A UN-Run Refugee Camp in JordanJamal Halaby and Dale Gavlak report for the Associated Press:
In an isolated stretch of Jordanian desert, a heavily guarded, secret compound houses 1,200 senior police and army officers who defected from nearby Syria.
The men live in trailers with fans but no air conditioning, surrounded by barbed wire, and they pass their days browsing the Internet and watching TV for news of Syria's civil war, longing to join the fight --- but they are largely unable to leave.
The Jordanian military runs the camp near a site formerly used by the U.S. to train some its forces for the war in Iraq, and the defectors are debriefed by intelligence agents. Access to them is tightly restricted for their own protection. They are even separated from their families, who live outside the camp near the northern border city of Mafraq but can get special police permits to visit.
The defectors in the camp are allowed to communicate with the rebel Free Syrian Army in Jordan and abroad, both in person and through telephone and Internet communications, but do not have what is considered valuable intelligence, according to Jordanian security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to make press statements.
The facility is a sign of Jordan's growing role as a quiet supporter of Syria's opposition. But at the same time, Jordan wants to avoid aggravating tensions with its more powerful northern neighbor, fearing that President Bashar Assad may remain in power.
There are more than 160,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan, and their number is increasing by the thousands every day. About 8,000 live in a newly set up camp on the border, while the rest are scattered across Jordan.
Maintaining control over the refugees poses a security threat to the small, tightly controlled kingdom. Jordanian security officials and refugees have said there were pro-Assad "sleeper cells" in Jordan that could act against the refugees.
Jordan has rejected several requests by the Assad government for the extradition of the defectors and has allowed entry to hundreds of Syrian rebels who move freely around the country. It also has helped the refugees by giving them medical treatment.