‘Oxygen is restored’ as Jordan-Syria border reopens
▶ The reopening of the Jaber-Nassib land crossing promises to boost Jordan’s ailing economy. Taylor Luck reports from the frontier village of Jabar As Sarhan
Three years after fighting closed the border, a vital trade and crossing route between Jordan and Syria reopened yesterday as the Assad government took steps towards returning to the international fold.
Among the travellers were Syrians who had not returned home in six years; others were Jordanians looking to rekindle business in Damascus.
“The war took away our livelihoods,” said Bassam Abu Aqouleh, a Jordanian taxi driver heading to Damascus. “Today our oxygen is restored.”
The reopening of the JaberNassib border had been much discussed in Jordan since the start of the year. Although Jordan stayed neutral in the Syrian conflict, ties between the neighbours had become strained.
The surprise announcement on Sunday evening led many Jordanians and Syrians to get their paperwork in order.
Under a new agreement unveiled by the Jordanian and Syrian governments yesterday, Syrians and Jordanians can travel freely into Syria. Syrians entering Jordan from Syria, however, require security authorisations from both governments.
The transport of commercial goods between Jordan and Syria, once a multibillion-dollar business, will take time to reach pre-war heights.
According to the Jordan Truck Owners’ Association, there are 5,000 Jordanian lorries ready to transport goods to Syria. But many vehicles and companies must renew their licences. Other companies are reviewing the security situation and insurance requirements. The association estimates that the border closures have cost Jordanian transport companies more than 750 million Jordanian dinar (Dh3.89 billion).
Jordanian tour companies intend to resume bus tours to Damascus and Beirut “as soon as possible”, Syria was once a popular destination for working-class and middle-class Jordanians who could not afford flights to other destinations.
The reopening also represented a lifeline for Lebanon, which relies on Syria for its overland trade. Lebanese officials say exports dropped 35 per cent after the conflict began. Although only 5 per cent of Leban’s exports go to Jordan, 45 per cent are destined for Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait via Jordan.
Celebration trumped bureaucracy on the Jordanian side of the Jabar border crossing yesterday as the first travellers in more than three years crossed this frontier into Syria.
Strangers kissed and hugged, teenagers filmed the passport stamping with their mobiles and young men declared: “Next stop, Damascus.”
This, travellers and drivers said, was the unfiltered joy inspired by the historic resumption of travel across the fertile plains of the Levant known as the Houran.
For generations, hundreds of families either side of the frontier earned a living by cross-border trading and taking people between Damascus and Amman.
For them, the reopening of the crossing represented the restoration of a lifeline.
For Syrians living in Jordan who doubted whether they would ever return to their wartorn homeland, it also represented a resumption of familial ties.
Ahmed, 40, teared up as he recalled how he had not seen his brothers, cousins or mother since he left his home town of Deraa to work in Jordan’s capital eight years ago.
As soon as the Jordanian and Syrian governments announced on Sunday night that they would reopen the border crossing, Ahmed told his family to expect him. He brought his eight-year-old son, who had never set foot on Syrian soil.
“It is an indescribable joy,” Ahmed said after having his passport and family file stamped.
“Thank God, thank God, thank God. We are returning home.”
The reopening ended months of speculation in Jordan and Syria. The two countries closed their last overland crossing in 2015 when rebel forces captured the border terminal.
Before the war, 7,000 lorries carrying vegetables, meat, electronics, clothes and medicine made the crossing daily. Hundreds of tourists passed through on their way to Damascus and Beirut.
The movement of passengers and goods slowed to a trickle as fighting between regime and rebel forces intensified in southern Syria in 2013. The main road leading to the crossing today is a procession of abandoned rest stops, restaurants, garages and petrol stations, their windows shuttered, all caked in the red dirt that stretches for miles into Syria.
Jordanians from nearby villages hoped the opening would mark a return to “real life”.
About two dozen out-of-work lorry drivers, lorry owners and taxi drivers from the border village of Jabar As Sarhan gathered at the crossing yesterday to watch the trickle of passenger vehicles enter the terminal leading to Syria.
Although commercial transport has yet to resume in full – most companies and drivers, after years of inactivity, must renew their licences, while businesses review the security situation – Jabar residents hope that renewed commerce will revitalise the town.
“Five hundred families from our village and the border area have been put out of work since they closed the border,” said Hussein Abu Sharan, 36, a lorry driver.
“We hope this re-opening means our struggles are over.”
Lorry drivers once earned between 15 and 30 Jordanian dinars (Dh77 to Dh155) per day driving goods across the border, a decent wage even today. Since the war, many men gave up their driving jobs in favour of farming and labouring.
Even those jobs were affected by the war, as refugee labour drove down wages. A day’s work that once paid 15 dinars was soon being done by Syrians for just five.
“We were being strangled and pressured on every front,” said Mohammad Ibrahim, 38, a lorry driver. “In the end, most of us decided just to sit at home.”
More than 100 articulated trailers with plates from Kuwait, Jordan and Syria are parked at the main lorry stop bordering the JordanianSyrian free zone, looking rusted and abandoned.
“Before the war, this place was so full you could barely walk between the lorries and cars,” said Ossama Al Qabsi, a 38-year-old driver from Jabar. “Now, it is a ghost town. We are tired of ghosts, we want life to return.”
At a currency exchange at the Jabar terminal, Aysam Al Zoubi unlocked his office for the first time in three years.
“Our company once employed 21 people,” he said, stepping over broken glass and old newspapers.
“If people are assured that the situation in Syria has returned to normal, we can employ people again.”
The second major crossing between the two countries, the Ramtha-Deraa border crossing about 40 kilometres to the west, remains closed since Jordan shut it in 2011, a move that left the 3,500 Jordanian drivers who live near by out of work.
Unemployment has hit a record 18.7 per cent in Jordan, increasing to 30 per cent among young people. The multibillion-dollar trade between Jordan and Syria was once the lifeblood of merchants throughout the region.
If this vital lifeline regains its pulse, it may do so in one direction only. Syrians and Syrian vehicles entering Jordan must receive security authorisation from both governments, an additional step many expect to slow traffic into the kingdom.
By noon nothing had arrived from Syria. But intrepid Jordanian drivers said they were up to the challenge.
“I am ready to take passengers, I am ready to take goods, I am ready to take anything I can between Damascus and Jordan,” said Bassam Abu Aqouleh, 33, a Jordanian taxi driver from Ramtha.
“This is not just a way of life for us,” Mr Abu Aqouleh said as he got into his car and looked to the desolate Syrian border ahead. “It is the only way of life for us.”