Abstract: The fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria in December 2024 may have disrupted large-scale production of the illicit drug captagon, but the trade has, by no means, disappeared from the black market. Instead, a new, post-Assad Syria marks a shift in this illicit trade, from state monopoly over production and trafficking to non-state entrepreneurialism in the captagon trade. The remnants of the captagon trade now lie in the hands of warlords, tribes, prominent families, armed militias, and terrorist organizations seeking to engage in captagon production and trafficking as a lucrative alternative revenue stream. With the Assad regime no longer holding a monopoly over the supply of captagon, new non-state actors are seeking to fill a vacuum both inside and outside of Syria, moving production and trafficking sites to new contested areas. The result is not an eradicated captagon trade, but a more complicated, challenging landscape for regional governments.
The unexpected fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in early December 2024 marked the conclusion of over half a century of Ba’athist and Assad family rule in war-torn Syria. The Assad regime’s demise also brought a swift end to one of the world’s strongest examples of a ‘narco-state.’1 For nearly a decade, the regime’s security apparatus and close Assad family members exerted sponsorship over the manufacturing and trafficking of an illicit stimulant called “captagon,”2 using the trade as both an alternative revenue stream amidst economic sanctions as well as a diplomatic tool of leverage against its regional neighbors.3 Syrian state sponsorship over the captagon trade enabled industrial-scale production and sophisticated trafficking operations,4 transforming what was once a little-known stimulant into one of the most popular illicit drugs in the Middle East5 and an underground industry worth at least $10 billion at its pinnacle.6
The regime’s role in molding Syria into an anchor of illicit drug production was something immediately rejected by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) following its takeover of Damascus and the flight of Assad.7 While the prospect of continuing this multi-billion dollar trade in the ruins of civil war and persistence of international sanctions may have been tempting for HTS leadership, the group’s conservative ideological opposition to illicit substances, paired with a long track record of interdictions in Idlib and the narrative of the regime’s role as a narco-state, laid the foundation for the new administration’s outright rejection of drug production and trafficking in a new Syria.8 Furthermore, the new administration understood that the former regime’s usage of the captagon trade attracted international condemnation and several layers of economic sanctions;9 by dismantling this feature of the regime, Damascus could both build credibility as well as a case for sanctions relief. On the eve of the opposition’s arrival in Syria’s capital, HTS leader Abu Mohammad Jolani—now known as President Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa—made a speech on the minbar sermon staircase of Damascus’ famous Umayyad Mosque, outlining the new direction of a post-war, post-regime Syria.10 He briefly, but notably, stated that the days of Syria serving as an anchor of drug production and trafficking were long gone, that “Al-Assad has turned Syria into the largest captagon factory in the world … Today, Syria is being cleansed.”11
The new Syrian security forces would go on to conduct busts of large captagon storage warehouses, industrial-scale laboratories, and raids against regime-era criminal networks.12 These enforcement measures have significantly disrupted Syria’s role as the world’s principal hub of industrial-scale production, the epicenter of an estimated 80 percent of all captagon production before the fall of the regime.13 Yet, the crackdown has also generated unintended consequences. The dismantling of regime-era infrastructures has created opportunities for a constellation of non-state actors—some remnants of the former order and others newly emergent—to exploit the evolving market, leading to both the diffusion of production and the relocation of trafficking activities into contested areas.
This article assesses how the new administration in Syria has implemented a new counternarcotics strategy in Syria, seeking to conclude the country’s status as the world’s top hub for illicit captagon production and smuggling. However, the Syrian government’s approach, while substantially stemming industrial-scale manufacturing and smuggling operations, should not be construed as an abrupt end to the captagon trade in both Syria and the region. This article identifies how the post-regime captagon trade has experienced a ‘spillover’ effect from former-regime-held hubs in Syria into contested borderland and conflict-afflicted areas such as southern Syria, the Syrian-Lebanese border, Sudan, and Yemen, where non-state actors can engage in captagon operations with reduced interdiction risk and proximity to destination markets.
