July 31, 2025

SHARE |

Where Does the Captagon Trade in Syria Stand After Assad?

AP Photo/Hussein Malla

The synthetic amphetamine-type stimulant Fenethylline, better known as captagon, has long been synonymous with the regime of the now-ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The drug, a stimulant that increases focus and wakefulness, has been abused by militants in battle and has fueled the party scene in gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Before Assad’s fall, captagon exports propped up the Assad family and its patronage networks, presenting the sanctioned regime with an economic lifeline and a lever of regional influence and transforming Syria into a modern-day narco-state. The regime flooded markets with the in-demand drug and only reduced flows in a tit-for-tat strategy in pursuit of economic and diplomatic normalization from neighboring countries. As the current Syrian transitional government makes strides in dismantling the vast Assad-era production and trafficking networks, key challenges in disrupting remaining and shifting nodes of the captagon trade in Syria endure.

The stakes in comprehensively disrupting the captagon trade are high and directly influence the country’s recovery, security, and growth: captagon trafficking continues through former regime remnants within Syria, seizures on the Lebanon-Syria border persist, and lack of economic opportunity or dissatisfaction with the transitional government may lead to the creation of new production hubs. Simultaneously, counternarcotics operations have presented the Syrian transitional government with an opportunity to commence international cooperation with governments that may still view the new authorities with suspicion, potentially paving the way for further international integration.

In the year leading up to the fall of the Assad regime, and since then, the dynamics of the captagon trade in Syria have evolved significantly, from initial high levels of production and activity to a noticeably diminished flow. In 2024, there was a record-high in terms of captagon seizure frequency, but the average size of each shipment had significantly declined. According to the New Lines Institute, 2024 saw more than 540 seizures, with an average of 400,000 pills per operation. This shift suggests both a change in trafficking methods and a disruption in supply. This trend was most evident in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the region’s main consumer markets, and likely reflected the Assad regime’s interest in using captagon as a bargaining chip in the normalization process.

This trend has persisted into the transitional period, with al-Sharaa’s government prioritizing the campaign against captagon, driven partly by international pressure as a precondition for normalization, and partly as a continuation of internal Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) policies. Leveraging HTS's experience in disrupting Assad's captagon enterprise when it controlled northwest Syria, the new administration has now expanded this strategy and conducted large-scale raids on manufacturing laboratories. In Douma, a city on the outskirts of Damascus, millions of captagon pills were discovered in a potato-chips-factory-turned-laboratory days after HTS rebels seized the capital in December. While some of HTS’s methods of disposing of the drug – such as the burning of seized pills – have been criticized due to the environmental and public health concerns, the new administration has started to build up capacity to disrupt smaller laboratories and arrest criminal associates of the Assad-era trade, signaling expanding intelligence capabilities.

According to Caroline Rose, an expert on the crime-conflict nexus, regional countries that remain skeptical of the new administration may view cooperation in the domain of counternarcotics as a way to gauge Damascus' trustworthiness and competence as an international partner. Successful cooperation on the issue of counternarcotics could thus create momentum for other security files such as counterterrorism. Transnational cooperation in the counternarcotics domain will be consequential, with some remaining stockpiles of captagon pills shipped to places such as Sudan, Türkiye, and the Netherlands – a trend that started under Assad in 2024.

The disruption of the trade within Syria has propelled a reconfiguration of the captagon ecosystem, both nationally and internationally. According to experts, within Syria, captagon actors are either downsizing or relocating manufacturing facilities to areas which are not under the new administration’s control—such as Suwayda and Daraa, where state presence is limited and where Bedouin tribes and Druze militia networks, previously co-opted or aligned with the Assad regime, are still involved in smuggling. An example of this is the al-Karama militia, which maintains an ambiguous position towards the captagon trade, and has allegedly maintained its network despite pressure from the transitional government. Amid rising sectarian conflict, particularly evident in southern Syria over the past week, there is a credible risk that opposition groups may turn to the captagon trade to finance their campaigns against the central government. The recent seizure of over 60,000 pills at Riyadh International Airport underscores the trade’s resilience, even amid heightened instability. Additionally, the clashes between Druze and Bedouin groups in Suwayda have highlighted the limited operational capability of the central government in the region.

This reconfiguration extends beyond Syria’s borders. Actors involved in the Assad-era captagon trade have fled Syria to Lebanon, Russia, Iraq and various countries in West Africa, where they can exploit governance gaps and existing local crime syndicates to set up new operations. In Lebanon specifically, where captagon production and trafficking have long been embedded in Beqaa Valley clans, the crackdown in Syria may prompt these actors to assume a more prominent role. The Lebanese captagon trade has thrived amid financial collapse, institutional paralysis, and sectarian patronage networks that have allowed traffickers to operate with impunity. Figures like Hassan Daqqou exemplify how traffickers leveraged political connections across rival camps, including Hezbollah and anti-Assad factions, undermining state sovereignty and exposing deep corruption in security institutions. Given the Lebanese state's current lack of capacity, there is a significant risk that Lebanon will become a central hub in the post-Assad captagon ecosystem.

Additionally, Israel’s months-long pounding of Hezbollah and its comprehensive bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s main sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, could see the group ramping up its involvement in captagon trade to maintain revenue flows and replenish its weapons arsenal. Hezbollah maintains a vast funding portfolio, which includes criminal enterprises that span from Latin America to West Africa. However, the current strategic setbacks it faces, including dwindling resources, renewed efforts by Lebanese authorities to disrupt its finances, and the election of reform-minded politicians, including President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, may incentivize it to expand its involvement in the captagon trade. Such pivots to profit-seeking by terrorist groups are well-documented in the crime-terror nexus literature. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), for example, became increasingly marked in the post-Cold War decade by a generational fissure, in which younger militants where less motivated by ideological fervor in pursuit of a Marxist-Leninist society and instead primarily focused on revenue generation from coca production and trafficking.

As the previously cited expert notes, these groups, along with other previously uninvolved actors both inside Syria and abroad, collectively recognize an opportunity to engage in the captagon trade amid significant disruption to existing supply chains, while demand remains high. With prices elevated, the potential for substantial profit is considerable.