Drugs, militia, and refugees complicate Syria’s return to Arab League

The long-expected decision this week from the Arab League to readmit Syria after a decade was bitter, even for some of those involved.
The devastation of the past 10 years is still raw, the human suffering still apparent.

The muted response from the region’s capitals, western politicians, and Syrian opposition, testify to a feeling that the region has changed so much that what was once unthinkable is now inevitable. 

The Middle East is undergoing profound political shifts, although the import of each of them is not immediately obvious.

The readmission by the Arab League comes shortly after a Chinese-mediated diplomatic agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a potential ceasefire in the Yemen war, and the first visit to Damascus since the Syrian war began of Iran’s president.

Years of war with no solution in sight and the severe strain of Syrian refugees especially on Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey eventually forced a recognition that a new direction was needed. 

Jordan initiativeIt was Jordan that first broke the cordon sanitaire around Assad, so it is no surprise that they were the ones who came up with the Jordan Initiative.

Attempting to address the vast issues of refugees, militias, and smuggling requires a state that is willing to act normal. After a decade of war, Syria is a very different state to the one the uprising started in.

Back in 2021, King Abdullah took a phone call from Assad, ending the isolation and beginning a gradual process of, if not reconciliation, then at least recognition.

The return of Syria would be “gradual” said Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Arab League’s secretary-general and would depend on each individual Arab country.

The process, he admitted, was only at the beginning.

Syria may never be a normal state againBut the beginning of what. The Arab League may have opened the door to normalization, but Syria has changed so much, it may never be a normal state again.

The question of how far Syria has fallen outside the orbit of the Middle East has been asked before. 

In the mid-2000s, the relationship between Damascus and the wider region had hit a low point.

The rumbling occupation of Iraq, the stalemate war between Hezbollah and Israel of 2006, and a continuing crisis in Lebanon all meant that, when 2008’s Arab League summit came along and was held in Damascus, barely half the Arab leaders showed up.

Yet, within a year a rapprochement was underway. Then, as now, the politics outside of Syria eventually created the conditions for its return.

2008 was different, and not merely because of the scale of the crimes committed by the Assad regime in the past 10 years.

Syria in the late 2000s had been changed by the Iraq war and other crises, but it hadn’t been fundamentally changed as a state. Today, Syria has been.

It’s all part of the forceful messaging that Jordan is determined to make Damascus understand: Normalization comes with a price.

At the root of the push for rehabilitation with Assad is Captagon, an amphetamine-style drug produced in Syria and exported across the Middle East.

Since the Syrian regime began mass producing the drug a couple of years into the civil war, the pills have flooded parts of the Middle East.

Tens of millions of pills have found their way to the cities of the Gulf and into Europe. By one estimate 80 percent of all the Captagon produced in the world is made in Syria, generating billions in revenue.

Captagon production and distribution has changed the way the Syrian regime operates, giving power, money, and latitude to act to a variety of groups beyond the control of the state. Jordan’s long border with Syria has become the focus of these groups, leading to gun battles with Jordanian soldiers.

The question Jordan and the wider Arab world will want answered is, can Syria now rein in these criminal gangs, in return for a return to the Arab fold?

Will they even want to, if the money from Captagon smuggling is not replaced by something else?

As a demonstration of how seriously Jordan is taking drug smuggling, the day after the Arab League voted to readmit Syria, Amman conducted rare airstrikes over Syrian territory, killing one of the largest suspected drug dealers.

 It’s all part of the forceful messaging that Jordan is determined to make Damascus understand: Normalization comes with a price.

What price will they demand for Syria’s returnAnd this is where, having made the bitter decision to readmit Damascus, the Arab leaders will need to expend their political energies: What price will they demand for Syria’s return, and is it a price Assad can or will pay?

The Arab League may have opened the door to normalization, but Syria has changed so much, it may never be a normal state again.

For Jordan, the three pillars are drugs, refugees, and roaming militias.

The latter, which overlap between drug smugglers and pro-Iranian militias, are also a concern for other countries.

That’s where the potential sticking points emerge.

Because, just as Captagon smuggling offers funds for the regime that will need to be made up elsewhere, so the militias offer political benefits that will need to be made up. The appearance of Iran’s president last week was a clear message that Iran will not simply fade away from Syria.

The current state of Syria remains the biggest political obstacle to any normalization.

Simply put, Syria has morphed from an authoritarian state into something rather different. The regime is beholden to Tehran, hemmed in by Hezbollah, and must answer to Russia.

Its smuggling empire is so vast it has been dubbed a narco-state. Under these circumstances, the very idea of normalization with the regime may be a fiction: the regime itself may be incapable of acting “normal.”

Attempting to address the vast issues of refugees, militias, and smuggling requires a state that is willing to act normal. After a decade of war, Syria is a very different state to the one the uprising started in.

Any attempt at normalization may founder on the rocks of that reality. Syria has simply changed too much.