Syria’s Phased Approach
Following the regime’s fall in December 2024, the interim administration adopted a sequenced counternarcotics strategy that can be divided into two phases.14
The first phase, implemented immediately after Assad’s departure, concentrated on dismantling the physical infrastructures of production. Civilians and local armed groups, particularly HTS, uncovered large-scale laboratories, storage facilities, and pill stockpiles that revealed the depth of regime involvement.15 Many of these sites were directly connected to high-ranking regime figures, including Maher al-Assad (Bashar al-Assad’s younger brother) and political allies such as Amr Khiti.16 The scale was unprecedented: Thousands of pills were discovered within the Air Force Intelligence compound at Mazzeh Airport; in Latakia, civilians seized narcotics concealed in vehicles outside of a car dealership belonging to Assad family relative Munther al-Assad; and in Douma, authorities dismantled an industrial-scale facility concealed in a former food-processing plant, “Captain Korn.”17 Investigative analysis of port export data, raided production sites, and precursor chemical supply routes revealed the extent of the Fourth Armored Division’s control over processing equipment, chemical vats, and smuggling logistics.18
According to the New Lines Institute Comprehensive Captagon Trade Database, between December 2024 and September 2025, Syrian forces dismantled seven laboratories, raided 23 warehouses, and seized over 200 million captagon pills.19 This represents a sharp departure from the regime era, when seizures were limited to surface-level interdictions and the government promoted the narrative that Syria was merely a transit state rather than a production hub.20
The second phase, beginning in spring 2025, shifted toward the disruption of trafficking networks.21 The Syrian Interior Ministry expanded its intelligence collection and cross-border coordination, launching arrests of prominent regime-era producers both inside and outside Syrian territory. These actions targeted the organizational backbone that had previously sustained production facilities: networks with accumulated expertise in manufacturing, routes, and partnerships with transnational syndicates. The Interior Ministry and Anti-Narcotics Department began a string of arrests starting with prominent smuggler Wasim Badia al-Assad—a notable trafficker and Assad cousin—through a covert “Black Gold Ambush” operation luring al-Assad from his hideout in Tripoli, Lebanon, into Syria.22 Wasim’s arrest was conducted in a string of detentions and arrests against regime-aligned individuals and traffickers like the drug kingpin Amer Jdei Al-Sheikh, Al-Baqir militia’s Fadi Al-Afiss, and the regime General Intelligence Directorate’s Dawoud al-Touqan.23 Many of these arrests required engagement with regional counterparts, such as the governments of Turkey, Iraq, and Lebanon, and have yielded new intelligence on regime-era criminal networks for captagon and other illicit trades across the region.24 The timing is notable. In the immediate aftermath of Assad’s fall, the interim administration lacked the political legitimacy and coercive capacity to confront regime-aligned factions directly. This constraint was particularly acute following episodes of sectarian violence, such as the March 2025 clashes in Latakia between Alawite and Sunni groups.25 However, as the state apparatus incrementally consolidated authority, the Interior Ministry was able to pursue more ambitious operations against entrenched criminal elites aligned with the former regime.
Downsized Operations
The use of illicit drug production and trafficking as a major revenue stream was both a strength and a vulnerability for the Assad regime. The drug trade padded the pockets of key individuals—Assad family cousins, Fourth Armored Division commanders, prominent business allies of the regime—with cash to undercut the effects of sanctions and provided funds to sustain operations for the regime’s security apparatus.26 However, as the trade grew larger and shifted from maritime to overland routes, the regime required collaboration with actors outside of the regime’s immediate circle. The trade gradually decentralized and empowered groups along Syrian borderlands utilized by the regime’s security apparatus and business sector, such as tribes, militias, and families to help facilitate cross-border trafficking operations into Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Jordan. These co-opted actors remain active in the captagon trade, while the regime’s core apparatus has either fled or faced recent arrest by the new Syrian interim government.27
The new administration’s string of interdictions and arrests has forced regime-era remnants of Syria’s captagon trade to either downsize the scale of operations and/or move into contested, borderland territories challenging for the new forces in Damascus to access. Analysis of captagon seizures through the New Lines Captagon Trade Comprehensive Seizure Database indicates that, largely, the size of captagon consignments has become smaller, as few actors now possess the access, capacity, and sophistication to ship millions of pills without the risk of interdiction.28 There has been an exception among regime remnants engaged in the captagon trade in central and coastal Syria; anticipating potential warehouse and laboratory raids by the new governmental forces, these syndicates have tried to get rid of large stockpiles of captagon pills through shipping large consignments,29 as evidenced in one attempted shipment of four million pills in April from Syria’s Port of Latakia hidden in metal bars and an attempted consignment of nine million seized in Aleppo bound for Turkey.30 Yet, as stockpiles have begun to run out and new Syrian governmental forces have closed in on regime-era facilities, criminal networks have started to identify new alternative sites for operations—both inside and outside of Syria.
