The fall of the Syrian regime highlighted, in a luxurious ‘villa’ on the border with Lebanon, one of its capitagon laboratories, a highly addictive amphetamine that was trafficked to finance a bankrupt state and which brought bad luck to it.
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, who is partly uncertain and 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, looted and vandalized However, the property, similar to almost all spaces associated with the five-decade dictatorship, but the entire Captagon production line was intact when the rebel military arrived at the site, 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 they accumulate dozens of containerss marked as caffeine and piles of large bags of lactose, 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 eachalready 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 capitagon manufacturing facilities have been discovered in Syria, which have helped to flourish a annual global trade of 10 billion dollars (9,550 million euros) of this highly addictive drug, which was trafficked mainly to neighboring countries in the Arab world.
Among the places used for the industrial scale production of the drug are Mazzeh air baseon 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 a former 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 effects similar to those of amphetamines have made it the so-called “cocaine two poor people” 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 processwhich involves mixing amphetamine derivatives with excipients to form tablets, usually in improvised laboratories, as was the case of the one discovered in al-Dimaas, where government forces abandoned without resistance a checkpoint they maintained near the town, on the highway which 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.
The shipments were disguised in tiressteel cogwheels, industrial paper rolls, sofas or even plastic fruit and sent 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 business is the name of Maher al-Assadformer commander of the Republican Guard and the Fourth Armored Division, who ran a network that included senior regime officials, businessmen and mafia leaders in exchange for their loyalty, and a distribution center in the Alawite stronghold of 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 has also flourished, especially near the Syrian border and in the Bekaa Valley and would be facilitated by the Shiite armed group Hezbollahwho was an ally of Assad.
After the discovery of boxes of fruit meticulously packed 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 is worth an estimated $10 billion, with the annual profit of the al-Assad family deposing the to achieve around 2400 million dollars (2293 million euros).
Although neighboring countries have long tried to ban drug trafficking, their influence over al-Assad was limited. Saudi Arabia 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 his political isolation. In May 2023, the Syria was readmitted to the Arab Leaguefrom where it had been suspended since 2011 due to the brutal repression against the protests that began that year with the Arab Spring and which lasted more than a decade of civil war, committing to combat smuggling, which led to the formation of a regional committee for security coordination.
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 do not intend to pursue the policies of an outlawed state, as well as recover 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 the fighting,” says Abu Hanifa Tajiki, wandering with his mask on under an intense artificial pestilential smell at the al-Dimaas facility, where he arrived a few days ago from the liberated areas of Idlib in northwestern Syria, reporting that facility managers and the previous soldiers who protected the place fled and were the weak links in this story, with their meager salaries 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, some of whom come from groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State, he defends the establishment of ‘sharia’, or law of Islam: “After all, that’s what we’ve 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 hat decorated with the word “anti-terror”.
