The Secretive Supply Chain Sending EU Trucks to Syria

Syria’s civil war is one of the most devastating conflicts of the 21st century. More than half a million people have been killed and about 12 million forced to flee their homes. 

Since the start of the conflict in 2011, the European Union and its member states have imposed some of the world’s heaviest sanctions against Syria, targeting perpetrators of violence, swathes of the economy, and barring the export of certain goods to the country. The bloc has made clear that the goal of these measures is to stop the Assad regime from using violence against its own people.

But sanctions are a tricky business. Enforcement, which is the responsibility of EU countries, can be patchy, the exact rules are often open to interpretation, and loopholes abound. While exporting ordinary road trucks to Syria doesn’t explicitly violate sanctions, images like the one in the Idlib video are not the sort of thing European officials want to see. 

The people selling trucks know this. Ask a dealer in the EU to ship a truck directly to Syria, and you’re all but certain to get turned down.

But that won’t necessarily be the end of the conversation. Some may offer you an alternative route, reporters found.

To supply its war effort, Syria’s government has been heavily dependent on its ally, Russia. But as recently as 2018, videos broadcast by state outlets and shared on social media have shown the Syrian army is getting its hands on new-looking trucks with EU brands such as Mercedes, Scania, Volvo, and Iveco.

The Idlib video shows Scania trucks, including the G460 model, as well as possibly G480 and R440 models, most of them carrying tanks. The video’s commentary says the trucks are being used by the Tiger Forces, an elite Russia-backed unit that has played key roles in high-profile offensives. It was posted by a pro-regime Facebook page in 2021, though the date it was filmed could not be confirmed.

Syria doesn’t publish army procurement information, so it’s not possible to say how or when these specific trucks entered Syria. Some manufacturers outsource parts of their production process, meaning these trucks may not have been assembled in the EU.

But some similar vehicles do appear to be making their way from the EU via an indirect pipeline that passes through neighboring countries which are not subject to the same level of sanctions. Once in these countries, the trucks can be more easily transported to their final destination. 

An undercover reporter conducted a dozen interviews with truck traders, shippers, and customs agents in Germany, Italy, Sweden, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. These intermediaries described in detail how trucks could be shipped from the EU to Syria through countries like Jordan and Lebanon, sometimes by paying bribes and falsifying paperwork along the way.

This circuitous supply chain is similar to routes through Belarus or Central Asia that have funneled goods into Russia since it was sanctioned for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, helping supply the Kremlin’s war machine.  

“Trucks may be non-military instruments but they do transport tanks and artillery,” said Ahmad Hamada, a military analyst and former Syrian army officer. “Such services to the regime represent death for civilians.” 

The Syrian Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.

Traders: Key to the Supply Chain 

Intermediaries such as traders and customs brokers are central to the trade. 

Of the dozen such intermediaries OCCRP interviewed, eight said that shipping directly to Syria was impossible due to trade restrictions and that shipping manifests needed to avoid mentioning the country’s name. 

When an undercover reporter contacted two EU-based traders to say he wanted to send Mercedes and Scania trucks from Sweden to a buyer in Damascus, they offered to help work around trade bans by shipping via Jordan, Lebanon, or the United Arab Emirates.

One of the traders, based in the southern Swedish town of Vimmerby, warned the reporter that Swedish authorities would block the shipment if they learned it was headed to Syria. “There are no boats going to Syria, there is an embargo, it is forbidden,” he said. (Sweden’s Foreign Ministry told OCCRP it was “crucial” that sanctions are adequately implemented but said Swedish authorities do not block shipments bound for Syria.) 

Instead, the trader offered to help ship the trucks via Jordan. Once the vehicles were in the Middle East, they could be moved to free zones — special economic areas not subject to usual customs rules — and from there into Syria, he explained.

The Vimmerby trader suggested shipping the trucks to Jordan’s port of Aqaba on the Red Sea, and from there transporting them to the country’s Zarqa Free Zone east of Amman.

After filling out some paperwork, the trucks could then move north to the Jordanian-Syrian Joint Free Zone, located on the border.

From there, the transfer to Damascus would be straightforward: “We don’t even need to discuss it,” the trader said.

Moving the money was another matter. Since financial sanctions might prevent the buyer in Syria from making direct transfers to Europe, the trader advised that the buyer send money to an exchange house in Syria. The trader could then collect it at a corresponding exchange house in Jordan. "I will receive it, and I will organize everything,” he said.