Borderland Contestation
These hubs of illicit captagon activity have largely shifted toward Syrian border regions—particularly along Syria’s borderlands with Jordan and Lebanon. These porous border regions—Al Qusayr and Talkalakh on the Lebanese frontier and Daraa and Suwayda on the Syrian frontier with Jordan—have historically served as trafficking hubs for drugs, arms, antiquities, fuel, and other products.31
In the captagon trade, the regime’s security apparatus often partnered with or co-opted local community non-state groups such as tribes, prominent families, or armed militias to carry out transnational trafficking operations on their behalf.32 As the trade expanded, small-scale, mobile production sites were often established closer to transit routes as a way to cheapen pill prices. For example, in July 2022, a small laboratory and pill processing center was identified in the militia headquarters of prominent Druze smuggler Raji Falhout, who aided the Fourth Armored Division and oversaw major trafficking operations from Suwayda into Jordan.33 While the regime maintained a monopoly over large-scale production and major trafficking operations, gradual decentralization in the early 2020s allowed some local actors to gain greater access to and knowledge about production and trafficking capabilities—knowledge that has served these actors well after the fall of the Assad regime and the resulting vacuum in captagon production and trafficking.34
Syria-Jordan Border
In Suwayda and Daraa along Syria’s border with Jordan, there are a series of rival criminal networks with a history of both competition and cooperation with the former regime—networks well situated to perpetuate the captagon trade. At present, three principal local actors are implicated in Syria’s illicit economies: militias aligned with Druze authorities, such as the Al-Karama militia and Suwayda Military Council (SMC) loyal to Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri; Bedouin tribal units like the Al-Balaas group; and criminal syndicates with a history of smuggling, such as prominent families like the Mazhar and Ramthan families.35 Throughout the years, as Suwayda and Daraa have gradually become major transit hubs for captagon trafficking, these groups have oscillated between occasional collaboration and fierce competition. For example, Druze livestock traders reportedly collaborated with Bedouin al-Balaas networks, using a rural farm in southern Syria as a base for the export of drugs and weapons. However, there have been repeated reports of roadside ambushes, kidnappings, killings, and clashes between groups over the control of routes and drug supply lines—a dynamic that was intentionally established by the former regime as it sought to play different sectarian groups against one another.36
The escalation in violence in July 2025 provides a particularly illustrative example. On July 11, a robbery on the Damascus-Sweida highway ignited disputes over control of key smuggling corridors.37 What began as a localized act of criminal predation quickly escalated as rival factions resorted to retaliatory kidnappings and armed attacks.38 Within days, these reprisals spiraled into sustained clashes against governmental forces. Even with a tentative ceasefire in place, existing tensions and the threat of revived clashes make southern Syria largely inaccessible to the new administration’s counternarcotics strategy; few seizures have been conducted in Daraa and Suwayda despite active levels of illicit activity and continued interdictions in neighboring Jordan.39
This dynamic has continued well into Syria’s post-regime era. Like the Assad regime, the new administration is not able to gain full access into Syria’s south, particularly in Suwayda, where its legitimacy and credibility is challenged and distrusted by local forces.40 Furthermore, the regime’s strategy of sowing seeds of rivalry between tribes and sectarian identities in Syria’s south has created a foundation of mutual competition. With a vacuum left behind by the regime in both the supply of captagon as well as governance in Syria’s south, rivalries between families, militias, and drug syndicates have exacerbated in areas such as Suwayda, creating a more complicated dynamic both for the new Syrian administration, but also Syrian neighbors including Jordan and Lebanon.
