Authorities have shuttered drug factories that have been money pipeline for former ruler Bashar al-Assad, UN report.
Revealed On 22 Dec 2025
Syria’s authorities has cracked down on the Captagon trade, which boomed beneath former longtime chief Bashar al-Assad, in response to a United Nations report.
Since al-Assad’s ouster a year ago, Syria’s new authorities have dismantled a community of factories and storage websites, a analysis temporary revealed on Monday by the UN Workplace on Medication and Crime (UNODC) stated.
Beneficial Tales
record of three objectsfinish of record
For greater than a decade, Syria produced most of the world’s Captagon, a extremely addictive, amphetamine-like tablet, bringing in billions of dollars for al-Assad’s authorities.
Nevertheless, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has carried out a clampdown as he tries to legitimise his government and strengthen diplomatic ties globally.
General, 15 industrial-level laboratories and 13 storage websites have been shuttered, in response to the UNODC report. The company stated the motion has “drastically modified” the Captagon market throughout the area.
Syria’s position within the drug commerce had beforehand drawn scrutiny from quite a few Gulf states, the place the tablet is widespread, together with Saudi Arabia. It additionally helped to immediate Western sanctions.
‘Political will and worldwide cooperation’
For years, the Captagon commerce supplied billions of {dollars} in revenue for networks and people aligned with the previous authorities “both inside the management of the regime’s safety equipment, Syria’s industrial sector and enterprise elite, and/or relations of Bashar al-Assad”, in response to Caroline Rose, an professional on Syrian drug trafficking on the New Strains Institute suppose tank.
Maher al-Assad, Bashar’s brother and former commander of the military’s elite Fourth Division, was recognized as a key participant, cashing in on defending shipments by means of Latakia, a former al-Assad stronghold.
Regardless of the present Syrian authorities’s concentrating on of the trade, giant seizures of the drug throughout the area counsel that vital stockpiles of the capsules originating from Syria stay in circulation, the report famous.
Smaller-scale manufacturing can also be doubtless persevering with inside Syria and in neighbouring international locations, the UNODC added, with Gulf international locations nonetheless the highest patrons of the drug.
The UN company stated the disruption of the Center East’s Captagon trade exhibits that with “political will and worldwide cooperation … even extremely advanced drug markets might be destabilised inside a comparatively quick time period”.
Nevertheless, it warned that the shift dangers pushing regional shoppers in direction of new artificial substances, like methamphetamine, which has not too long ago grown in recognition.
“With out addressing the underlying demand for ‘Captagon,’ trafficking and use are more likely to shift towards different substances, corresponding to methamphetamine, with new routes and actors rising to fill the hole,” it stated.
