The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Syria’s Spillover Effect on Jordan

Nikita Malik writes for the Carnegie Endowment on smugglers, refugees, tribes & Islamism. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a foreign-policy think tank with centers in Washington, D.C., Moscow, Beirut, Beijing, and Brussels.

In January 2013, the Jordanian armed forces prevented a smuggling attempt across the Syrian border, claiming that they had stopped a “major shipment of arms, ammunition, explosives and drugs.” It was no isolated event. In 2013 alone, smuggling activity across Jordan’s border with Syria, which is over 230 miles long, increased by more than 300 percent.

The impact of Syria’s crisis on Jordan, its smaller southern neighbor, has been most clearly seen in the form of a massive influx of Syrian refugees, now numbering some 600,000 people. But there are other, less visible, consequences that also contribute to the erosion of Jordan’s internal stability.

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