Sunni Bedouin Traffickers: Marriage of Convenience

The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and other Jordanian weapons traffickers would not have been able to arm Palestinian militants in the West Bank if not for the network of organized crime groups backed by Iran in southern Syria who helped traffic weapons and explosives alongside drugs into Jordan. This section will begin by outlining the structure of both Iranian-backed smuggling networks and Russian proxies in the area, along with the incentives driving tensions between both patrons following the Assad regime’s takeover of southern Syria in July 2018. 

It will then provide a granular analysis of the Sunni Bedouin trafficking networks in Syria’s southeastern Suwayda province who possess kinship ties in Jordan’s northeastern Mafraq province and who eventually aligned with Iran. Though these groups represent just one node of Iran’s broader trafficking network in southern Syria, Bedouin tribesmen in Suwayda were responsible for smuggling the majority of weapons into Jordan after August 2022, the same month that Iran committed to expand its effort to arm militant groups in the West Bank.¹⁷⁴

Lastly, this section will analyze the push and pull factors that enabled Iran to cultivate allies in an overwhelmingly Sunni region. First, it will show how Bedouin tribesmen in Suwayda were drawn to Iranian patronage following disputes with their previous patron, Jordan, which scaled back support for the area’s main Bedouin faction in 2017 and 2018. The need for alternative financing served as a powerful pull factor that lured Suwayda Bedouin groups into taking part in trafficking and eventually partnering with Iran. 

Similarly, Russia’s partial withdrawal from the area after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 enabled Iran to expand its military footprint and purge figures and groups backed by rival patrons, including Russia, the United States, Jordan, and the Arab Gulf states. With a lack of true competitors, Iran’s capacity to push through its agenda in southern Syria throughout 2022 and 2023 became almost uncontested.

On July 12, 2018, the Assad regime retook southern Syria from rebel forces, capturing Dara’a province, where the country’s revolution had begun in 2011.¹⁷⁵ The Syrian regime’s recapture of the region was enabled by support from both Russia and Iran. However, Syria’s two foreign sponsors had distinct visions for the area and different relationships with local organized crime groups. 

In southern Syria and across the country, Syria’s Military Intelligence was informally tasked with overseeing the activities of Iranian militias and coordinating their activities with local organized crime groups.¹⁷⁶ In Syria’s southwestern Dara’a province, local Military Intelligence Chairman Lu’i al-Ali served as one of the top power brokers following the Assad regime’s capture of southern Syria until its overthrow on December 8, 2024. There, al-Ali coordinated with traffickers led by Aimad Abu Zrayg who smuggled contraband through the Nassib border crossing with Jordan and others who oversaw routes in remote parts of the Dara’a countryside.¹⁷⁷

In Suwayda province, the local Military Intelligence branch cycled through five chairmen during the same period.¹⁷⁸ As a result, real power lay with Jamil al-Bala’as, the former director of the office of Wafiq al-Nasser, ex-chairman of Suwayda Military Intelligence from 2011 to 2018, who cultivated close ties to national-level Military Intelligence Chairman Kifah al-Mulhim.¹⁷⁹ Al-Bala’as is also a leading sheikh of the Jarah clan, a Sunni Bedouin tribe based in Lajat, a volcanic rock field in northern Dara’a and Suwayda provinces. Lajat has long served as a refuge for smugglers who use the area to collect, package, and assemble contraband.¹⁸⁰ 

For years, Lu’i al-Ali, Jamil al-Bala’as, and others from Military Intelligence served as the link between local traffickers on the Syrian-Jordanian border and groups with direct ties to Iran, such as Hizbollah and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) 4th Division—led by Maher al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s brother—who smuggled contraband into southern Syria from other parts of the country.¹⁸¹

From July 2018 until the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, Russia and Russian-backed groups in southern Syria cooperated with Jordan to limit the spread of these groups and stem the flow of weapons and narcotics over the border.¹⁸² This came as part of a broader initiative pursued by Russia and the United States to ease the concerns of Jordan and Israel, which had long sought to limit the presence of Iranian-backed groups on their borders since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.¹⁸³

However, Russia had its own incentive for limiting Iranian expansion. Despite Russia and Iran both supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad, their interests in Syria began to diverge following the large-scale defeat of ISIS in late-2017. Beginning in 2018, Moscow led efforts to rehabilitate the Assad regime among the international community in the hopes of lifting UN and Western sanctions on Syria and triggering the release of hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid that Russian firms were poised to benefit from.¹⁸⁴ Iran, by contrast, aimed to continue using the country as a corridor to supply weapons to proscribed terror groups, including Hizbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank, sabotaging the likelihood of Assad securing sanctions relief.¹⁸⁵ 

Russia led efforts to finance regime forces responsible for preserving security in the area. The majority of the forces it backed were Sunni ex-rebels granted amnesty by Moscow after formally surrendering and reconciling with the regime, becoming official SAA units.¹⁸⁶ For Russia, reconciled Sunni rebels could be relied upon to resist Iranian encroachment for ideological and sectarian reasons more so than Syrian security forces, many of which were led by Alawites, a breakaway sect of Shi’a Islam to which the Assad family, Lu’i al-Ali, and others belong.

