Eurasia Press & News
In the chaos following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024, looting on a massive scale hit Syria’s armories. Tens of thousands of small arms and light weapons flowed into the hands of civilians, criminals, and armed groups in a country which already had a thriving illicit arms market and established smuggling networks. Failure to monitor and tackle the spread of these weapons could pose a major security threat to Syria itself and the wider region.
Syrian weapons are on the move across the country’s borders. On Jan. 11, Lebanese police stopped a vehicle on the highway between the Bekaa Valley and Beirut. They found dozens of weapons and thousands of ammunition rounds smuggled from Syria, including five Russian 9A-91 assault rifles, which were issued only to elite units in Assad’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA). The suspects admitted to carrying out more than five other arms smuggling runs from Syria into Lebanon.
This incident is part of a bigger pattern. Open-source data from reputable official and mainstream news sources, supplemented by local social media, shows the extent of the proliferation of weapons in post-Assad Syria. Between early December 2024 and March 31 this year, there were at least 121 reports of major arms seizures or surrenders in Syria and 32 in Lebanon. These incidents included 15 seizures of weapons confirmed as smuggled from Syria to Lebanon, over 90 seizures by Syria’s new transitional authorities, and 18 negotiated large-scale weapon surrenders by communities in Syria.
Images from these incidents show that assault rifles, grenades, RPG rocket launchers, mortar rounds, anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), and man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) are circulating widely. These include models produced in Russia, Iran, China, and former Soviet-bloc countries like Romania and Bulgaria, many of which were commonly used by the SAA. Ongoing violence and continued seizures in Syria indicate that the reported incidents account for only a small sample of the weapons that remain outside of official control.
Recent examples of regime collapse suggest that Syria could become a regional or global source of diverted weapons. In Lebanon, arms seizures have spiked since the collapse of the Assad regime, particularly in border regions with established smuggling networks. And while no major trafficking incidents were reported on the Syria-Jordan border, the volume of arms seizures in the provinces bordering Jordan indicates there is no shortage of supply.
Regime collapse is often a precursor to large-scale arms trafficking. Armories fall into the hands of armed groups, militias, and even mobs. Local smuggling networks, sustained by a robust conflict economy, thrive in the ensuing power vacuum. Criminal groups and unscrupulous arms dealers exploit weakened state institutions to facilitate illicit transfers.
A prime example is the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya in 2011. The collapse led to a power vacuum and state fragmentation in which various armed groups looted regime armories. Libyan weapons have helped fuel conflicts in the Sahel, Sudan, Syria, and Gaza for over a decade. The loss of control over thousands of MANPADS — shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles — drove fears about diversion to terrorist groups and threats to civilian aviation.
Today, Libya alternates between being a source and a destination for trafficked weapons. Ongoing instability, foreign interventions, and repeated civil wars drive fluxes in supply and demand. Libya has also become a destination and transit point for illicit international arms transfers, despite an arms embargo, which foreign sponsors supporting competing actors in the country have ignored. In the last two years, trafficked Libyan weapons have turned up in conflicts in Sudan, Chad, and Niger.
More recent examples show the same. The Taliban’s rapid toppling of the Afghan government in 2021 led to a sudden loss of control over hundreds of thousands of US-supplied weapons. The collapse led to an initial price drop for weapons as they flooded the black market. Despite the Taliban’s efforts to control these stockpiles, US-origin weapons have reappeared in the hands of armed groups in Pakistan, Iran, and even in the disputed, Indian-administered region of Kashmir.
Assad’s Syria was already a prominent destination and transit point for trafficked weapons. SAA armories had long been a source of weapons for Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which militarily supported Assad throughout the 14-year civil war. The regime allowed Iran — a major foreign sponsor — to funnel weapons to proxies in Syria and Lebanon. Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades, also received advanced weapons from the regime, such as Russian Kornet ATGMs and Iranian rocket technologies.
The collapse of the Assad regime led to a massive loss of control over state stockpiles. As a coalition of rebel groups led by the Sunni Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) advanced toward Damascus in late 2024, SAA units and allied militias abandoned their positions and weapons en masse. Some observers estimate that hundreds of thousands of weapons left state control.
According to Middle East Institute associate fellow Gregory Waters, a complete security vacuum gripped much of the country between Dec. 5 and 8. “In that first 24 hours, people tried to loot every single government building, whether it was a police station, military base, municipal office, [or] back office, and every gun was taken,” he says. The release of thousands of prisoners only worsened the situation, Waters adds, as many acquired looted weapons.
