External Contribution: The Captagon Trade After the Downfall of Assad

The historical departure of the Assad regime this past December marks many “ends” in Syria. It also marks the end of Syria’s tenure as a narco-state, where high-level regime sponsorship over industrial-scale production and trafficking of an illicit stimulant known as “captagon” was used as a political and economic tool for the former regime. However, while the days of state-level involvement in the drug trade have ended in Syria—with massive repercussions for supply in the illicit market—the captagon industry is by no means over. It is simply entering into a different chapter.

After opposition forces entered Damascus and dealt the final blow to Assad’s hold on power, it was only a matter of days for local residents and opposition forces to identify captagon laboratories and storage facilities that were either directly or indirectly managed by Assad family members and regime cronies. A combination of the strong scent of synthetic chemicals, lingering suspicions, and local resident tip-offs led Syrians to first expose a major trafficking node in Latakia, where a distant relative of ousted President Bashar al-Assad, Munther al-Assad, trafficked captagon from his Syria Car Trading Company. Local residents found white tablets with the traditional two-crescent moon logo in trunks in vehicles parked both inside and outside the facility—many of which were thrown out into the streets and into the drains. Then came thousands of captagon pills identified at Mazzeh Military Airport, home to the Military Intelligence Division and a frequently-used private airport for the Assad family. Next came a facility in Douma: a former potato chip factory that had been transformed by close regime affiliate, politician, and businessman Amer Khiti and his siblings, under the auspices of Bashar al-Assad’s brother and commander of the Fourth Armored Division, Maher al-Assad. The Douma facility encompassed industrial-scale cooking and professional laboratory equipment that most definitely served as one of the largest manufacturing sites in regime-held areas, with authorities identifying 2.5 to 2.7 million pills on site. A private villa in Yafur, just along the highway connecting Damascus and Beirut, was then found to contain another impressive industrial-scale laboratory believed to be linked to the regime.

The seized sites will play a significant role in suppressing captagon flows within illicit markets. The regime likely tampered with the distribution of captagon this previous year, seeking normalization with its regional counterparts and to achieve a “step-on-the-hose” effect by cosmetically increasing pill prices—a finding that will be explored for an upcoming report at the New Lines Institute Captagon Trade Project later this month.

The laboratory busts are a nail in the coffin for industrial-scale production in the near term. It will take criminal syndicates—particuarly exiled regime affiliates—months or even years to regroup, acquire the professional equipment, and establish the necessary relationships to produce captagon at the industrial scale that the Syrian regime and its affiliates had in Syria.

Since these discoveries, the new Caretaker Government (CG) has played a role in incinerating pills in the streets, deploying HTS forces to guard seized facilities and open them up to journalists, and exposing the regime’s close involvement in the trade. While the CG has not presented any new counter-narcotics strategy, let alone a ministerial position for Syria’s Anti-Narcotics Directorate, it has made a series of hints at a new posture. HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly Abu Mohammad al-Jolani) stated that he sought to “cleanse” Syria of its role as a production and trafficking hub for captagon in his victory speech at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. CG Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani raised counter-narcotics coordination as an area of collaboration with Syrian neighbors like Jordan, entering Syria into a joint security committee with Jordan for counter-illicit and counter-terrorism issues. Al-Shibani sought to convey a strong message that the new government is turning a page on captagon: “When it comes to captagon and drug smuggling, we promise it is over and won’t return. We are ready to cooperate on this extensively.”

It’s becoming clear that HTS and its CG will seek to prioritize a crackdown on industrial-scale captagon production and trafficking within Syria. And following the end of the transitional government on March 1st, it’s likely that Damascus will seek to conduct additional operations against suspected, large-scale manufacturing sites, trafficking notes, and smuggling outposts. However, the new government and HTS forces will likely encounter greater difficulty cornering smaller-scale, more mobile laboratories and trafficking networks—which operate with greater interdiction resiliency—that have moved across porous regions like the Qalamoun Mountain range along the Syrian–Lebanese border or the Qaim Highway along Syria’s border with Iraq. Therefore, it’s important to interpret the signalling of Syria’s new government as being “tough” on drugs as something that will have two consequential effects.

First, criminal actors will perceive Syria as less conducive to illicit activity, creating a spillover effect into border areas, neighboring countries that are either closer to destination markets in the Gulf or who lack effective law and order, political will, and capacity to disrupt captagon production and trafficking.

Second, the sudden drop in industrial-scale production in Syria—something that will create a supply shortage and likely price hike—will be seen as an opportunity for new criminal actors to take up captagon as a business opportunity. It’s therefore expected that the trade will become more fragmented, but ultimately more complex to monitor and counter, as new criminal syndicates evolve out of the ashes of the Assad regime’s narco-state, shifting geographically to set up smaller-scale production and trafficking operations in countries like Iraq, Türkiye, Kuwait, Libya, and Lebanon.

Perhaps of most concern, the shortage of captagon on the market will encourage criminal actors to turn to a more harmful, lethal substitute: crystal methamphetamine. Like captagon, methamphetamine is an amphetamine-type stimulant, with similar effects and a similar production process that shares many precursor materials and equipment, but is much more addictive and dangerous for users. Crystal meth in particular—commonly referred to as “shabo” or “shabu” in the region—has a greater potency-to-weight ratio than captagon and can therefore be easily trafficked across the region with reduced risk of interdiction. It’s possible that in the wake of reduced captagon circulation and higher pill prices, due to a combination of reduced supply in 2024 and the bust of major regime-operated laboratories in December, criminal actors will attempt to satisfy sustained demand levels with the next available alternative—meth.

It’s clear that while the regime’s fall brought to a close Syria’s tenure as a narco-state, the trade of captagon and amphetamine-type stimulants in the region is far from over. Such a tectonic shift in Syria, brought on by a lightning opposition offensive, will fragment Syria’s criminal landscape and create a much more complex, diversified captagon industry that will evolve to meet continued demand but be harder to track.