For the next several years, Russia cooperated closely with Jordan to finance and support reconciled rebels, in particular the SAA 5th Corps’ 8th Brigade in the east Dara’a countryside and a select number of other groups, with the aim of preventing Iranian encroachment.¹⁸⁷ 

However, in the months following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Moscow withdrew thousands of troops from the country and shut down several forward military positions, including four in Damascus and Suwayda provinces.¹⁸⁸ Speaking about the subject in May 2022 in an interview with the Hoover Institution, Jordanian King Abdullah II described the situation by saying, “The presence of the Russians in the south, in Syria, was a source of calm….That vacuum will be filled by the Iranians and their proxies.¹⁸⁹ 

Iran’s efforts to fill the vacuum were already underway. From March to July, Iranian proxies in southern Syria carried out a wave of assassinations aimed at solidifying Tehran’s control of the Syrian-Jordanian border region, beginning with director of the Nassib border crossing, Maher Wasouf.¹⁹⁰ By August, weapons trafficking from Syria grew significantly, the majority of which occurred in Syria’s Suwayda province, located adjacent to Jordan’s Mafraq province, a remote desert region along the border with Iraq which Jordanian security forces have traditionally found difficult to patrol.¹⁹¹ 

This occurred the same month that Iran and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leadership reached a deal to expand arms trafficking to the West Bank on August 6, and that Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade militants in the city of Nablus formed the Lion’s Den faction on August 15, suggesting a coordinated effort by Iran to organize the efforts of its proxies across multiple theaters.¹⁹² Unsurprisingly, it was also around this time that violence began to spike in the West Bank.

Events in southern Syria, Jordan, and the West Bank reflected a continuing stream of weapons seizures by both Jordan and Israel, with Jordanian security forces making at least seven seizures of heavy weapons on its border with Syria in 2022, followed by nine in the first ten months of 2023.¹⁹³ On the border with Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) thwarted at least 22 attempts to smuggle weapons from Jordan in 2022, compared to four in 2021.¹⁹⁴

By August 2022, Suwayda province became a more effective location for Iranian-backed weapons traffickers than traditional routes through Dara’a. Understanding this shift requires understanding the demographics of the area and the history of the local forces involved in trafficking. Despite the majority of Suwayda’s population being Druze—a breakaway sect of the Ismaili branch of Shi’a Islam—Suwayda province is also home to a large Sunni Bedouin minority whose members belong to tribes that possess kinship ties in Jordan’s northeastern Mafraq province.

Beginning in October 2015, many of these tribes—in particular the al-Shanabala, al-Masa’id, Bani Khalid, al-Ghiyath, and others—joined the Army of Free Tribes (AFT), a Sunni rebel faction in Syria formed by Jordan and tasked with protecting Jordan’s northeastern border from ISIS. Also known as the “Free Tribes Collective” or “Southern Tribes Collective,” AFT’s connection to related clansmen in towns and villages across Mafraq meant the group was well positioned to work with Jordanian security forces to protect the country from cross-border threats.

As a result, shortly after its founding, AFT began as the Jordanian monarchy’s most important Syrian proxy. Its leader, Rakan al-Khudayr, was granted Jordanian citizenship and developed close ties to some of Jordan’s top leaders.¹⁹⁵ 

Jordan’s reliance on AFT grew as the threat of ISIS began to manifest domestically. As shown in Table 1, from June 2015 to May 2017, at least 59 people were killed and more than 100 injured in 11 violent incidents involving ISIS and other jihadists in Jordan and the Rukban refugee camp, located inside a poorly delineated section of the Syrian-Jordanian border demarked by walls of sand erected by bulldozers known as “the berm.”

AFT’s presence across southern Syria was key to ensuring that ISIS groups on both sides of the border did not establish direct links or supply lines with one another. However, following the collapse of ISIS in late 2017 and the Assad regime’s takeover of southern Syria in July 2018, AFT quickly reconciled with regime forces and exploited its presence in critical parts of the border to manage and oversee cross-border drug and weapons trafficking networks.  

