• About Us
  • The Publisher
  • Our Mission
  • Archive Gallery
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy & Policy
Friday, May 30, 2025
  • Login
The Corporate Guardian
Advertisement
  • Home
  • Oil and Gas
  • Human Resource
  • Banking
    As 2024 unfolds, the Bank of Ghana continues to prioritize economic stability, risk management, and innovation. The bank’s proactive stance on monitoring inflation trends and its commitment to enhancing financial inclusion through digital platforms are expected to play crucial roles in the nation’s economic development.

    Navigating through economic turbulence with prudent policies and strategic recapitalization

    As 2024 unfolds, the Bank of Ghana continues to prioritize economic stability, risk management, and innovation. The bank’s proactive stance on monitoring inflation trends and its commitment to enhancing financial inclusion through digital platforms are expected to play crucial roles in the nation’s economic development.

    Standard Chartered Bank accused of helping fund terrorists

    Dr Da Costa Aboagye appointed new CEO of NHIA

    Dr Da Costa Aboagye appointed new CEO of NHIA

    RightCard (LemFi) doubles down on Bank of Ghana Approval with Nsano partnership

    RightCard (LemFi) doubles down on Bank of Ghana Approval with Nsano partnership

    Nigeria clamps down on forex traders amid persistent naira woes

    Nigeria clamps down on forex traders amid persistent naira woes

    Banks to blacklist defaulters, borrowers with bad credit history to mitigate rising NPLs

    Banks to blacklist defaulters, borrowers with bad credit history to mitigate rising NPLs

  • Law
    World Law Congress 2025: Morocco highlights its legal model and its Autonomy Plan

    World Law Congress 2025: Morocco highlights its legal model and its Autonomy Plan

    HM the King Receives Foreign Ministers of Three Countries of Sahel States Alliance

    HM the King Receives Foreign Ministers of Three Countries of Sahel States Alliance

    Over 78K Illegal Migration Attempts Aborted in 2024 (Interior Ministry)

    Over 78K Illegal Migration Attempts Aborted in 2024 (Interior Ministry)

    Court to deliver judgment on J.B. Danquah Adu’s murder Dec 4

    Court to deliver judgment on J.B. Danquah Adu’s murder Dec 4

    Does the Police law empower police to run a broadcasting service?

    Does the Police law empower police to run a broadcasting service?

    Improving Women’s Participation in the 2023 District Level Elections: The Role of the Media, Jeorge Wilson Kingson

    Improving Women’s Participation in the 2023 District Level Elections: The Role of the Media

    Trending Tags

  • Mining
  • Politics
  • Real Estate
  • Insurance
  • On the marble
  • Special Projects
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Oil and Gas
  • Human Resource
  • Banking
    As 2024 unfolds, the Bank of Ghana continues to prioritize economic stability, risk management, and innovation. The bank’s proactive stance on monitoring inflation trends and its commitment to enhancing financial inclusion through digital platforms are expected to play crucial roles in the nation’s economic development.

    Navigating through economic turbulence with prudent policies and strategic recapitalization

    As 2024 unfolds, the Bank of Ghana continues to prioritize economic stability, risk management, and innovation. The bank’s proactive stance on monitoring inflation trends and its commitment to enhancing financial inclusion through digital platforms are expected to play crucial roles in the nation’s economic development.

    Standard Chartered Bank accused of helping fund terrorists

    Dr Da Costa Aboagye appointed new CEO of NHIA

    Dr Da Costa Aboagye appointed new CEO of NHIA

    RightCard (LemFi) doubles down on Bank of Ghana Approval with Nsano partnership

    RightCard (LemFi) doubles down on Bank of Ghana Approval with Nsano partnership

    Nigeria clamps down on forex traders amid persistent naira woes

    Nigeria clamps down on forex traders amid persistent naira woes

    Banks to blacklist defaulters, borrowers with bad credit history to mitigate rising NPLs

    Banks to blacklist defaulters, borrowers with bad credit history to mitigate rising NPLs

  • Law
    World Law Congress 2025: Morocco highlights its legal model and its Autonomy Plan

    World Law Congress 2025: Morocco highlights its legal model and its Autonomy Plan

    HM the King Receives Foreign Ministers of Three Countries of Sahel States Alliance

    HM the King Receives Foreign Ministers of Three Countries of Sahel States Alliance

    Over 78K Illegal Migration Attempts Aborted in 2024 (Interior Ministry)

    Over 78K Illegal Migration Attempts Aborted in 2024 (Interior Ministry)

    Court to deliver judgment on J.B. Danquah Adu’s murder Dec 4

    Court to deliver judgment on J.B. Danquah Adu’s murder Dec 4

    Does the Police law empower police to run a broadcasting service?