SAA and allied militia commanders also took advantage of the chaos, siphoning off weapons for personal protection and profit.SAA and allied militia commanders also took advantage of the chaos, siphoning off weapons for personal protection and profit. In March, loyalist insurgents — likely using weapons cached from regime armories — launched an uprising against the HTS-led transitional authorities in Assad’s traditional strongholds of Tartus and Latakia.
The transitional authorities have attempted to secure former regime stocks and recover lost weapons through security operations. These efforts have yielded at least 91 major weapons seizures between December 2024 and March 2025.
Waters says that less-organized armed groups especially looted regime bases in southern Syria — Daraa, Quneitra, Suwayda, and parts of the southern Damascus countryside.
In January, the Military Operations Directorate launched operations to secure former military bases and recover looted weapons in Al-Sanamayn and Ghabaghib, Daraa Governorate. One commander claimed that during these operations, his forces seized arms depots containing medium and heavy weapons in such large quantities that it took days to inventory them. Images of weapons seized and surrendered in the area showed large amounts of Soviet-designed ATGMs, Strela-2 MANPADS, and rare Russian-made MRO-A launchers, all likely from regime stockpiles.
The transitional authorities also launched amnesty campaigns to collect weapons from former soldiers and community militias. At least 24 negotiated surrenders took place between December and March. Communities in Hama, Latakia, and Tartus governorates surrendered thousands of weapons following the March uprising. In Tartus, one small town reportedly handed over around 600 small arms to the transitional authorities.
The most commonly recovered items were AK-pattern rifles, ammunition, and hand grenades — mainly F-1, RGD-5, and Type 86P models. Other frequently encountered weapons included anti-tank/personnel launchers (RPG-7s and occasionally RPG-26s or RPG-29s), landmines, mortar rounds, and light and heavy machine guns — typically produced in Russia, China, Iran, or former Soviet bloc states.
Some incidents involved more advanced systems. The transitional authorities recovered ATGM systems in 18 separate incidents, including Soviet-designed Malyutka, Fagot, Konkurs, and Metis models, as well as US-designed TOW launcher components (Iran produces and refurbishes variants of most of these systems). Nine incidents involved MANPADS components, primarily from Soviet Strela-2 systems and, in one case, 9K310 Igla-1 launchers — though full systems have yet to be visually confirmed.
While the exact origins of these weapons are difficult to verify, many are consistent with standard SAA armaments. The manufacturing of some seized weapons, like Golan S-01 anti-material rifles, took place in Syria, uniquely for regime forces. That said, some weapons have been looted from positions abandoned by allied militias like Hezbollah, while others may have been circulating illicitly since before December 2024. Nevertheless, these weapons demonstrate the extent to which arms have proliferated throughout Syria in recent months.
In Lebanon, arms trafficking incidents involving military weapons tripled in the four months following the Assad regime’s collapse compared to the same period before. Lebanese forces reported only 10 relevant arms seizures between August and early December 2024. This number spiked to 32 between Dec. 8 and March 31.
Some of these seizures are unrelated to Syria. Lebanon’s state forces have moved aggressively to reassert territorial control following Hezbollah’s devastating war with Israel in late 2024. Bassel Doueik, a regional geopolitical analyst, credits this shift to Hezbollah’s weakened posture and the appointment of former Lebanese Armed Forces commander Joseph Aoun as president — factors that have emboldened state forces to crack down on illicit arms flows.
Still, many of the recent seizures appear to be directly tied to Syria. While earlier cases were scattered across Lebanon, at least 20 incidents occurred on or near the border with Syria since December. These mainly occurred on well-known smuggling routes like Wadi Khaled, northern Hermel, and the eastern Bekaa Valley. Several incidents also took place along major highways linking border crossings to cities such as Beirut and Tripoli.
Eight cases involved weapons known to have been smuggled directly from Syria — ranging from large-scale shipments by organized syndicates to individuals purchasing arms from Syrian dealers. Over a dozen incidents featured weapons specific to SAA stockpiles, including the Russian 9A-91 rifles, Golan S-01 rifles, Chinese Type 86P grenades, and Iranian M61 mortar rounds.
Back in Syria, the transitional authorities have intercepted multiple arms shipments reportedly bound for Lebanon. In one case in January, security forces in Tartus seized Iranian kamikaze drones, machine guns, a Serbian-made grenade launcher, and assorted rifles, allegedly intended for Hezbollah. One seizure in the Homs countryside in March uncovered Serbian/Yugoslav and Iranian mortar rounds, along with Soviet-style ATGMs.
Other security incidents point to significant arms flows between Syria and Lebanon. In mid-March, fighters from Syria’s transitional forces clashed with alleged Hezbollah-affiliated militias around Hawsh al-Sayyid Ali, a Syrian border town long considered a Hezbollah logistics hub and smuggling corridor for Shia clans in Bekaa. After securing the area, Syrian forces seized caches of Soviet ATGMs, Iranian mortar rounds, and other weapons.
