Jordan FM in Damascus for Assad talks amid Syria captagon smuggling wave

Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi touched down in Damascus on Monday to meet key Assad regime officials, as Syria-manufactured captagon floods the kingdom.

Safadi is expected to meet his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad, while Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad will hold an audience with the Jordanian FM.

The meeting will discuss strengthening bilateral relations between Jordan and Syria and comes less than two months after Assad attended the Arab League summit in Jeddah, in a sign of the Syrian regime's return to the Arab fold.

Safadi is said to be keen to promote a Jordanian initiative to bring an end to the Syrian crisis, which involves direct engagement with Assad and part of a normalisation push by key Arab countries, such as the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

While the Syrian regime has returned to the Arab League, some Arab countries - such as Qatar - are against Assad's regional re-integration without concessions from the regime. The US and Europe also maintain sanctions on key Syrian regime figures and are calling for the implementation of United National Security Council Resolution 2254. 

Captagon drones

Despite the improved Syria-Jordan relations, Amman has struggled to curb the illegal captagon trade via its northern border with Syria, with security forces involved in clashes with heavily armed drug dealers, many believed to have links to the Assad regime.

Over the past two weeks, Jordan has shot down three drones from Syria, likely part of what the US describes as an "Assad regime-linked captagon-trafficking network".

In the US document on the regional captagon trade, the US identified Jordan as a key partner in tackling the smuggling of the drug.

The Syrian regime has been accused of using captagon as a bargaining chip to reintegrate itself into the Arab world, amid heavy US sanctions.

Jordan, like most Arab countries, broke off relations with the Syrian regime in 2011, amid a crackdown by Assad's security forces on pro-democracy protests.

As the regime began to reclaim territory from the opposition, including the border regions with Jordan, official relations between Amman and Damascus resumed in 2021 when King Abdullah received a phone call from Assad - the first such in a decade.

Jordan is home to an estimated 1.3 million Syrian refugees, with the overwhelming majority unwilling to return to an Assad-ruled Syrian territory.