    Does the Police law empower police to run a broadcasting service?

    Improving Women’s Participation in the 2023 District Level Elections: The Role of the Media, Jeorge Wilson Kingson

    Improving Women’s Participation in the 2023 District Level Elections: The Role of the Media

    Trending Tags

  • Mining
  • Politics
  • Real Estate
  • Insurance
  • On the marble
  • Special Projects
No Result
View All Result
The Corporate Guardian
No Result
View All Result
Home Foreign

Syria seeks to sever last Iran-linked networks for smuggling arms and cash

After ousting Assad, Syria’s new rulers have been stamping out the “land bridge” that Iran used to project regional power by arming Hezbollah and other allies.

Efo Komla Hukporti by Efo Komla Hukporti
April 13, 2025
in Foreign, Hot News, Politics, Special Projects, The 54 AFRICAN STATES, Top Story
0
0
SHARES
2
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

HAWSH AL-SAYYID ALI, Syria — From the front seat of a black GMC truck, Maher Ziwani, the Syrian army commander overseeing this stretch of the border with Lebanon, radioed ahead to check the safety of the dirt track stretching to the frontier. But before he got a response, Syrian fighters on a motorbike sped past his window, shouting a warning.

“Hezbollah, Hezbollah!” one yelled. “Hezbollah shot one of our guys!”
A car followed, its interior smeared with blood. A patrol had come under fire, soldiers said.

In recent weeks, Syrian government forces have been trying to choke off smuggling routes that cross the rugged 233-mile border with Lebanon. These routes are the last vestiges of the “land bridge” — a network traversing the breadth of Syria — used by Iran and its allied militias to ferry weapons, cash, drugs and fuel. These had helped prop up the ousted government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and represented vital support for the regime’s powerful ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, including in its confrontation with Israel.

Today, it’s a dramatically different picture after Islamist militants overthrew Assad in December, dealing a major setback to Iran’s regional power and largely cutting it off from Hezbollah.

From the border smuggling hubs like Hawsh al-Sayyid Ali, still smoldering from clashes when Ziwani visited last month, to the abandoned Shiite Muslim militia bases in the war-ravaged cities of Qusayr and Palmyra to the east,

waypoints once used by Iran and its proxies are in tatters. A recent reporting trip by Washington Post journalists to these once-vital nodes in the smuggling network found abundant evidence of a hasty exit.

With its regional influence shattered, however, Iran has now started looking beyond its traditional allies, including to Sunni Muslim extremist groups, in efforts to maintain supply lines and destabilize the new government, headed by interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, security officials in Europe and the region have warned. This is among the many challenges for Sharaa as he tries to cope with the meddling of rival outside powers and unite Syria.

Clashes on the Lebanese border
Iran’s once uncontested dominance over Syria’s strategic corridors has given way to a new uncertain order.

After Hezbollah was pummeled by Israeli forces in Lebanon last fall, the group remains desperate to replenish its arms stockpiles and bring in cash to compensate its traditional supporters in Beirut and southern Lebanon who lost property in the conflict

“They are trying to open gaps,” Ziwani said, referring to the attempts of clans aligned with Hezbollah to retain smuggling routes.

Efforts by Ziwani’s forces to cut smuggling routes have flared into deadly clashes. The most severe came last month, when local clans in the border area confronted Syrian government troops, residents said. Three Syrian soldiers were killed, and Syrian forces responded by entering the village of Hawsh al-Sayyid Ali, which they said had been a base for operations against their forces. They poured thousands of reinforcements into the area — largely from the northern Syrian province of Idlib, which has long been a stronghold of the Islamist militants who overthrew Assad.

The Lebanese military also said it became involved, responding to shelling inside its territory. Hezbollah said it did not take part.

“It’s quite difficult to draw a clear line between the clans and Hezbollah. There’s clear and strong cooperation between the two,” said Haid Haid, a Syria analyst with Chatham House who tracks transnational smuggling routes.

Even after a ceasefire was agreed upon, bullets still whistled through the air in Hawsh al-Sayyid Ali. How much does Ziwani trust the Lebanese military to secure the border? “Not even 1 percent,” he said as he eyed the Lebanese troops in the distance.

Hezbollah weapons hubs

The region around the Lebanese border became a critical hub for Hezbollah over the course of the 13-year Syrian civil war, a center for drugs manufacturing and gateway for the transfer of weapons and manpower. During operations in border villages, Syrian government forces discovered 15 factories for making Captagon, an amphetamine-like drug whose sales benefited both the Assad regime and Hezbollah. Local security officials estimated the value of the trade reached to tens of millions of dollars.

