Małgorzata Iwanicka

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the country has been struggling with production and export of illicit drugs, including captagon. A small, white pill with two embossed crescents was initially created in the 1980s as an alternative to amphetamine. After its addictive properties were discovered, captagon was banned in the Western world; however, it continued to flourish on the Middle Eastern black market, mostly in Saudi Arabia. Nowadays, it is commonly used as a recreational drug because it boosts energy and allows one to stay up for long periods of time. Those features made it also popular among soldiers who fought in the civil war and needed to enhance their courage. Now, when the military conflict is finally drawing to a close, captagon poses yet another threat to the emerging society.

The birth of a new narcostate in the Middle East is a matter of grave concern not only for the locals, but also for many other countries across the globe. Only in Italy, 84 million pills were captured by the officials who found them in massive rolls of paper. In total, 250 million captagon pills were seized by officers across the globe in 2021. In comparison, in 2017, this number was 18 times smaller, with the main export destinations being Kuwait and other nearby states. Captagon is paving its way to the global markets in packages of tea and milk, transports of oranges and pomegranates, or fake-bottoms of ship containers. The question arises: how did it all happen?

The production of captagon had started already during the decade of the civil war when the country’s economy lay in ruins. Members of the political and military elite, including people from President Bashar al-Assad’s closest surrounding, looked for alternative ways to earn money and circumvent the international sanctions. The abandoned villages and closed pharmaceutical factories proved to be the perfect places for synthesis of the drug. Since other branches of the economy were destroyed, many people invested in  the export of captagon which quickly became the highest source of Syrian income. There was little room for foreign intervention and negotiations with the government as it was the government itself who was in charge of the whole business. Today, most of the captagon labs are state-controlled and under constant military protection of Ghassan Bilal’s Fourth Division. The pills are carefully hidden among other export products and sent on the smuggling routes, leading to Jordan and Lebanon or directly to the country’s biggest Mediterranean port of Latakia. The drug is trafficked mostly to other Arab states where it is used both by the Saudi royal family and by poorer people who use it as a cocaine substitute. Apart from captagon, Syria’s drug industry produces and exports substantial amounts of hashish and crystal meth. 

The availability and low market price of captagon attract many young people in Syria. For one dollar per pill, they are able to escape reality and mitigate the effects of conflict trauma. Nonetheless, if the number of drug-users continues to rise, there might be no way to reverse the damage done by the illicit drugs in Syria. Even though the money from trafficking comes back to the country, it goes mostly into the pockets of people involved in the business. Therefore, as long as the Syrian government is part of the cartel, all efforts to restore the rule of law or a balanced economy will be futile.