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Agence France-Presse

The dramatic collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime has thrown light into the dark corners of his rule, including the industrial-scale export of the banned drug Captagon.
Victorious Islamist-led fighters have seized military bases and distribution hubs for the amphetamine-type stimulant, which has flooded the black market across the Middle East.
Led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, the rebels say they found a vast haul of drugs and vowed to destroy them.
This week, HTS fighters allowed Agence France-Presse journalists into a warehouse at a quarry on the outskirts of Damascus, where Captagon pills were concealed inside electrical components for export.

“After we entered and did a sweep, and we found that this is a factory for Maher al-Assad and his partner Amer Khiti,” said black-masked fighter Abu Malek al-Shami.
Maher al-Assad was a military commander and the deposed strongman’s brother, now presumed on the run. He is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative Captagon trade.
Syrian politician Khiti was placed under sanction in 2023 by the British government, which said he “controls multiple businesses in Syria which facilitate the production and smuggling of drugs”.
In a cavernous garage beneath the warehouse and loading bays, thousands of dusty beige Captagon pills were packed into the copper coils of brand new household voltage stabilisers.
“We found a large number of devices that were stuffed with packages of Captagon pills meant to be smuggled out of the country. It’s a huge quantity. It’s impossible to tell,” Shami said.
Above, in the warehouse, crates of cardboard boxes stood ready to allow the traffickers to disguise their cargo as pallet-loads of standard goods, alongside sacks and sacks of caustic soda.

Caustic soda, or sodium hydroxide, is a key ingredient in the production of methamphetamine, another stimulant.
Captagon, the trademark name for the synthetic stimulant fenethylline, was first produced in the 1960s to treat hyperactivity, narcolepsy and depression, but had been banned in most countries by the 1980s for being too addictive.
The drug is cheap and simple to produce, using ingredients that are easy and often legal to obtain.
Assad fell at the weekend to a lightning HTS offensive, but the revenue from selling Captagon propped up Assad’s government throughout Syria’s 13 years of civil war.
Captagon turned Syria into the world’s largest narco state. It became by far Syria’s biggest export, dwarfing all its legal exports put together, according to estimates drawn from official data by Agence France-Presse during a 2022 investigation.
Hundreds of millions of pills have been smuggled over the years into Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries, where the drug is used recreationally and by people with physically demanding jobs to keep them alert.

Experts – like the author of a July report from the Carnegie Middle East Center – also believe that Assad used the threat of drug-fuelled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
Captagon fuelled an epidemic of drug abuse in wealthy Gulf states, even as Assad sought ways to end his diplomatic isolation among his peers, wrote Carnegie scholar Hesham Alghannam.
Assad, he wrote: “leveraged Captagon trafficking as a means of exerting pressure on the Gulf states, notably Saudi Arabia, to reintegrate Syria into the Arab world”, which it did in 2023 when it rejoined the Arab League bloc.
The caustic soda at the warehouse, in the Damascus suburbs, was supplied from Saudi Arabia, according to labelling on the sacks.
The warehouse haul was massive, but smaller and still impressive stashes of Captagon have also turned up in military facilities associated with units under Maher Assad’s command.
Journalists from Agence France-Presse this week found a bonfire of Captagon pills on the grounds of the Mazzeh airbase, now in the hands of HTS fighters who descended on the capital Damascus from the north.




Behind the smouldering heap, in a ransacked air force building, more Captagon lay alongside other illicit exports, including off-brand Viagra impotence remedies and poorly-forged US$100 bills.
“As we entered the area we found a huge quantity of Captagon. So we destroyed it and burned it. It’s a huge amount, brother,” said an HTS fighter using the nom de guerre “Khattab”.
“We destroyed and burned it because it’s harmful to people. It harms nature and people and humans.”
Khattab also stressed that HTS, which has formed a transitional government to replace the collapsed administration, does not want to harm its neighbours by exporting the drug – a trade worth billions of dollars.


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Middle East

Syrian rebels expose ousted Assad regime’s drug trade, fuelled by Captagon

Captagon pills found at a drug manufacturing facility on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. Photo: AFP

Syrian rebel fighters inspect electrical storage components that were used to hide pills of Captagon. Photo: AFP

Syrian rebel fighters inspect sacks marked to contain ‘Saudi-made’ flakes of caustic soda at a drug manufacturing facility. Photo: AFP

A bonfire of Captagon pills at Mazzeh airbase. Photo: AFP

Syria’s infamous Sednaya prison was a ‘slaughterhouse’, ex-inmates say

A man shows two ropes tied in the shape of nooses, found in the infamous Sednaya military prison. Photo: AP

The Sednaya prison complex in Damascus. Photo: AFP

A man tries to break the lock of a cell. Photo: AP

Syrian White Helmets and experts search for potential hidden basements. Photo: AFP

Isis comeback? Syria power vacuum marks opportunity for jihadists

Portraits of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are dumped in a skip in the Damascus suburb of Daraya. Photo: AFP

Isis militants in Tel Abyad, northeast Syria in 2015. File photo: Militant website via AP

Women and children at the Kurdish-run al-Hol camp in Syria, which holds relatives of Isis fighters, in 2022. File photo: AFP

Syria’s new transitional prime minister calls for ‘stability and calm’ amid regime change

A man walks on a poster of Bashar al-Assad in downtown Damascus, Syria. Photo: Reuters

Syria’s new transitional prime minister Mohammad al-Bashir chairing a meeting of the new cabinet in Damascus. Photo: SANA via AFP 

People gathering at the Sednaya prison in Damascus. Photo: AFP

Rebel fighters patrol a street in Damascus. Photo: AFP

Syrian naval ships destroyed during an Israeli attack on the port city of Latakia. Photo: AFP

News

World

Syria was the world’s leading trafficker of Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine, during the country’s long war


Syria was the world’s leading trafficker of Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine, during the country’s long war.
