US, UK sanctions highlight role of Syrian, Lebanese figures in fueling Captagon addiction crisis

Massive seizures of Captagon, including in Saudi Arabia. (AFP)
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Updated 31 March 2023
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US, UK sanctions highlight role of Syrian, Lebanese figures in fueling Captagon addiction crisis

  • Sanctions imposed on Syrian-linked figures reflect growing international alarm over Captagon trafficking
  • Arab News Deep Dive shed light on Saudi efforts to stop trade blamed for destroying lives, destabilizing region

LONDON: Sanctions recently imposed by US and UK authorities on two cousins of President Bashar Assad and several Syrian and Lebanese figures reflect growing international alarm over their role in manufacturing and trafficking Captagon, estimated to be worth up to $57 billion to the Syrian regime.

Captagon is a highly addictive amphetamine used throughout the Middle East, with 80 percent of the world’s supply produced in Syria. Multibillion-dollar shipments of the drug routinely leave regime strongholds such as the Port of Latakia.

In a recent Deep Dive published in February, Arab News delved into the dark underbelly of the Captagon industry, speaking to recovering addicts, dealers, traffickers, health professionals, and border officials involved in clamping down on the illicit trade.

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“Syrian President Bashar Assad’s family members and associates rely on the illicit drug trade to fund his regime’s violent oppression and commission of abuses against the Syrian people,” Vedant Patel, the State Department’s deputy spokesman, said on Tuesday.

“The individuals and entities being designated today have enabled the Syrian regime to continue carrying out abuses against the Syrian people by providing funds to the regime derived from trade in illicit drugs.

“Captagon trafficking by the Assad regime, Hezbollah and their affiliates poses a significant threat to stability, public health and rule of law in the region.”




Captagon is a highly addictive amphetamine used throughout the Middle East. (AFP)

Trade in the drug is a financial lifeline for the Assad regime during 12 years of civil war, sanctions and diplomatic isolation. According to UK authorities, the business is worth approximately three times the combined trade of the Mexican cocaine cartels.

The Assad regime, Lebanese militia Hezbollah, and other Iranian-backed groups in the region are all known to facilitate the Captagon industry, and in doing so fuel regional instability while creating a growing addiction crisis.

American and British authorities announced the new sanctions on March 28, targeting two of Assad’s cousins, Samer Kamal Assad and Wassem Badi Assad, over their role in the drug trade.

According to the US Treasury, Samer Kamal Assad owns a factory in the coastal city of Latakia that produced 84 million Captagon pills in 2020 alone.

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“Syria has become a global leader in the production of highly addictive Captagon, much of which is trafficked through Lebanon,” Andrea Gacki, the senior Treasury official handling sanctions, said in a statement.

“With our allies, we will hold accountable those who support Bashar Assad’s regime with illicit drug revenue and other financial means that enable the regime’s continued repression of the Syrian people.”

The list includes senior regime officials facilitating the trade, to the manufacturers of the drug, and key Hezbollah associates responsible for trafficking it across the Middle East.

Others targeted in the sanctions include Nouh Zaitar, Lebanon’s most famous drug lord who is on the run from authorities, and Hassan Dekko, a Lebanese-Syrian drug kingpin with high-level connections in both countries.

Under the US Treasury action, the US will block any assets on its soil held by the alleged drug traffickers and will make transactions with them a crime. The sanctions also constitute an asset freeze and UK travel ban on the individuals concerned.




Seizures of Captagon have been traced to the Assad regime, with Maher Assad, left, playing a key role in production and smuggling of the drug. (AFP)

“The Assad regime is using the profits from the Captagon trade to continue their campaign of terror on the Syrian people,” Lord Tariq Ahmad, the UK minister of state for the Middle East, said in a statement.

“The UK and US will continue to hold the regime to account for brutally repressing the Syrian people and fueling instability across the Middle East.”

Recognizable by the distinctive twin half-moons logo, which gives the drug its Arabic street name, “Abu Hilalain,” “Father of the Two Crescents,” the pills are easy to make, readily available and relatively cheap to buy.