In the city of Qusayr, just six miles from the Lebanese border, the entire industrial zone had been turned into a vast weapons storage site, covering an area of about 50 soccer fields. Israeli airstrikes had blown the shutters off the windows of buildings, and boxes of munitions were visible.

“These are Iranian missiles,” said Samer Abu Qassim, head of general security for Qusayr, pointing to large wooden cases. The remnants of other ordnance littered the ground. “This was a central facility for them,” he said. “All these shops were weapons storage.”

A nearby building, formerly a school, had been used as a Hezbollah training base. Paintball pellets from exercises were strewn in the yard. Drones lay discarded in a stairwell on top of boxes of munitions. Hastily abandoned teaching aids offered a glimpse of Hezbollah’s pedagogy, including how fighters prepared battle plans.

As the Islamist fighters led by Sharaa advanced last year from northern Syria, Hezbollah militants who had gathered in the city packed up and left without a fight, locals said.

“It was a huge loss for them,” said Ahmed Adbelhakim Ammar, the head of security for Qusayr and its surroundings. For Hezbollah, the area had become a “second Hermel,” he said, referring to the group’s stronghold in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

Arms stockpiles in Syria

Still, elements of Iran’s network in Syria remain active, particularly those linked to Hezbollah, said Haid. The new Syrian government has intercepted more than a dozen shipments bound for Lebanon, he said. One such raid in January, announced by Syria’s interior ministry, yielded crates of drones hidden in a truck of animal feed.

“There is a huge stockpile in Syria that Hezbollah is trying to move out of Syria,” Haid said. “They know where those are, and they are working with Syrian networks to get them out.”

To do so, Hezbollah must evade Israeli airstrikes. The bridge connecting Hawsh al-Sayyid Ali to Lebanon — one of Hezbollah’s key supply lines — was destroyed by an airstrike during Israel’s war with Hezbollah, and Israel has continued to pound stockpiles in Syria.
Some cross-country networks are likely to be still functioning, said Phillip Smyth, an expert on Shiite militias.

“In a quasi-anarchic Syria, it’s not going to be hard for them to get across when a government is trying to solidify itself and dealing with a ton of internal issues,” he said. “They have melted back into the surroundings; operating with more criminally focused networks is probably going to be the de facto way they do business.”

Suspicions about Iran

Beyond the smuggling efforts, Syrian officials have also accused Iran of seeking to destabilize the new government, including by helping to foment recent violence along the coast, when coordinated attacks by Assad loyalists on Syrian security forces spiraled into sectarian violence.

Syrian officials have not provided details to back up their claims, and two European security officials said there is no evidence of a direct Iranian role in the coordinated attacks against Syrian forces.

But the European officials said Iran had instead been trying to sow unrest by mobilizing Sunni extremists, including militants affiliated with the Islamic State, against the new Syrian government. “We see Iranian involvement there,” one of the officials said. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters, did not elaborate.

A planned trip in late March to Damascus by the German and Austrian interior ministers was abruptly called off because of a concrete threat from affiliates of the former regime against diplomats, according to a Western security official and diplomat.

Over the years, Iran has fostered a wide array of proxy groups to advance its interests. Iran, for instance, trained fighters from the Algeria-based Polisario Front, a militant group fighting for the independence of the Western Sahara from Morocco, with hundreds now detained by Syria’s new security forces, according to a regional official and a third European official.

In Palmyra, home to the breathtaking ruins of one of the most important cities in the ancient world, the fall of Assad’s regime has helped reveal the scale of Iran-backed militias in Syria.

“Death to America,” the graffiti read on the side of a former hotel that was used to house hundreds of fighters from Liwa al-Fatemiyoun, a militia of Afghan Shiites deployed to advance Iranian interests in Syria. The city, on a strategic desert crossroads, essentially became a vast military compound, soldiers in Palmyra said. Today, security forces have finished clearing booby traps and mines planted in and around the city, but their grip appears flimsy.

“State control is zero,” said Zaher al Salim, 40, a volunteer with the local civilian council.

