Jordan outreach to new Syria government is turning point

When the regime began to collapse, the rebels returned to march on Damascus. This could provide Jordan with key influence in Dara’a and other areas in southern Jordan.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN DECEMBER 23, 2024 15:13 Updated: DECEMBER 23, 2024 15:19

Illustrative image of a Syrian domino falling followed by a Jordanian domino. (photo credit: Dall-E)

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi met with the new Syrian leadership on December 23. He met with Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took over Damascus on December 8 as the Assad regime fell.

Since December 8 Sharaa has been hosting a plethora of delegations from abroad, include Turkey, Qatar, the UK, France, Germany and the US. The meeting with the Jordanians is important because Jordan is a neighbor and because they have a long history of complex ties to Syria.

Al-Ain media in the UAE wrote about the meeting between Safadi and Sharaa. This illustrates how closely the Gulf is watching developments in Syria. It should be noted that the Gulf states and Jordan all had been willing to do outreach to the Assad regime in the last several years. The goal was to enable the Assad regime to return to the Arab League. Now that Assad is gone these same countries have to shuffle the deck.

Support for Syrian security

Jordan’s Foreign Ministry posted about the trip by Safadi. Minister of State for Government Communication and official spokesman for the Jordanian government, Mohammad al-Momani, told reporters on Sunday that “the Jordanian position on the recent events in Syria…expresses the sincerity of relations between the two brotherly countries, in addition to its support for achieving security for Syria, the unity of its territories and the stability of its institutions.”

Jordan wants to secure its northern border. This is important because the Syrian civil war led to much uncertainty in Jordan. First of all, hundreds of thousands of Syrians fled to Jordan and were hosted in refugee camps and cities in northern Jordan. Some Syrians in southern Syria have tribal and some family or historic clan ties to people in northern Jordan. Jordan has a 375km border with Syria and a lot of it is made up of empty desert. This leads to security concerns.

Rebel fighters pose as they hold a Syrian opposition flag at the Umayyad Mosque, after rebels seized the capital and ousted Syria's Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria December 9, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/AMR ABDALLAH DALSH)

It's worth noting that after the Syrian civil war began in 2011 and 2012 there were not just refugees fleeting Syria but also there was an ISIS threat between 2013 and 2018 to Jordan. Jordan fought ISIS and took this threat seriously. Jordan also coordinated with the US, UK and others to back Syrian rebels in southern Syria.

This “southern operations room” or southern front rebel support collapsed in 2018 when the Russian-backed Syrian regime returned to southern Syria. The rebels reconciled but waited for an opportunity. When the regime began to collapse in early December, the rebels returned to march on Damascus. This could provide Jordan with key influence in Dara’a and other areas in southern Jordan.

US role 

Meanwhile the US has a role in Tanf in Syria near the Jordanian and Iraqi border. This garrison is near Jordan and is near an IDP camp called Rukban. It is a forlorn post in the desert but it matters. The US has been training a group of Syrian rebels in Tanf. This group is called the Syrian Free Army.

It used to be called the Maghawir al-Thawra or Revolutionary Commando Army. Americans who served in Tanf called it the “Mat” for years before its name change. This group played a limited role on December 7-8 in taking areas from the collapsing regime in Homs province near Palmyra. There is another aspect of the Tanf garrison that may matter to Jordan. There is a site called Tower 22 in eastern Jordan.

This area is not far from the Syrian border and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq targeted it in January 2024. The drone attack killed three American service personnel in Jordan. Jordan has been very sensitive about these issues, including hosting US military in Jordan. Three American soldiers were also killed in Jordan in 2016 during the King Faisal Air Base shotting incident.

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Now all eyes are on Jordan-Syria ties. There are still 680,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan, Al-Ain media reports. This is about half the number that once were in Jordan at the height of the refugee crisis.

“7,250 Syrians have returned to their country across the Jordanian border since the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, the Jordanian Interior Ministry said last Thursday,” Al-Ain noted. Jordan also hosted a meeting in Aqaba on December 14 to discuss Syria. Eight Arab countries attended as did the US, France, Turkey, the EU and UN.

On December 14, Jordan hosted a meeting on Syria with the participation of foreign ministers of eight Arab countries, the United States, France, Turkey, the European Union, and a UN representative. Jordan’s King Abdullah stressed at the meeting the concern over chaos in Syria. "Over the past years, Jordan has suffered from continuous infiltration and smuggling of weapons and drugs, especially Captagon, by land from Syria,” al-Ain media noted.

Now in Syria much of the Assad drug trade empire has been uncovered by the new authorities. Where once Iranian-backed gangs in Syria would threaten Jordan via organized drug smuggling, even using drones, now this trade may be reduced.

The historic connections of this region are important. During the era of the Arab Revolt and the formation of the British and French Mandates which divided this landscape into what is now Syria and Jordan, a number of Arab notables met in northern Jordan near Um Qays to protest the colonial decisions.

A short lived Arab Kingdom of Syria was led by King Faisal while his brother Abdullah became kind of Jordan. Faisal’s rule in Syria was ended by the French in 1920 and he fled first to Dara’a and then left Syria, heading for Haifa. Syria attempted to invade Jordan in 1970 to support the Palestinians during the short Jordanian civil war, also known as Black September.

This matters, because although the region moves on, the proximity of Jordan, Syria and Israel in this complex meeting point of various countries continue to be overshadowed by history today. Israel, for instance, has advanced into the buffer zone of the ceasefire line from 1973. Both Israel and Jordan are watching southern Syria closely.