Syria’s Borders Chief Qutaiba Badawi Meets Jordan, Lebanon To Expand Naseeb And Jaber Crossings

Syria’s General Authority for Borders and Customs said Chairman Qutaiba Badawi held separate talks with Jordanian and Lebanese delegations to develop border crossings and enhance cooperation on customs, transport and trade.

“Mazen Aloush, the Director of Relations at the General Authority for Borders and Customs, said on Tuesday that there is an official move to establish a new border crossing with Jordan to replace the old Daraa Customs Center (the Daraa–Ramtha crossing), which has been completely out of service for about 11 years due to the destruction of its infrastructure”

Al-Jazeera Net

Badawi met a Jordanian government delegation headed by Interior Minister Mazen al-Frayeh to discuss cooperation on border crossings, including the planned expansion of the Naseeb crossing and the creation of new lanes toward the Jaber crossing.

Al-Jazeera Net

The two sides also discussed rehabilitation of the Daraa–Ramtha crossing, including technical and administrative steps to reopen it to passenger traffic, and agreed to expand cooperation on training border staff in detecting forged documents and modern customs procedures.

SANA said the meetings come as Syria seeks to modernize its border infrastructure to boost trade and transit traffic following the fall of the deposed regime, with the Naseeb crossing described as a key link on the M45 highway connecting Türkiye to Jordan and the Gulf states.

In a separate development, Al-Jazeera Net reported Mazen Aloush, the Director of Relations at the General Authority for Borders and Customs, said there is an official move to establish a new border crossing with Jordan to replace the old Daraa Customs Center, which has been out of service for about 11 years due to destruction of its infrastructure.

RFI reported that Jordan closed its border with Syria after a coronavirus resurgence, with a decision taken by the Jordanian government on Thursday.

The outlet said the border closure is total and will last for one week, and that from now on goods cannot move between Jordan and Syria while all staff at the Jaber border crossing, on the Jordanian side, must be quarantined.

Le Figaro

RFI also stated that it has already been five months since people have been unable to cross the border that separates Jordan from Syria, while truck drivers could still cross it but had to undergo a COVID-19 test.

The same report said Jordan recorded fifty-three new COVID-19 cases in the past six days and that authorities would monitor the evolution of the situation through the coming weekend to decide whether to impose new containment measures.

In the context of border management, OpenEdition Journals described how Jordan sought to control cross-border movements on its northern border while trying to reconcile security with its strategic interests, including its commercial economy.

Le Figaro reported that the Jordanian army released footage of its strikes against drug networks in Syria, with Syrian state television having reported these strikes against captagon depots in the south and east of the country on Wednesday, December 24.

“At the very moment of the very first demonstrations in Syria (in Deraa, on March 15, 2011), a few kilometers from the Jordanian border, it was then impossible to imagine the chaos that these events prefigured”

OpenEdition Journals

The outlet said Jordanian armed forces targeted “drug-trafficking networks and depots in the south and east” of the Suwayda province, and that they also said they targeted in the northern border area “factories and workshops used by arms and drug traffickers as hideouts to launch operations into Jordanian territory”.

Le Figaro quoted a resident of the Suwayda province living near the Jordanian border, who told AFP of “extremely violent bombardments” that notably targeted “smuggling routes”.

Separately, Orient XXI described how the northern Jordan border town of Al-Ramtha lived for decades at the pace of cross-border trade with neighboring Syria, and said that since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, its inhabitants have awaited the reopening of its border crossing and hoped for an economic revival.

Orient XXI also stated that the inhabitants used to travel from one country to the other without going through the Al-Ramtha border post and customs office established in 1921, and that the border was open all along so “one crossed the plain calmly and arrived”.