Inside Syria's Drug Trafficking Empire

Midway through December 2018, Greek authorities detained the cargo ship Noka, which was sailing from the Syrian port of Latakia and headed toward eastern Libya. The commercial cargo was loaded with three million super-strength Captagon pills and six tons of cannabis that had been processed in India and was worth approximately $100 million USD. The shipment served as both the actual and figurative centerpiece of the multibillion-dollar drug trade run by the al-Assad dictatorship, but it is only one example of a larger network of illegal Syrian exports to neighboring nations.

Fenethylline hydrochloride, often known as Captagon, is a medication that was first created in West Germany in the 1960s and is used to treat depression, narcolepsy, and attention deficit disorder. Due to the drug's addictive properties, it was outlawed in the 1980s, but soon after, imitation Captagon pills started to appear in several Middle Eastern nations. In March 2023, Britain and the United States announced sanctions on people suspected of involvement in the captagon trade.

Manufacturing and trafficking of captagon have grown dramatically in recent years in regions governed by the Syrian regime. The regime has used specialized equipment and numerous laboratories to turn war-torn Syria into one of the world's largest drug production facilities. It also boasts ports that are connected to Mediterranean shipping lanes as well as land smuggling routes to Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq, all of which are safeguarded by the regime's security apparatus. The names "narco-state" and "hashish republic" have been used by major media outlets to describe regions ruled by al-Assad's government.

The Syrian drug industry facilitates all stages of the production and smuggling process, including manufacturing the pills, concealing and packaging them in facilities that prepare grains for export, and finally smuggling the pills through networks that sell them in foreign markets, according to research conducted by specialized monitoring centers over the past two years. The beginning point for the transportation of drugs out of Syria is the Latakia Port, which has long been involved in shady missions to transport and export Iranian weapons.

In TV broadcasts around the region, scenes of Jordanian border security personnel foiling attempts to smuggle thousands of tablets from Syria have become regular. In this approach, the Syrian government seems determined to harm its ties with Jordan, which serves as its only land entry point to the Gulf states. This is in spite of the Jordanian government's recent softening of its stance towards Syria, which appeared to signal a willingness to turn a new page in ties, at least on the front of commerce. Damascus' continued pursuit of its illicit activities outside of Jordan presents a problem for the region that calls for increased attention from regional states and their Western allies.

International sanctions on the Syrian regime played a significant impact in depleting the regime's financial resources and increasing the government's desperate need for foreign currency. To avoid economic hardship, Bashar al-Assad opted to fund drug trafficking networks with the help of his relatives, close associates, and military personnel. This action vaulted Syria to the top of the world's drug-exporting countries at record speed.

It is no longer a secret that the Syrian drug trade is run by influential allies of the government, who are in charge of the most minute aspects of producing and exporting Captagon. It is now obvious that the regime's long-standing resistance to curbing drug use in the nation and stopping drug trafficking across the border was the result of a scheme sponsored by influential individuals with close ties to the dictatorship.

Among the organizations regulating the Captagon trade on Syrian soil is Hezbollah. Press sources reveal that some places where Hezbollah has a significant influence, such as the border villages between Lebanon and Syria, play a significant part in smuggling operations. In order to promote its own rapidly growing captagon business, it appears that the Syrian government chose to learn from the expertise Hezbollah has accrued in managing the manufacture and smuggling of pharmaceuticals from the Beqaa Valley in southern Lebanon.

Media outlets' investigations revealed that the Fourth Armored Division of the Syrian Army, an elite division under Maher al-Assad, the president's younger brother and one of Syria's most prominent individuals, oversees a significant portion of the manufacture and distribution inside Syria. Caroline Rose, a senior analyst at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, asserts that "the Syrian government appears to use local alliance structures with other armed groups, such as Hezbollah, for technical and logistical support in Captagon production and trafficking."

As of late, captagon has become Syria's most valued export good and a major source of money for the state, which is unable to revive the economy through licit or legal trade. Drug trafficking offers Syria, which is under harsh American sanctions since 2019, a different stream of cash that helps pay for some of its institutional commitments and funds its ongoing conflict. While the lower-quality Captagon pills are sold by the regime for one USD each inside of Syria, the higher-quality pills are exported to overseas markets where they retail for about $14 apiece.

According to a report from the German magazine Der Spiegel, the al-Assad dictatorship sold drug shipments for a total of almost 5.7 billion USD in 2021. The rising number of Syrian drug exports and the decline in its legal trade activities have made narcotics the country's main source of foreign exchange, according to Syria Report, a business and economics website, which made this observation in 2020. The quantity of seizures made by border guards in nations that stop drug shipments coming from Syria gives a glimpse into the size of the industry, which has grown rapidly in recent years.

However, with border countries on high alert for drug shipments from Syria, the al-Assad regime has been forced to resort to innovative methods to hide and transport the drugs. Captagon pills and cannabis palms have been found hidden in packages of milk, cardboard rolls, and egg cartons. They have also been found buried in shipments of tea, milk, and fresh fruit.