Syria-Lebanon Border
Along the Syrian-Lebanese border, a similar dynamic of contestation has taken place. In February 2025, the Syrian government began dismantling a series of captagon laboratories and facilities in the Syrian-Lebanese border region. Syria’s Anti-Narcotics Department and General Security Directorate conducted two laboratory seizures along the border with Lebanon that month in the Hanna Valley.41 These raids preceded violent confrontations with Lebanon-based smuggling groups tied to both the former regime and the newly restructured Syrian Army, mirroring interdiction dynamics seen in Latakia.42
Prominent criminal syndicates and influential families with longstanding ties to Hezbollah and the former regime’s Fourth Armored Division mounted a campaign of targeted violence against state security forces.43 This campaign consisted of kidnappings, assassinations, and armed confrontations, culminating in clashes that left an estimated 72 people dead.44 The timing of these attacks was not incidental. In the weeks prior, Syrian security forces had carried out a series of interdictions that disrupted narcotics shipments and interfered with the flow of contraband along critical border corridors.45 By targeting Syrian Army units and escalating into lethal exchanges, these groups sought to signal both their capacity and their willingness to resist enforcement measures. The objective was twofold: first, to preserve control over lucrative cross-border trafficking routes that represent the economic lifeline of these syndicates; and second, to deter the emerging Syrian government from further attempts to challenge their operations.
However, the Lebanese-Syrian border no longer offers criminal actors the same immunity that southern Syria does. The weakening of Hezbollah in the country and the empowerment of Lebanese state capacity have culminated in a forceful crackdown on criminal syndicates operating throughout the country, particularly in Hezbollah strongholds in the Bekkah Valley and Qalamoun Mountain range that were once considered largely off limits for Lebanese state forces. Following the bout of clashes in February and March, Lebanese forces have conducted a string of arrests—even a killing—of powerful illicit drug traffickers with ties to Hezbollah and the former Syrian Fourth Armored Division. Lebanese Army forces arrested prominent traffickers such as Ali M. and Hassan J. (security forces have not disclosed their full last names) since the regime’s fall in neighboring Syria.46 In Baalbek in August 2025, Lebanese Armed Forces killed Ali Mounzer Zeaiter (otherwise known as Abu Salleh), one of the most wanted drug traffickers in the Levant and a prominent member of the Zeaiter family closely aligned with Hezbollah and the former Fourth Armored Division.47
Lebanese forces have also conducted more laboratory interdictions this year, with three to date in 2025—the most production site raids since 2022.48 This indicates a new level of central state capacity and empowerment against non-state actors and terrorist organizations engaged in captagon production, parallel to Syria’s own development of a capable counternarcotics strategy.
Spillover Beyond Syria
Even before the Assad regime’s fall, throughout 2024, the captagon trade began to incrementally decentralize from Syria, spilling over into neighboring countries in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.49 The regime played a central role in this fragmentation, motivated by rapprochement with regional counterparts to shift the narrative that it served as captagon’s key sponsor without severely impacting its revenue flows. In the spring and summer of 2023, a string of engagements between Syria and its regional counterparts exploring the prospect of normalization, the Assad regime’s role in captagon—and use of drug trade as a political weapon—became a subject of contention.50 To attain reentry into the regional fold, Gulf states affected by rising captagon trafficking operations and consumption rates demanded that Damascus take action against illicit drug flows.51
Throughout that next year, the Syrian regime began directing its syndicates to downsize the scale of trafficking operations, shift from maritime to overland routes, and diversify routes and production sites outside of Syria.52 The regime also conducted a slight increase in arrests and seizures of captagon consignments; however, it did not conduct any laboratory raids—keeping with its narrative that Syria is a transit country, not a production hub, in the captagon trade.53 In 2024, there was an uptick in laboratories identified by local law enforcement in neighboring Turkey and Iraq, while new production and storage sites were found farther afield in Germany, the Netherlands, Egypt, and Kuwait. On August 15, 2024, a consignment of 4,000 captagon pills was identified as far as Venezuela on a Colombian national—the first known emergence of the drug outside of Eurasia.54
