Nr. 1 | July 2026 - Anchoring the South: Jordan and the Stabilisation of Post-Assad Syria
Katrina Sammour
The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 redrew the security map along Jordan's northern border. Eighteen months on, southern Syria presents three distinct challenges: a governance vacuum and de facto self-rule in Suwayda, the collapse of a dominant armed faction and the return of tribal authority in Daraa, and an Israeli ground presence in Quneitra that functions as the local authority.
All three governorates carry costs for Jordan, even, they compound one another. The Captagon trade has not been dismantled so much as decentralised, and the routes that carry narcotics carry weapons as well. Israeli operations erode the authority of the very government in Damascus that Jordan has chosen to work through, and so long as that authority remains contested, refugee returns from the Kingdom will stall. It is against this background that Amman has become the most active state partner of the new Syrian authority, pairing security cooperation with institutional capacity-building.
This paper assesses the reach and limits of that engagement. Because Jordan's core objectives depend on the consolidation of central authority in Syria, it argues, the Kingdom is best served by dealing with Damascus rather than around it and by distributing the political, financial, and security costs across a wider coalition of regional and international partners. The same logic yields four priorities for the coming 12–18 months, namely adapting counter-narcotics strategy to a decentralised trade, preserving a diplomatic track in Suwayda, converting Jordan's security role into leverage on the Gulf–Syria corridor, and institutionalising water management in the Yarmouk Basin.
