The fall of the Syrian regime uncovered one of its capitagon laboratories, a highly addictive amphetamine that was trafficked to finance a bankrupt state and brought bad neighborhood to it, in a luxurious ‘villa’ near the border with Lebanon.
Ownership of the multi-story white stone ‘villa’, an empty swimming pool and jacuzzi in its luxurious interiors, is attributed by the rebel military that deposed President Bashar al-Assad to his brother, Maher, which is partly uncertain and he He would also be the owner of this capitagon factory that was developed in several of its large halls and annexes.
The inhabitants of al-Dimas, a few kilometers from the Masnaa border with Lebanon and less than an hour from Damascus, have since looted and vandalized the property, like almost all spaces associated with the five-decade dictatorship, but the entire The Captagon production line was intact when the rebel military arrived on the scene on their victorious route to Damascus, where similar ones were discovered.
He is a Tajik soldier from the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, HTS) who guides, with a mask on his face, the visit to the elegant complex, starting with a hall with a marble floor and lit by a huge crystal chandelier. , where dozens of containers marked as caffeine and piles of large bags of lactose accumulate, indicating that these were two elements used in the composition of Captagon.
But there are also unidentified chemical components in the various spaces of the factory, surrounded by tall cypress trees, despite their origins in China, India and several European countries, according to the labels on the packaging, and a considerable amount of industrial equipment, including mixing machines, hydraulic presses and forklifts.
In the garage area, there are more bags, containing thousands of empty mothballs, where four Captagon tablets were packed at three dollars each, already in the form in which they reached the consumer. The drug found in al-Dimas was, according to the 26-year-old Tajik soldier, who identifies himself by his military name, Abu Hanifa Tajiki, transported to the Syrian capital in a truck.
Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, several Captagon manufacturing facilities have been discovered in Syria, which has helped to flourish a $10 billion (€9.55 billion) annual global trade in this highly addictive drug, which was mainly trafficked to neighboring countries in the Arab world.
Among the sites used for industrial-scale production of the drug are the Mazzeh air base on the outskirts of Damascus, which was also a political prison, a car trading company in Latakia, in the former Syrian president’s Alawite region. and an old potato chip factory on the outskirts of the capital.
Captagon was developed in Germany in the 1960s as a prescription stimulant for conditions such as narcolepsy. It was later banned due to heart problems and its addictive properties. Its amphetamine-like effects made the so-called “poor man’s cocaine” popular in the Middle East, among elites and fighters, as it increased concentration and reduced fatigue.
al-Assad’s government recognized an opportunity in this cheaply made drug amid Syria’s economic crisis and the heavy sanctions it was subject to.
Captagon is produced through a simple chemical process, which involves mixing amphetamine derivatives with excipients to form tablets, usually in improvised laboratories, as was the case with the one discovered in al-Dimaas, where government forces abandoned a post without resistance control system that they maintained near the town, on the highway that connects to the border with Lebanon, and a Soviet-made T52 armored vehicle, which has since been removed.
Initially, according to the television station Al-Jazeera, the Captagon production chain in Syria was controlled by armed groups, but, as the government recovered territory during the counterattack to the uprising triggered in 2011 in the country, it began to increase management of smuggling routes and manufacturing facilities.
Shipments were disguised in tires, steel cogs, rolls of industrial paper, sofas or even plastic fruit and routed through Europe and Africa to disguise their origin before reaching the Gulf countries, becoming an essential product of Syrian exports.
At the head of this deal is the name of Maher al-Assad, former commander of the Republican Guard and the Fourth Armored Division, who ran a network that included high-ranking regime officials, businessmen and mafia leaders in exchange for their loyalty, and a distribution center from the Alawite stronghold in Latakia, from where the former Syrian President left for Russia on December 8, ironically on the day his brother turned 57, before fleeing to an uncertain part.
His residence in Damascus was looted in the following days by the liberated population, including a large underground bunker. The new authorities emerging from the coalition of rebel groups that deposed the regime no longer allow access to the site, as well as the presidential palace, but leave the capitagon laboratories, whose revenues were also used to feed their repressive machine, visible to all.
The main smuggling routes were Syria’s porous borders with Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, from which it would be distributed throughout the region, especially rich Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
In Lebanon, capitagon trafficking also flourished, especially near the border with Syria and in the Bekaa Valley and would be facilitated by the Shiite armed group Hezbollah, which was an ally of Assad.
After the discovery of meticulously packed fruit boxes with bales of the drug hidden among pomegranates and oranges, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates imposed bans on Lebanese agricultural products. But Captagon has also entered international markets, reaching Southeast Asia and parts of Europe.
According to Caroline Rose, director of the Captagon Trade Project at the New Lines Institute, based in New York, the annual global trade in this drug has an estimated value of 10 billion dollars, with the annual profit of the deposed al-Assad family reaching around 2,400 million dollars (2,293 million euros).
Although neighboring countries have long tried to ban drug trafficking, their influence over al-Assad was limited. Saudi Arabia has imposed strict sanctions for capitagon trafficking and strengthened border security, collaborating with other Gulf states to monitor smuggling routes.
But the Captagon provided Bashar al-Assad with leverage to end political isolation. In May 2023, Syria was readmitted to the Arab League, from where it had been suspended since 2011 due to the brutal repression against protests that began that year with the Arab Spring and which lasted more than a decade of civil war, pledging to combat the smuggling, which led to the formation of a regional security coordination committee.
The collapse of the Syrian regime now raises questions about the future of Captagon trafficking, at a time when the new authorities in Damascus are striving to show the world that they are trustworthy and have no intention of continuing the policies of an outlawed state, as well as recovering a disastrous economy and consolidate the security situation in the country.
“Right now, we have the situation under control, this population has the right to live in peace, without fear of bombings and fighting”, says Abu Hanifa Tajiki, wandering around with his mask under an intense artificial pestilent smell in the al- Dimaas, where he arrived a few days ago from the liberated areas of Idlib, in northwestern Syria, reporting that those responsible for the installations and the previous soldiers who protected the place had fled and were the weak links in this story, with their salaries miserable in a business worth millions.
Having fulfilled his part in the war, the Tajik soldier intends to call his family and settle in Syria, where, like many other fighters, and some groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State, he defends the establishment of ‘sharia’, or law of Islam: “After all, that is what we have worked for all these years, but we have no problem living in peace with people of other religions, as long as they respect ours”, maintains the soldier who is wearing a cap decorated with the word “anti-terror” .