AFT commanders maintained influence along seven key legs of the smuggling route linking southern Syria and Jordan, beginning with the village of al-Mutila, Rakan al-Khudayr’s hometown where Jamil al-Bala’as also maintained a second residence.¹⁹⁶ Al-Khudayr is a member of the al-Shanabala tribe, whose members live in several dozen towns in the southeastern Suwayda countryside and 13 villages in Mafraq centered around Um al-Qatin. Though originally from the town of Malah in the southeast Suwayda countryside, al-Khudayr’s family relocated to al-Mutila during his youth.¹⁹⁷  

Following the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, al-Mutila became a strategic location as it was the last major population center on the Damascus-Suwayda highway before Lajat, the volcanic rock field home to Jamil al-Bala’as that serves as an assembly point for smugglers before disbursing contraband to traffickers closer to the Syrian-Jordanian border. 

Militias that controlled checkpoints in al-Mutila could extort large fees from traffickers or sabotage their shipments further south. Even today, after the overthrow of Assad in December 2024, AFT and other militias in al-Mutila exploit their control over the area to secure concessions from Syria’s interim government, including being merged into the country’s formal security apparatus.¹⁹⁸ 

The second area where AFT enjoyed significant influence was in Lajat itself, alongside the Al-Aumari Brigades (AAB), a tribal militia dominated by members of the al-Jawabara clan and al-Ghiyath tribe’s al-Madalja branch.¹⁹⁹ Both AAB and AFT were founded in October 2012 and October 2015, respectively, by Hossam al-Karahsha, an enigmatic rebel leader about whom little is known.²⁰⁰ By 2016, both AAB and AFT occupied territory in the central Lajat villages of Masika, Shiyah, and Jadl and received support from Jordan to combat ISIS in northern Lajat around the village of Hosh Hamad, eventually forming a joint operations room in May 2017.²⁰¹ 

By the time of the Assad regime’s takeover of southern Syria in July 2018, Jordan had reduced its support for AFT due to allegations of embezzlement and corruption. This created a gap that was filled by Iran and Hizbollah, which provided support for both AFT and AAB, particularly in Lajat.²⁰² There, AAB commanders Faysal Sabih al-Madalja and Muflih al-Sabra, along with AFT leaders Hassan al-Ruwaydan, Mansur al-Ruwaydan, and Safi al-Khalaf, became the largest drug traffickers in the region, partnering directly with Lu’i al-Ali and Jamil al-Bala’as to smuggle contraband through Dara’a and Suwayda.²⁰³ Eventually, AAB became a sub-unit of AFT, with Muflih al-Sabra becoming Rakan al-Khudayr’s top deputy, a position he retains today.²⁰⁴ 

From Lajat, contraband is smuggled to Bedouin neighborhoods of Suwayda city, in particular the al-Muqawas and al-Shaqrawia neighborhoods—home to al-Shanabala and al-Jawabara tribesmen, respectively—and the al-Musharab district, where AFT partnered with Bedouin organized crime figures affiliated with Jamil al-Bala’as.²⁰⁵ 

From Suwayda city, contraband is trafficked in two directions. Throughout much of 2022, most contraband was taken south toward al-Shih hill, an elevated mound a mile north of the Jordanian border, and the Jordanian al-Shanabala town of Um al-Qatin. From there, and the nearby village of Khirbat al-Awwad, traffickers conducted cross-border raids or used drones to transport contraband to smugglers in villages around Um al-Qatin.²⁰⁶

However, as Jordanian security forces increased their presence in the area, smugglers increasingly pursued routes farther east, near the villages of Sha’ab and Um Shama in the southeast Suwayda countryside, home to the al-Shanabala tribe’s al-Ramthan and al-Shuwa’ayr clans. Located just east of the al-Khudayr family’s hometown of Malah, trafficking in both villages was led by Mara’i al-Ramthan, a Syrian-Jordanian dual national, and Jihad al-Sa’id, a member of the al-Masa’id tribe whose members live in Um al-Jimal and other north Mafraq towns west of Um al-Qatin.