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In the past six years, Saudi authorities have seized a total of 600 million Captagon pills at the country’s borders, including more in the first quarter of 2021 than in the whole of the previous two years.

Almost 120 million pills were seized in 2021, and in August 2022 alone the authorities intercepted a record single haul of 45 million pills.

One of the largest recent hauls was in October, when almost 4 million pills were discovered in a shipment of bell peppers in Riyadh, leading to the arrest of five suspects, in the capital and Jeddah.

Intercepting the drugs at the border is only half the battle against Captagon, which is also being fought by medical professionals at dedicated treatment centers across Saudi Arabia. Thankfully, addicts in Saudi Arabia have the opportunity to seize the lifeline offered by organizations such as the Kafa Society.

INNUMBERS

• $57bn Estimated value of the Captagon trade to the Bashar Assad regime.

• 80% Proportion of the world’s supply of Captagon produced in Syria.

• 5%-10% Approximate amount of Captagon intercepted by Gulf authorities.

Many young people turn to Captagon to help keep them awake during intense periods of study and exams or to hold down jobs with long or antisocial working hours.

Once addicted, some users will turn to street crime in order to feed their habit, or treat it as a gateway to harder substances. In the process, the addiction can destroy relationships, careers and academic potential, and can lead to arrest, hospitalization and even death.

Captagon has been found to cause confusion and mood swings, ranging from anxiety and extreme depression to impatience, irritability and feelings of anger or rage.

Even more worryingly, it also endows some users with an indifference to pain and fear and a dangerous sense of invincibility — qualities that have reportedly led to the drug being adopted by the foot soldiers of Daesh and other terror groups in the region.




Maher Assad has been affiliated with production and smuggling efforts in his role as commander of the Fourth Armored Division, Caroline Rose told Arab News. (AFP)

In 1981, amid growing evidence of widespread addiction and misuse, including its use as a performance-enhancing drug in sports such as cycling and soccer, Captagon was banned by the US Food and Drug Administration.

In 1986, Captagon’s legal run finally came to an end when the World Health Organization listed fenethylline as a controlled substance under the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, to which Saudi Arabia has been a signatory since 1975.

Since then, the drug has not been produced, sold or prescribed legally anywhere in the world. But in the shadows, criminal gangs had spotted a profitable opportunity and counterfeit versions of Captagon soon began to appear in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Today, the vast majority of the tens of millions of pills flooding the Arabian Peninsula every year are manufactured in Syria with the active involvement of the Assad regime.

According to a report published in April 2022 by Washington think tank the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, war-torn Syria has become “the hub for industrial-sized production.”

It adds that “elements of the Syrian government are key drivers of the Captagon trade, with ministerial-level complicity in production and smuggling, using the trade as a means for political and economic survival amid international sanctions.”

The government “appears to use local alliance structures with other armed groups, such as Hezbollah, for technical and logistical support in Captagon production and trafficking.”




80 percent of the world’s Captagon supply produced in Syria. (AFP)

Caroline Rose, a senior analyst at New Lines, told Arab News there was no doubt that “Captagon is being produced and trafficked by an array of individuals that are very close to the Assad regime, some of them cousins and relatives of regime members.”

Most notable among them, she said, was “Bashar Assad’s brother, Maher, who has been affiliated with production and smuggling efforts in his role as commander of the Fourth Armored Division.”

This military unit has been associated with a diverse range of economic activities linked to Syria’s wartime economy, including the collection of levies from traders and smugglers at checkpoints set up at international border crossings under regime control.

On Sept. 20, 2022, the Syrian regime’s role in the drug trade was officially recognized when the US House of Representatives passed H.R. 6265, the “Countering Assad’s Proliferation Trafficking and Garnering of Narcotics (CAPTAGON) Act.”

The Act requires the US government “to develop an interagency strategy to disrupt and dismantle narcotics production and trafficking and affiliated networks linked to the Bashar Assad regime in Syria.”

Speaking on the House floor in support of the Bill, Representative French Hill said that “in addition to regularly committing war crimes against his own people, the Assad regime in Syria is now becoming a narco-state.”

