Curse of the Captagon trade
Secret drug labs, mainly in Syria, are churning out death and misery — with the Arab Gulf states their prime target
It is over 10,000 km from Little Rock, Arkansas, to Damascus, Syria. But it was in Suite 630, one of dozens of offices in an unremarkable 18-story building on North University Avenue in Little Rock, that plans were hatched to end Syria’s deadly trade in the mindbending drug Captagon.
In a multimedia Deep Dive investigation launched today, Arab News reveals the scale of the Captagon crisis that is gripping Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East, and the human cost being paid by addicts and their families.
It also reveals the lengths to which the Saudi government is going to not only cut off the flow of the narcotic to the Kingdom, but also to provide treatment for addicts, some of whom are being hooked on the drug by callous dealers while still at school.
Now Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states battling the curse of Captagon are about to be joined in the fight by the US, increasingly concerned about the involvement of Iran-backed terror groups in the deadly drugs trade.
Captagon was one of several brand names for fenethylline, a psychoactive drug created in 1961 by a German pharmaceutical company as a treatment for ADHD and other conditions.
Hailed at first as a miracle drug, Captagon was widely prescribed. But by the 1980s it was banned worldwide, having been found to have multiple side-effects, ranging from the unpleasant to the downright dangerous.
Many users experienced confusion and mood swings, ranging from anxiety to feelings of anger or rage.
Worse, it could induce an indifference to pain and fear — qualities that led to the drug being adopted by Daesh and other terror groups in the Middle East.
But when the drug was banned, criminal gangs discovered Captagon could be easily and cheaply counterfeited.
For the gangs and the Iranbacked militias in Lebanon and Syria — often one and the same — and for the sanctioned Syrian government, a drug that began life as a treatment for children diagnosed with ADHD became a criminal gold mine.
Today, vast quantities of the narcotic are being manufactured in secret labs, mainly in Syria, with the direct involvement of the Assad regime.
From there, via sea, land and air routes, the pills are being smuggled into the Gulf states, with the collaboration of Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups.
The trade is ruining lives across the Arab world, funding terrorism, bankrolling the sanctions-hit regime of President Bashar Assad — and, US Congress members believe, bolstering Iranian meddling in the region.
No country in the Middle East is being spared the curse of Captagon — Jordan, the UAE and other states all have their hands full coping with the flood of drugs — but the number-one target of the smugglers is Saudi Arabia.
Over the past six years, Saudi border guards, K9 dog units, and the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority, working closely with police and the General Directorate of Narcotics Control, have foiled multiple attempts to smuggle the dangerous drug into the Kingdom. In that time, they have seized a total of 600 million pills — almost 120 million in 2019 alone. Although the region has been battling the Captagon menace for the past two decades, the involvement of the Syrian regime, and the threat posed by the trade to the stability of the wider region, is now being recognized by the US government.
US efforts to undermine the regime’s drugs business got underway in December 2021, when a provision requiring the government to develop a plan to end the regime’s Captagon trade was hatched by French Hill, a Republican congressman in Little Rock.
Hill’s staff began to draft what would become known as “the Captagon Act” in his office at 1501 North University Avenue.
Thanks to an alliance of senior Republican and Democratic lawmakers, the provision found its way into the draft of the
National Defense Authorization Act, the annual US national defense package.
One member of the Republican Study Committee’s national security task force told Congress that “the brutal Assad regime is involved in industrial-scale Captagon production and the drug trade is one of the essential means that it uses to fund its war machine, while causing people all across the region and even in Europe to become addicted to illicit drugs.” Wider strategic fears lay behind the US concerns. As a commentary in the National Review put it in December 2021, “not only does widespread Captagon smuggling across the Middle East put money in Assad’s and Hezbollah’s coffers, but it could also serve to destabilize US-aligned countries such as
Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”
Hill, who has repeatedly drawn attention to the Syrian regime’s role in the regional drugs trade, launched the “Countering Assad’s Proliferation, Trafficking, and Garnering of Narcotics (CAPTAGON) Act” on Dec. 15, 2021. The act called on the federal 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 at the launch, Hill said that “narcotic production and trafficking in Syria has turned Syria into a narco-state to fund its crimes against humanity.
“It is important we stop this trafficking and source of illicit finance. If we fail to do so, then the Assad regime will continue to drive the ongoing conflict, provide a lifeline to extremist groups, and permit American adversaries such as Iran to strengthen their engagement there.”
His cross-party collaborator, Democratic Congressmen Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, added that it is “imperative that the US takes a leading role in thwarting narcotics production in Syria so we can continue to pursue a political settlement and permanent resolution to the conflict.” As part of the National Defense Authorization Act, the Captagon Act was signed into law by US President Joe Biden on Dec. 23, along with record funding of $858 billion for the Pentagon.
Now it remains to be seen how much of that enormous budget will be invested in tackling the curse of Captagon.
The secretaries of Defense, State and Treasury, along with the directors of national intelligence and other US agencies, have been given 180 days to present a plan of action to a committee of Congress — and part of that plan must include a strategy to aid and support partner countries, such as Saudi Arabia, that are “receiving or transiting large quantities of Captagon.” For years, Saudi Arabia and its allies in the region have been fighting the battle against Captagon almost singlehandedly. Now, with any luck, the cavalry could soon be coming over the horizon.