Because of their cross-border kinship ties, the al-Ramthan and al-Sa’id families have been entrusted with smuggling many of the most sensitive weapons material into Jordan, including C4, TNT, mines, anti-tank mines, RPG launchers, and anti-armor and anti-personnel mines, many of which were sourced from Wafiq Safa, chairman of Hizbollah’s external security office in Lebanon.²⁰⁷ The al-Ramthan and al-Sa’id families’ importance has often made them the target of Jordanian airstrikes, with Mara’i al-Ramthan himself killed in one such strike on May 8, 2023, after which his brother, Muhammad al-Ramthan, took over his role.²⁰⁸ Jordanian airstrikes continue to target the vicinity of the village of al-Sha’ab, including on December 24, 2025.²⁰⁹

From al-Sha’ab, al-Ramthan and al-Sa’id clansmen moved further east across the Safa volcanic zone toward the southern stretches of the Syrian Central Desert in the Damascus countryside province. Along the way, traffickers utilized numerous valleys across the volcanic zone around the informal Sharshuh crossing to transport contraband into Jordan.²¹⁰ By mid-2023, traffickers increasingly moved into the Central Desert itself, handing contraband to members of the al-Harayra clan, a branch of the larger al-Ghiyath tribe whose members also dominated the ranks of AAB and AFT in Lajat. Perhaps more than any other group, al-Ghiyath tribesmen became critical for the success of Iranian-backed smuggling routes in the area due to the geographic distribution of their members, who are concentrated in border regions in Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. 

After receiving contraband near Safa, al-Ghiyath tribesmen move goods into Mafraq province’s far eastern al-Ruwayshid district via al-Handalat, the site of a former Syrian IDP camp in the southeast Damascus desert that was abandoned when the area was taken over by pro-Assad forces from U.S.-backed rebels. The al-Handalat camp is located adjacent to the al-Handalat dam in Jordan’s al-Ruwayshid district, which are both connected by a valley that provides cover to smugglers to cross the border without being noticed. Despite being abandoned, the tents of the former al-Handalat camp remain in place, providing smugglers cover from aerial surveillance.²¹¹

From al-Ruwayshid, traffickers move narcotics south to Saudi Arabia via the al-Haditha crossing, located near the Saudi cities of al-Quryat and Turayf, also home to al-Ghiyath tribesmen. Weapons are moved west to the village of al-Halaywa, one of several towns in al-Mafraq home to members of both the al-Ramthan and al-Sa’id clans, who thereafter move contraband farther west. As in al-Sha’ab, traffickers in this area are allegedly led by Muhammad al-Ramthan and members of the al-Sa’id family.²¹²

At its founding in October 2015, the AFT was tasked by Jordan to protect its border with Syria from penetration by ISIS cells in the desert south and east of Damascus and to oversee aid distribution and security at the Rukban and al-Handalat refugee and IDP camps. However, by late 2016, allegations of embezzlement and extortion involving AFT leaders at Rukban and al-Handalat, together with the group’s failure to prevent ISIS attacks on the border, pushed Jordan to reduce its support for the group, limit AFT’s functions in both camps, and increase funding for other factions.²¹³ Keen to preserve their status, AFT leaders quickly sought new ways to self-finance, with the pull of smuggling presenting itself as the most expedient option. 

A leaked copy of a Jordanian State Security Court report reviewed by this author reveals that, in early 2017, Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate allowed AFT to traffic and resell $21.8 million in low-cost Syrian tobacco into Jordan in order to plug its funding deficits.²¹⁴ The report, circulated internally within Jordanian institutions on December 3, 2019, was commissioned to investigate allegations that Rakan al-Khudayr and Jordanian military officials embezzled much of the $21.8 million, which was not used to fund AFT. 

The report was part of a Jordanian State Security Court crackdown on tobacco smugglers launched in July 2018 in response to large protests that began on May 30, 2018. The protests objected to new sales taxes and austerity measures imposed as part of an IMF reform package and led to the resignation of Prime Minister Hani Mulki less than a week later, on June 4.²¹⁵ Beginning in January 2018, Jordan’s government imposed a JD0.2 ($0.28) tax on packs of cigarettes, a 10–20 percent tax on carbonated drinks, and a 30 percent tax on 95 and 98 octane gasoline while also reducing bread subsidies, leading to a spike in bread prices for the first time since 1996.²¹⁶ Throughout the year, new sales taxes were also imposed on more than 160 goods, along with proposed increases of 5 percent and 20–40 percent on income and corporate taxes, respectively.²¹⁷

The tax on cigarettes proved particularly unpopular in light of allegations that Mulki had turned a blind eye to black market cigarette factories being operated in Jordan’s Zarqa Free Zone by Awni al-Muti’a, a businessman who allegedly had evaded $760 million in taxes since 2006 by smuggling cigarettes meant only for export on to the domestic market.²¹⁸  