This effort of diversifying production and transit sites by regime-aligned actors unintentionally positioned the captagon trade in a favorable position after Assad’s fall in Syria. As Syria-based actors broadened captagon operations outside of the country, they were forced to forge close partnerships with new criminal syndicates and armed actors that exerted control over maritime ports, trafficking routes, and evaded interdiction from state security forces. As regime-aligned criminal actors broadened captagon operations, they collaborated with well-known criminal groups and armed actors such as the Italian mafia group the ‘Camorra,’55 Iraqi militias engaged with the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces,56 Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese expatriates in West Africa,57 Haftar forces in eastern Libya,58 and local Dutch and German syndicates.59
The captagon trade’s geographic diversification has only continued after the fall of Assad. In 2025, new captagon transit and production sites have been flagged closer to destination markets in the Gulf. In Sierra Leone, over seven million pills were seized from an individual, Hussein Anter, who coordinated with a Hezbollah-led drug and arms smuggling ring.60 Increased activity has also been flagged in Sudan, with four interdictions and one laboratory bust—one that had evidence of involvement from Syria-based actors through its packaging materials and sophisticated industrial equipment—flagged in 2025 thus far.61
In Yemen, there have been increasing signs that local non-state groups have been seeking to partially fill the supply shortage left behind by the Assad regime and capitalize on illicit captagon production and trafficking. The New Lines Institute’s Comprehensive Captagon Database has recorded 12 interdictions conducted in Yemen to date in 2025, on track to surpass the 12 interdictions conducted in Yemen in 2024.62 In July 2025, Yemeni authorities identified a Houthi-controlled captagon laboratory and seized 1.5 million captagon pills from Houthi-held territory.63 One September 2025 raid of an industrial-scale laboratory in Al Mahrah was found to be producing both captagon and another amphetamine-type stimulant, ‘shabo’ (crystal methamphetamine), with authorities implying that Syria-based actors had moved to locations perceived to be ‘safer’ and closer to production sites after the Assad regime’s fall to engage in captagon operations.64 While Al Mahrah is not under the direct control of the Houthis, the area serves as a key trafficking corridor that the Houthis often use for illicit arms trafficking.65 The facility reportedly had the capacity to produce up to 45,000 captagon pills and 13 kilograms of methamphetamine per hour, indicating both sophisticated capacity as well as diversification of captagon with methamphetamine, a much more highly addictive, harmful, and chemically similar stimulant with rising demand levels in the region.66
Conclusion
In the wake of the Assad regime’s collapse in Syria in December 2024, the captagon trade’s state-to-non-state evolution and regional spillover have highlighted a fragile balance of power—one between newly assertive state institutions seeking to demonstrate legitimacy and entrenched criminal elites determined to maintain their autonomy. The new Syrian administration and Lebanese state forces seek to build state capacity and disrupt criminal remnants—both non-state and remnants of the former regime—engaged in the captagon trade. Yet, they are challenged by the risk of law enforcement intervention triggering significant destabilization, as criminal groups retaliate not only to protect revenue streams but also to send a broader message of deterrence.67
Despite signs of a major disruption to captagon’s supply, demand levels in the region remain steadfast, and pill prices have skyrocketed.68 This dynamic has created a strong imperative for new, non-state criminal and armed actors to engage in the captagon trade, filling a void left behind by the Assad regime’s near-monopoly over production and trafficking. The result is a more complex, fragmented captagon trade with increasing intersections with criminal syndicates across Europe, Africa, Latin America, as well as crossover with alternative stimulants like methamphetamine. The resulting picture is a substantially more challenging landscape for governments to effectively monitor and counter a post-Assad captagon trade. CTC
Caroline Rose is a director at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank New Lines Institute, where she generates research and policy analysis about criminality, security, and defense. She is an expert on the illicit captagon drug trade and geopolitical dynamics in the Middle East. Rose also is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s graduate Security Studies Program, where she instructs a course on the intersection between crime, terrorism, governance, and conflict. She has served as an expert consultant to the European Union and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), advising on the proliferation of synthetic drug flows and their implications around the world. Rose has frequently briefed U.S. and partner governmental agencies, legislative bodies, and criminal prosecutors, along with her work and analysis frequently featured on media outlets such as BBC, CNN, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy, among others.