Captagon, he added, “has already reached Europe and it is only a matter of time until it reaches our shores.”

 

 

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Palestinian official says Israeli forces killed West Bank teen with US citizenship

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Palestinian official says Israeli forces killed West Bank teen with US citizenship

  • Settler violence in the West Bank, including incursions into occupied territory and raids on Bedouin villages and encampments, has intensified since the Gaza war began in October 2023

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: A Palestinian official told AFP that Israeli forces shot dead a teenager holding US citizenship in the occupied West Bank Sunday, while the Israeli military said it had killed a “terrorist” who threw rocks at cars.
Omar Muhammad Saadeh Rabee, a 14-year-old “who was killed in Turmus Ayya, held US citizenship,” the town’s mayor, Lafi Shalabi, told AFP.
The Israeli military said that during “counter-terrorism activity” in Turmus Ayya, “soldiers identified three terrorists who hurled rocks toward the highway, thus endangering civilians driving.”
“The soldiers opened fire toward the terrorists who were endangering civilians, eliminating one terrorist and hitting two additional terrorists,” a military statement added.
The Palestinian health ministry said one person was in critical condition and another suffered minor injuries in the same incident.
Shalabi said one of the wounded also had US citizenship. And Turmus Ayya, northest of the main West Bank city of Ramallah, is known for having many dual US-Palestinian citizens.
The Palestine Red Crescent said its teams had taken the body of the deceased boy to a hospital. It also reported the injuries of two boys shot in the lower abdomen and thigh respectively, during “clashes” in Turmus Ayya.
One of the two, 14-year-old Abdul Rahman Shehadeh, told AFP he was shot by a soldier while collecting fruit near the town.
The second, who was shot in the abdomen, was identified as 14-year-old Ayoub Asaad by his father Ahed Asaad. He confirmed that the boy had a US passport.
Ahed Assad said that an ambulance that took his wounded son to hospital was stopped by soldiers.
“We were stopped at a military checkpoint at the village entrance, and a soldier told me that he was the one who shot the three boys,” he told AFP.
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign affairs ministry denounced the Israeli forces’ “use of live fire against three children.”
“Israel’s continued impunity as an illegal occupying power encourages it to commit further crimes,” it added.
Violence has soared in the West Bank since the Gaza war started on October 7, 2023.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 918 Palestinians, including militants, in the West Bank since then, according to Palestinian health ministry figures.
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Israel has occupied the West Bank, home to about three million Palestinians, since 1967.
 

 


Hamas fires rockets at Israeli cities, Israel issues evacuation orders in Gaza

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Hamas fires rockets at Israeli cities, Israel issues evacuation orders in Gaza

  • Israel’s Channel 12 television said at least 12 lightly injured people have been treated as a result of the rocket firing from Gaza, quoting officials at the Bazilai Hospital in Ashkelon

JERUSALEM/CAIRO: Palestinian militant group Hamas said it fired a barrage of rockets at cities in Israel’s south on Sunday in response to Israeli “massacres” of civilians in Gaza.
Israel’s military said about 10 projectiles were fired, but most were successfully intercepted. Israel’s Channel 12 reported a direct hit in the southern city of Ashkelon.
Israeli emergency services said they were treating one person for shrapnel injuries, and teams were en route to locations of fallen rockets. Smashed car windows and debris lay strewn on a city street, videos disseminated by Israeli emergency services showed.
Meanwhile, Gaza local health authorities said Israeli military strikes killed at least 39 people across the Gaza Strip on Sunday.
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Later, it said it struck the rocket launcher from which projectiles were launched earlier from the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on a flight to Washington for a meeting with US President Donald Trump, was briefed on the rocket attack by his Defense Minister, Israel Katz.
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Israel’s Channel 12 television said at least 12 lightly injured people have been treated as a result of the rocket firing from Gaza, quoting officials at the Bazilai Hospital in Ashkelon.
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Syria’s president to visit Turkiye and UAE next week