The political firestorm over the tobacco tax produced a crackdown on tobacco smuggling. Shortly after taking office, Mulki’s replacement, Omar Razaz, launched a ministerial committee to investigate cigarette smuggling in July 2018, formally charging Awni al-Muti’a with tax evasion and arresting several dozen of his associates.²¹⁹ Among those arrested was Wadah al-Hamud, Jordan’s former director of customs, who allegedly turned a blind eye to al-Muti’a’s operations in the Zarqa Free Zone and provided him with tip-offs on raids in exchange for bribes.²²⁰ The aforementioned Jordanian State Security Court report detailing Rakan al-Khudayr’s tobacco smuggling operations also lists Wadah al-Hamud as al-Khudayr’s chief partner responsible for facilitating the passage of at least 55 illicit tobacco shipments between Syria and Jordan in 2017, seven of which purportedly were intended for the Zarqa Free Zone, home to Awni al-Muti’a’s cigarette production.²²¹

Following three years of trials, the same State Security Court sentenced Awni al-Muti’a in September 2021 to 22 years of prison time; Wadah al-Hamud was given a sentence of 10 months.²²² However, at no point did the State Security Court implicate Rakan al-Khudayr in illicit tobacco smuggling, despite repeatedly identifying him as a trafficker in its internal report. 

It remains unconfirmed whether AFT ever stopped trafficking tobacco, either after the July 2018 arrest of Awni al-Muti’a or following the December 2019 circulation of the State Security Court report. However, the crackdown, alongside other challenges, likely diminished its available funding. Over the next several years, AFT commanders became heavily involved in Captagon production and smuggling, providing them with an alternative source of funds, albeit one that ran through Iranian and Syrian power brokers, as detailed above.²²³

While AFT’s need to plug its funding gaps acted as a strong pull factor drawing many of its commanders into Iran’s orbit, Russia’s partial withdrawal from southern Syria, starting in February 2022, and the expansion of Iranian-backed groups along the Syrian-Jordanian border served as powerful push factors that incentivized reconciled rebels across the region to move closer to Tehran to avoid violent reprisals. The set of events that drove this shift began almost immediately.

First, in late February 2022, unknown assailants assassinated Maher Wasouf, director of the Nassib border crossing. Wasouf had been appointed to the position shortly before via a formal order issued by the Office of the Syrian President, which tasked him with curbing Captagon flows in response to complaints received from Jordan. After his assassination, Wasouf was replaced with Yahya Miya, a Syrian with close ties to Hizbollah and Iranian officials. Following Wasouf’s replacement, other security officials in Dara’a aligned with Iran were appointed to lead the area’s three local intelligence bureaus.²²⁴

Months later, Hizbollah launched a campaign to eliminate the Anti-Terror Force, a U.S.-backed faction formed a year before to combat ISIS and Iranian influence in Suwayda that was based in the town of Khazma, southwest of al-Sha’ab along the route to al-Handalat. On June 9, 2022, 500 Hizbollah and other pro-Assad troops besieged Khazma and killed the group’s commander, Samir al-Hakim, thereafter forcing the group to dissolve.²²⁵ These and other killings led to a new outpouring of contraband into Jordan, with security forces seizing 33 million Captagon pills in the first nine months of 2022, more than twice the 16 million seized in all of 2021.²²⁶ 

In order to address the uptick, representatives from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt met in Abu Dhabi in late June with leaders of five former rebel factions in southern Syria to discuss the formation of a 35-kilometer safe zone in Dara’a province. On July 1, 2022, these five leaders, led by Kanan al-Aid (aka Abu Talib), returned to Syria. Two days later, al-Aid was assassinated.²²⁷ These killings marked Iran’s final takeover of large swaths of the Jordanian-Syrian border, just weeks before IDF soldiers killed Palestinian militant leader Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, triggering the formation of the Lion’s Den faction in Nablus. 

The pull of a revived Palestinian militant movement in the West Bank, together with the consolidation of Iranian control over the Syrian-Jordanian border, led to an explosion of new weapons being trafficked into Jordan.²²⁸ In the six months from October 2022 to March 2023, Syrian smugglers made at least 108 crossings into Jordan, adopting increasingly audacious tactics, often moving in groups of hundreds separated into teams, including drone-equipped units tasked with reconnaissance.²²⁹ It was also around this time that JMB members returned to Jordan from Lebanon and began planning to build a missile production factory outside Amman, granting Iran and its proxies their first-ever fixed military position inside the Kingdom and eventually leading to the April 15 arrests.²³⁰