Tags: cashIrannetworksseversmuggling armsSyria
Efo Komla Hukporti

Efo Komla Hukporti

Related Posts

Morocco’s Top Police Chief Attends 13th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues in Moscow
Foreign

Morocco’s Top Police Chief Attends 13th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues in Moscow

May 29, 2025
Kenya Considers Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as Sole Sustainable Approach to Resolving Sahara Issue
Collaborations

Kenya Considers Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as Sole Sustainable Approach to Resolving Sahara Issue

May 27, 2025
UNTWO election: PABF urges Africa to back UAE’s Al Nowais bid to be first Female Secretary-General 
Africa Means Business

UNTWO election: PABF urges Africa to back UAE’s Al Nowais bid to be first Female Secretary-General 

May 25, 2025
Slovakia Acknowledges Moroccan Autonomy Initiative as 'Basis for Definitive Solution Under UN Auspices' to Moroccan Sahara Issue
Foreign

Slovakia Acknowledges Moroccan Autonomy Initiative as ‘Basis for Definitive Solution Under UN Auspices’ to Moroccan Sahara Issue

May 23, 2025
Syria Thanks HM the King for Decision to Reopen Moroccan Embassy in Damascus
Foreign

Syria Thanks HM the King for Decision to Reopen Moroccan Embassy in Damascus

May 18, 2025
Neither EU nor Any of Its Member States Recognize the So-Called 'SADR' - Spokesperson Reaffirms
Foreign

Neither EU nor Any of Its Member States Recognize the So-Called ‘SADR’ – Spokesperson Reaffirms

May 17, 2025

Recent Publications

Morocco’s Top Police Chief Attends 13th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues in Moscow

Morocco’s Top Police Chief Attends 13th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues in Moscow

May 29, 2025
Kenya Considers Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as Sole Sustainable Approach to Resolving Sahara Issue

Kenya Considers Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as Sole Sustainable Approach to Resolving Sahara Issue

May 27, 2025
UNTWO election: PABF urges Africa to back UAE’s Al Nowais bid to be first Female Secretary-General 

UNTWO election: PABF urges Africa to back UAE’s Al Nowais bid to be first Female Secretary-General 

May 25, 2025
Slovakia Acknowledges Moroccan Autonomy Initiative as 'Basis for Definitive Solution Under UN Auspices' to Moroccan Sahara Issue

Slovakia Acknowledges Moroccan Autonomy Initiative as ‘Basis for Definitive Solution Under UN Auspices’ to Moroccan Sahara Issue

May 23, 2025
Load More
  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
CSOs welcome suspension of Agyapa Royalties IPO

CSOs welcome suspension of Agyapa Royalties IPO

October 7, 2020
Judge complains over slow pace of uniCredit case

Judge complains over slow pace of uniCredit case

October 8, 2020
Asantehene urges chiefs to abstain from partisan politics

Asantehene urges chiefs to abstain from partisan politics

October 8, 2020
Absa Bank engages fresh graduates and youth with ‘ReadytoWork’ virtual sessions

Absa Bank engages fresh graduates and youth with ‘ReadytoWork’ virtual sessions

October 27, 2020
World Wellbeing Week: Self-Care and its Global Impact

World Wellbeing Week: Self-Care and its Global Impact

4
2023: Proactive and determined Royal action in favor of strengthening the Welfare State

2023: Proactive and determined Royal action in favor of strengthening the Welfare State

1
QNET's Amezcua Bio Light 3 and Bio Disc 3: Cutting-Edge Recovery Tools for Peak Athletic Performance

QNET’s Amezcua Bio Light 3 and Bio Disc 3: Cutting-Edge Recovery Tools for Peak Athletic Performance

1
France reaffirms Support for Morocco’s Sovereignty over its Sahara – French FM

France reaffirms Support for Morocco’s Sovereignty over its Sahara – French FM

1
Morocco’s Top Police Chief Attends 13th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues in Moscow

Morocco’s Top Police Chief Attends 13th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues in Moscow

May 29, 2025
Kenya Considers Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as Sole Sustainable Approach to Resolving Sahara Issue

Kenya Considers Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as Sole Sustainable Approach to Resolving Sahara Issue

May 27, 2025
UNTWO election: PABF urges Africa to back UAE’s Al Nowais bid to be first Female Secretary-General 

UNTWO election: PABF urges Africa to back UAE’s Al Nowais bid to be first Female Secretary-General 

May 25, 2025
Slovakia Acknowledges Moroccan Autonomy Initiative as 'Basis for Definitive Solution Under UN Auspices' to Moroccan Sahara Issue

Slovakia Acknowledges Moroccan Autonomy Initiative as ‘Basis for Definitive Solution Under UN Auspices’ to Moroccan Sahara Issue

May 23, 2025
  • About Us
  • The Publisher
  • Our Mission
  • Archive Gallery
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy & Policy
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Oil & Gas
  • Mining
  • Politics
  • Human Resource
  • Business News
  • Real Estate
  • Special Projects
  • Insurance
  • On The Marble

© 2020 The Corporate Guardian - The Corporate Guardian.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Go to mobile version