Israel has also struck Syrian weapons storage sites, military bases, and arms smuggling routes spanning the Syria-Lebanon border on at least 16 different occasions since Dec. 8. The Israel military said that some strikes specifically targeted Hezbollah-linked smuggling operations. While such attacks were common before Assad’s fall, their continuation underscores the persistent flow of weapons across the border.
Hezbollah remains a major recipient of trafficked weapons. According to Doueik, the group likely repatriated some of its stockpiles from Syria after the regime’s collapse and still maintains a significant arsenal in Lebanon. Yet it does not operate alone. Prominent Shia clans in Bekaa, namely the Jaafar and Zaiter families, also dominate the cross-border smuggling economy. These clans, some of which supported the Assad regime militarily, operate private militias and run large-scale trafficking operations involving weapons, fuel, drugs, and untaxed goods.
Smaller actors are also active. According to Doueik, arms smuggling tends to be more opportunistic in northern regions like Wadi Khaled and Akkar, where Sunni populations lack strong clan structures. Individual buyers and sellers and small criminal gangs involved in robbery and kidnapping are more prominent in these less organized networks. With both Syria and Lebanon still mired in economic crises, weapons trafficking and other forms of smuggling have become lucrative criminal economies.
In southern Syria, several seizures confirmed reports about the emergence of a domestic market for illicit weapons. The seizures included heavy machine guns, ATGMs, and anti-aircraft weapons, reportedly trafficked from or through Daraa into neighboring Suwayda Governorate, where local armed groups have violently resisted efforts by Syria’s transitional authorities to assert control.
However, in contrast with Lebanon, there is little evidence of significant arms trafficking into Jordan. Despite the proliferation of weapons across the border, the Jordanian authorities reported seizing only a few firearms (often in connection with drug smuggling attempts) up until March 31. According to the local ETANA watchdog, the collapse of the Assad regime and the weakening of Hezbollah have severely disrupted the previously established smuggling networks here.
Waters attributes the limited activity to the fact that the regime itself built the drug and arms smuggling networks along the southern border. In contrast to border areas near Lebanon, where local clans dominate long-standing networks, smuggling on the southern border was largely run by regime agents with little local support. And unlike with Hezbollah in Lebanon, there is no powerful partner in Jordan to facilitate smuggling, he adds, noting that counter-smuggling efforts by the Jordanian authorities have also played a role.
Though this analysis runs through March 31, state forces in Syria and Lebanon have continued to seize significant amounts of weapons almost daily. In Lebanon, troops seized a shipment of modern Russian Metis-M ATGMs and Strela-2 MANPADS components that had apparently been smuggled from Syria in the Bekaa Valley in April. In Syria, transitional forces seized Lebanon-bound Strela-2 MANPADS and Kornet ATGM components in early May.
Recent local reporting has also illuminated market dynamics in Syria. The independent Enab Baladi news website reported that weapons are now cheaper and easier to obtain, with black market prices having more than halved since the Assad regime’s collapse. Many individuals are also selling their weapons as the transitional authorities crack down on illicit firearm ownership.
Waters predicts that as the security environment stabilizes, armed groups will increasingly sell their weapons to smugglers and other armed actors. He notes that economic pressures will be a key driver here, as many of these groups are not receiving salaries from HTS or the Defense Ministry.
This points to a significant and enduring risk that Syria could become a major regional source of illicit small arms. This is already apparent in Lebanon, though the lack of seizures on the border with Jordan suggests that state interventions, local political factors, and relative differences in supply and demand can curtail the outflow of arms.
Syria’s near and distant neighbors can prevent an arms outflow by supporting the transitional authorities’ efforts to consolidate control over Assad’s former weapons. This could include funding gun buyback campaigns, mediating community-based surrenders, or supporting the documentation and destruction of recovered weapons. Reducing the supply of weapons will also foster stability in Syria itself.
To succeed, any response will need to go beyond Syria and support Syria’s neighbors in securing their borders against illicit economies and arms flows. An effective strategy should include a maritime component, such as support for local coast guards or a joint sea patrol mission like Operation Irini in Libya.
A sustained monitoring of arms flows in and outside of Syria can illuminate trafficking risks and opportunities for interventions. Tracking internal developments, as well as arms seizures and surrenders in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, Turkey, Iraq, and even southeastern Europe, would provide governments, international bodies, and the public with a potent and useful intelligence resource. Without concerted monitoring and disarmament interventions, the weapons that drove Syria’s decade of violence will likely fuel crime and conflict elsewhere.