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Syria’s president to visit Turkiye and UAE next week

  • Sharaa and other members of the new Syrian leadership have been working to strengthen ties with both Arab and Western leaders following the fall of Bashar Assad in a lightning offensive in December, led by Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham

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Sharaa, who previously visited Turkiye in February, will make the UAE his second Gulf destination after traveling to
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He and other members of the new Syrian leadership have been working to strengthen ties with both Arab and Western leaders following the fall of Bashar Assad in a lightning offensive in December, led by Sharaa’s Sunni Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.
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Moroccans protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza and take aim at Trump

Updated 55 min 58 sec ago
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Moroccans protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza and take aim at Trump

  • Moroccan authorities tolerate most protests, but have arrested some activists who have rallied in front of businesses or foreign embassies or implicated the monarchy in their complaints
  • More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed as part of Israel’s offensive, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t say whether those killed are civilians or combatants

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In the largest protest Morocco has seen in months, demonstrators denounced Israel, the United States and their own government. Some stepped on Israeli flags, held banners showing slain Hamas leaders and waved posters juxtaposing Trump alongside displaced Palestinians fleeing their homes.
Organizers condemned Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed since Israel renewed air and ground strikes last month, aimed at pressuring Hamas to release remaining hostages.

Women lift a banner during a national march in support of Palestinians and against Morocco's normalisation of ties with Israel, in the capital Rabat on April 6, 2025. (AFP)

Such protests have erupted across the Middle East and North Africa, where leaders typically worry about demonstrations undermining domestic stability. Pro-Palestinian rallies were also staged this weekend in the capitals of Tunisia and Yemen as well as in Morocco’s most populous city Casablanca.
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Sudan activists sound alarm on ‘catastrophic’ situation in besieged Darfur city

Updated 06 April 2025
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Sudan activists sound alarm on ‘catastrophic’ situation in besieged Darfur city

  • According to UN estimates, around two million people face extreme food insecurity in North Darfur state, with 320,000 already suffering famine conditions

KHARTOUM: Civilians trapped in Sudan’s El-Fasher city are facing “catastrophic” conditions, activists warned on Sunday, with their situation rapidly deteriorating amid a months-long paramilitary siege.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have taken most of the vast Darfur region in their war against the regular army since April 2023, but El-Fasher in North Darfur remains the only regional state capital the RSF has not conquered.
A local advocacy group, the Darfur General Coordination of Camps for the Displaced and Refugees, said in a statement that residents “bear the brunt of artillery shelling” and live “with the sounds of aircraft and their terrifying and deadly missiles, in addition to the daily suffering of hunger, disease and drought.”
Life in El-Fasher and other areas of Darfur “has come to a complete standstill,” the group said, with no food at markets and a “complete halt” in humanitarian aid.
There was a sharp rise in prices of basic commodities and “a severe shortage in cash,” it added, warning of an “unprecedented and catastrophic deterioration” in already dire conditions in and around El-Fasher.
The RSF-aligned armed group Sudan Liberation Army called on Saturday for civilians in El-Fasher and the nearby displacement camps of Abu Shouk and Zamzan to leave, warning of an “escalation of military operations.”
Another RSF ally, the Gathering of Sudan Liberation Forces, said it was ready to “provide safe corridors” for residents to leave and head to “liberated areas” under paramilitary control.
In late March, the RSF announced its fighters had seized Al-Malha, which lies at the foot of a mountainous region 200 kilometers (124 miles) northeast of El-Fasher.
Al-Malha is one of the northernmost towns in the vast desert region between Sudan and Libya, where the RSF’s critical resupply lines have come under increasing attack in recent months by army-allied groups.
The war has created what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst hunger and displacement crises. More than 12 million people have been uprooted, tens of thousands killed and a UN-backed assessment declared famine in parts of the country.
According to UN estimates, around two million people face extreme food insecurity in North Darfur state, with 320,000 already suffering famine conditions.
Zamzam is one of three displacement camps around El-Fasher hit by famine, which a UN-backed assessment says is expected to spread to five more areas including the state capital itself by May.