How Syria became another narco-state
There is a drug war brewing in the Middle East, and Syria is at its
center. The country has been destroyed by its eleven-year civil war, and
in the ruins of what was once a prosperous country, an entirely
different economy now takes shape. It’s an economy of poverty and
privation, where food and energy prices are perpetually high, and
supplies of basic commodities are uncertain.
The regime of Bashar al-Assad, now unlikely to be overthrown, has become
the Middle East’s biggest moocher — a rent-seeking entity that begs for
“reconstruction” funds from nearby monarchies to keep its own corrupt
machinery in operation.
Wartime brings its own economic calculations. As old authority
disintegrates and civil society buckles, what was once illegal and
punished becomes lucrative and practical. In war, the “dark” or illegal
economy soon vacuums up labor and capital. In Syria, this included the
widespread manufacture and selling of illegal drugs, including hashish
and, most notably, an amphetamine commonly called Captagon.
Captagon is a cheap stimulant and has the same attractions as other
recreational drugs, with some extras. It allows many in war to escape
the unhappy present and the requirements of conscious participation in
miserable existence.
And on the battlefield, the drug makes fighters alert on dreary watches;
it gives them false courage; it stops them from feeling the most
debilitating effects of pain; and it is rumored to keep drugged soldiers fighting on after receiving ultimately un-survivable wounds.
Captagon has obvious downsides. It is addictive and addiction does lasting physical and neurological damage; and it can kill by overdose. Its ramshackle and criminal manufacture means the quality of drugs supplied is uncertain and frequently dangerous.
As several recent reports document, the production of this drug has
changed during the course of the war. Where once, as Caroline Rose and
Alexander Söderholm document
in a major recent study, production was concentrated, small-scale, and
in rebel areas, now the drug is manufactured in industrial quantities in
government territory, with the increasingly overt approval of the
regime.
With Syria’s legitimate primary and secondary industries still in states
of disarray and collapse, Captagon has become a serious export. Allying
with criminal networks across the region, Syria exports Captagon in
creative ways, and at an eye-popping scale.
Foreign jurisdictions routinely seize millions of pills — sometimes hidden in crates of fruit,
or run directly across borders at high speed. The Jordanian military,
which this year alone has seized 16 million pills, is increasingly open
on the subject of its growing war with the smugglers. It advertises its
new policy: shooting to kill on sight.
The vast majority of these drugs are neither spotted nor seized. They
simply cannot be, given the growing scale and seriousness of the drug
economy emanating from Syria.
In trying to explain their confiscations, foreign countries are
sometimes at a loss. The problems of black markets and the illicit
smuggling of unregulated substances are real enough, as are the clear
links to international organized crime.
But when pressed on seizures, some local authorities defer to judgements
that are out of date. When Italy seized millions of tablets in 2020,
its police maintained, in the face of little evidence, that the shipment
was intended to finance the Islamic State (ISIS).
This is unlikely to be true. Suhail al-Ghazi, writing
for the Turkish Center for Middle Eastern Studies (ORSAM), notes that
the majority of Syria’s Captagon production rests with Hezbollah and the
Syrian regime, which sell drugs through long-standing narcotics trafficking operations dating back at least to the 2006 war.
But these other manufacturers and beneficiaries are hardly better than a
desiccated Islamic State. The ancillaries of their drug smuggling are
no less brutal.
Their markets are in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Jordan’s military happens to be in between Syria and these markets.
Syria’s emergence as a narco-state has broad implications. The drugs
themselves are social and political menaces for Syria’s many neighbors.
But so is the infrastructure they require and reward. A drug trade
produces drug smugglers and drug gangs.
It makes a drug gang out of what was once a government. Growing out of a
pre-existing war, these gangs arm themselves and fight. They fight each
other, and anyone representing law.
Rose and Söderholm document numerous instances
of violence between drug gangs within the Syrian state and its allies,
and violence against border posts and law enforcement in Lebanon and
Jordan, resulting conservatively in dozens of deaths. One incident on
Christmas Day 2021 catches the eye: Jordan’s armed forces fought as many
as 200 Syrian smugglers carrying machine guns who were trying to enter
Jordan from Suweida and Daraa provinces in Syria.
The dead of this new war include Jordanian and Lebanese soldiers, border
guards, policemen — the smugglers themselves. Not to mention the
civilians caught up in the trade.
Work from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project indicates
widespread drug-related corruption within the Assad regime. We can
infer not only that the regime is complicit in this growing drug trade,
but also that much of its nominally legitimate economic and political
functions are either connected to or subsumed within the criminal world
of drug production.
With rough estimates
indicating that the Captagon trade was worth more than $5 billion to
Syria in 2021 alone, there is no incentive, let alone will, for a poor
state, isolated by its own unrepentant actions, to tamp down the drug
trade.
Assad claims his government is a stabilizing influence, and as he tours
the region in pursuit of diplomatic normalization and economic
reconstruction, he claims he is a suitable partner for all manner of
initiatives. He says he needs large sums of money to participate fully,
of course.
But a state built anew on these foundations — of corruption and
illegality, and with violence entrenched in its drug economy — cannot
stabilize itself. As Jordanian authorities are increasingly concluding,
neither the drug economy nor the violence it brings can be contained by
ordinary measures.
With organized crime, terrorist organizations, and armed militias all
participating in this black market, more violence is coming. Syria’s
civil war is not over, and neither is the drug war likely to follow on
its heels.
