea.
In that city, where the Syrian flag flew again this Friday along with that of the other Arab states, Al Assad has participated in the annual summit of heads of state of the League, with another guest of honor who was not expected : Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky. The latter traveled to Saudi Arabia yesterday with the aim of “improving Ukraine’s bilateral relations and ties with the Arab world”, especially with the host country, to which Zelensky attributed “a very important role” and recalled his “positive experience ” on the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war. For his part, the crown prince and strongman of the kingdom, Mohamed bin Salman, offered to “mediate between Russia and Ukraine, and support international efforts to resolve the crisis politically.”
Zelensky’s stellar appearance took away some of the prominence from Al Assad, who returned to sit in the chair of the representative of the Syrian Arab Republic after a long absence. Faced with the few who remained by his side and those who turned their backs on him, the Syrian president wished the summit to be “the beginning of a new stage” in which all act “in solidarity for peace, development and prosperity of the region, and not for war and destruction”.
For the countries gathered in Jeddah, “Bashar Al Assad has been the victor of the internal conflict in Syria and he is the one with whom we must work: the regime is once again the legitimate government of Syria,” Haizam Amirah-Fernández, explained to elDiario.es. principal investigator of the Elcano Royal Institute. This 180-degree turn by some member countries -especially those in the Persian Gulf that, in the words of the expert, “did everything possible to overthrow Al Assad”- occurs in “a geopolitical context that has changed, both regionally and international, as was reflected in the Chinese mediation that has allowed rapprochement between the once antagonistic enemies, Saudi Arabia and Iran”. According to Amirah-Fernández, everyone is looking for “détente in the different conflict scenarios, such as Yemen and Syria.”
“The war in Ukraine plays a central role” in this turn of the Arab countries, in addition to their “attempt to be more flexible in the search for partners -not only in economic and energy matters, but also in geostrategic issues-, as China,” he adds. “We must also take into account the waste of resources in conflicts, which have meant a lot of expense but little profit for the Arab governments: with everything they invested in Syria, they were not able to finish off Al Assad, but rather the presence of Iran (an ally of Shiite president) will even increase,” he points out.
However, this sets a dangerous precedent. “If you are brutal and bloodthirsty enough with your people, you can guarantee their physical and political survival, and be readmitted and accepted” by the Arab community, says Amirah-Fernández, although not by the international community, for the moment.
Washington has assured that it will not normalize relations with Damascus without prior ceasefire and free elections in Syria, as established by UN Security Council resolution 2254, which represents a kind of road map for the conflict in the Arab country and has the support of all the actors. The Arab countries have also relied on that document so far, but have decided to establish more realistic conditions that will allow “gradual progress towards a solution to the crisis.” The Arab League asks Al Assad to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid “to all those in need in Syria”, including those in opposition areas; the “voluntary return of refugees” who fled due to the regime’s violence and persecution; and his contribution to “the fight against drug trafficking,” among other things.
The drug trafficking networks that have been woven in Syria in the midst of chaos, the war economy and the multiple actors in the conflict have become a problem at a regional and even global level.
The UN already warned several years ago of the threat it posed and in the 2022 global report prepared by its Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) notes that the conflict in Syria “created the conditions that lead to illicit drug trafficking.” . “Production seems to have shifted to this region, which is also close to the (Persian) Gulf, the largest consumer market for captagon,” details UNODC, while before 2011 more was produced in southeastern Europe. Data from Member States on seizures indicate that Syria and Lebanon are the main producers of the drug in the area and shipments leaving Syria pass through the territory of Jordan or the Red Sea.
Jordan has recently launched a campaign against smuggling, particularly across its porous border with Syria, and has announced several operations, arrests and seizures. In addition, the Hashemite kingdom is believed to be behind a May 8 bombing that killed a Syrian drug lord near the Jordanian border. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (NGO with a wide network of collaborators on the ground, who have reliably documented all the years of war in Syria) blamed the Jordanian aviation for having attacked the house of Marai Al Ramthan and for having also killed his wife and six children, but the Amman government neither confirmed nor denied this information.
In the opinion of the investigator of the Elcano Royal Institute, “it is likely that we will see actions against drug trafficking from countries neighboring Syria” which, “with the connivance or participation of the regime, has become a producer and distributor of narcotics throughout the region “.
“As part of the normalization, the neighboring countries hope that Al Assad will go against the production and trafficking networks, which have grown in the shadow and with the support of the regime,” adds Amirah-Fernández, and is skeptical: ” I don’t think Assad is willing to make these concessions.” “As long as he has the backing of Russia and Iran, and the active support of (Lebanese Shiite group Hizbollah),” he will not need to make any concessions, he says.
Likewise, he is not very optimistic regarding the possibility that the refugees can and want to return to Syria. “What guarantees does a refugee have who has fled and is wanted by a regime – which has murdered hundreds of thousands of people – to return to their place of origin, which is probably destroyed or in the hands of people who are in favor of the regime, who are at ease with total impunity?” he wonders.
The Syrian regime and its Lebanese allies, especially Hezbollah (considered in turn a state within the Lebanese state), are accused of being involved in and benefiting from drug trafficking, which represents an important source of income for Damascus, plunged into a deep crisis. economy after more than a decade of war. According to the US Treasury Department, which imposed new sanctions this March on Syrian and Lebanese individuals linked to the pill trade, “Syria has become a global leader in the production of the highly addictive captagon, much of which it is trafficked through Lebanon.” “We will hold accountable those who support the Bashar Al Assad regime with drug funds and other financial means that enable the regime’s continued repression of the Syrian people,” he added in a statement.
On the list of those sanctioned are two cousins of Al Assad and a businessman associated with his brother, Maher Al Assad, who has been on the West’s blacklist since the outbreak of the conflict in 2011: the general is in command of the powerful and feared IV Division of the Syrian Army, which controls the border areas with Lebanon, where the local inhabitants are employed in this illegal business, specifically the youngest, who stop studying to dedicate themselves to this more profitable activity. The Washington think tank “New Lines Institute” states in a detailed document on this elite unit that “among the individuals and organizations involved in the production and distribution of narcotics, the IV Division currently controls most of the trade.” In addition, the US sanctions, adopted at the same time by the UK, include two Lebanese traffickers and two import-export companies from the small country, all related to Maher Al Assad.
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