The other trader, based in Germany, offered to connect the reporter with a Syrian trader based in the UAE who, he said, “may be able to take the trucks to Syria.”

Free Zones

While the nature of economic free zones varies by country, they frequently offer relaxed controls and less monitoring of cargo.

“As soon as you say the word ‘free trade zone,’ every alarm bell should be ringing. I like to call them ‘free to do whatever you like’ zones,” said Tom Keatinge, director of the Center for Finance and Security at the U.K.-based RUSI think tank.

To see how the trade works on the ground, the reporter visited Jordan’s Zarqa free zone in December. The reporter saw about 50 trucks — including Mercedes, Volvo, and Scania models — moving through the zone, which sits in the country's north, some 60 kilometers from the Syrian border. 

A customs officer explained that the trucks came from Jordan and were on their way to Syria. The buyer of the trucks, or what their final use would be, could not be confirmed. 

A broker working out of Syria and Jordan’s Joint Free Zone said he tended to direct goods through Jordan’s Aqaba port. He recommended saying on the paperwork that the trucks were destined for his company, and that a customs broker he knew in Aqaba would be able to clear the vehicles and get them sent to the free zone. 

The operation would take about 10 to 15 days, he said, and cost about $23,000 to handle approximately $100,000 worth of goods. Asked by the reporter if he would have to pay bribes to get the goods into Syria, the agent chuckled. “Yes, that’s mandatory,” he said.

Jordan was not the only route offered. One Syria-based shipping agent offered to help connect the undercover reporter to a company who could receive trucks in Lebanon, and said that from there, “we will do the transit and send them to Syria.” 

A customs agent based in Damascus provided evidence of having brought EU-made trucks into Syria in recent years. The agent shared customs clearance forms showing that a second-hand Mercedes 2011 Actros 1846 LS, manufactured in Germany and priced at $38,260, had been declared to Syrian customs authorities on March 15, 2020. 

Another declaration showed an Iveco 2018 model — made in Spain and priced at $216,696 — was transported to a Syrian free zone in September last year.

Jordanian and Lebanese authorities did not reply to requests for comments. 

The Limits of Sanctions

As the United States and Europe’s appetite for military intervention has waned over the past two decades, governments have leaned increasingly on sanctions. Since 2000, the U.S. government’s use of sanctions has increased ninefold. 

But the growth of sanctions as a foreign policy tool has often complicated enforcement. The laws themselves are also written in ways that leave room for interpretation.

“Sanctions can be quite vague for multiple reasons. Chief amongst them is that the cost of compliance is not borne by the party that imposes them,” said Karam Shaar, a fellow at the New Lines Institute who researches illicit narcotic flows in Lebanon and Syria.

“Governments that impose them have the luxury of writing sanctions in broad terms because they know it’s private institutions and traders and individuals who are caught in these sanctions,” he added. 

Though the EU sanctions on Syria prohibit EU companies and individuals from exporting a range of goods and technology which might be “used for internal repression,” they do not explicitly ban the export of ordinary trucks. The closest article is one that prohibits the export of  “luxury vehicles for the transport of persons on earth, air or sea.” 

A European Commission spokesperson confirmed that sanctions did not ban the export of road trucks and said that the commission coordinates with member states to ensure the bloc’s sanctions “are responsive to any reports emerging on sanctions circumvention or other issues observed during the implementation.” 

Haid Haid, a consulting fellow at the U.K.-based think tank Chatham House, said that while sanctions have been able to limit the Syrian government’s ability to buy certain goods through standard legal routes, “they have not been able to really prevent the regime and networks linked to it from finding ways to […] secure those goods.” 

In order to be effective, “sanctions regimes need to be dynamic, they need to constantly evolve, and they need to respond to information as it emerges,” said Keatinge from the RUSI think tank. He described the case of the trucks as a likely example of “immorality” as opposed to “illegality.”

As a “consensus organization” where decisions are not made by one country alone, the EU has often struggled to keep up momentum on achieving its aims through sanctions, he added. 

“We need to ask ourselves: How come there is this loophole? What are we doing to close the loophole?” he said.

Shaya Laughlin, Lara Dihmis, and Benjamin Spahovic contributed reporting.