© 2025 Caroline Rose
Citations
[1] Ralph Outhwaite, “The Fall of the Captagon Kingdom,” New Lines Institute, December 19, 2024.
[2] “Syria’s Drug Trade Fuels Regional Instability,” BBC, June 25, 2023.
[3] Karam Shaar et al., Sky High: The Ensuing Narcotics Crisis in Arab Asia and the Role of the Assad Regime (London: Karam Viz/Observatory of Political & Economic Networks, 2023).
[4] Caroline Rose and Alexander Söderholm, “The Captagon Threat: A Profile of Illicit Trade, Consumption, and Regional Realities,” New Lines Institute, April 5, 2022.
[5] “What Is Captagon, the Addictive Drug Mass-Produced in al-Assad’s Syria?” Al Jazeera, May 9, 2023.
[6] Leila Molana-Allen and Abdul Razzaq Al-Shami, “How the Assad Regime Made Billions Producing and Exporting Party Drugs,” PBS NewsHour, December 26, 2024.
[7] Emily Feng, “New Syrian Leadership Destroying Captagon, an Addictive Drug Made by the Assad Regime,” NPR, January 28, 2025.
[8] Aaron Y. Zelin, “The New Syrian Government’s Fight Against the Islamic State, Hezbollah, and Captagon,” CTC Sentinel 18:3 (2025).
[9] “Treasury Sanctions Financial Facilitators and Illicit Drug Traffickers Supporting the Syrian Regime,” U.S. Department of the Treasury, March 26, 2024.
[10] Nic Robertson, “Syrian rebel leader’s victory speech holds a message for Iran – and for Trump and Israel too,” CNN, December 9, 2024.
[11] Sally Abou Aljoud, “Captagon: What Assad’s Fall Revealed About Syria’s Trade in the Drug,” Associated Press, December 18, 2024.
[12] Emir Nader, “What Now for Syria’s £4.5bn Illegal Drug Empire,” BBC, December 22, 2024.
[13] Leila Molana Allen, “How the Assad regime made billions producing and exporting party drugs,” PBS News Hour, December 26, 2024.
[14] Caroline Rose, “Redefining Counter-Narcotics in a New Syria,” Al Majalla, July 7, 2025.
[15] Caroline Rose, “How Assad’s Trade in Captagon Fueled His Downfall,” New Lines Magazine, January 23, 2025.
[16] Timour Azhari, “Discovery of Vast Syrian Drug Lab Reveals Secrets of Illicit Captagon Trade,” Reuters, December 13, 2024; “Syrian Rebels Discover Captagon Pill Lab Linked to Assad,” USA Today, December 13, 2024.
[17] Rose, “How Assad’s Trade in Captagon Fueled His Downfall.”
[18] Jihad Yazigi, “From India to Beirut: How Maher al-Assad’s Fourth Division Turned Syria into a Captagon Factory,” Syrian Observer, August 18, 2025.
[19] Compiled from the private New Lines Institute Comprehensive Captagon Trade Database.
[20] Karam Shaar and Caroline Rose, “The Syrian Regime’s Captagon Endgame,” New Lines Institute, May 24, 2023.
[21] Rose, “Redefining Counter-Narcotics in a New Syria.”
[22] Caroline Rose, “Wasim al-Assad’s Arrest Is a Big Win for Syria’s War on Crime,” Al Majalla, July 1, 2025.
[23] Ibid.; “Syrian and Turkish Authorities Arrest Dangerous Drug Kingpin,” Arab News, August 3, 2025.
[24] Rose, “Wasim al-Assad’s Arrest Is a Big Win for Syria’s War on Crime.”
[25] “UN Syria Commission Finds March Coastal Violence Was Widespread and Systematic,” UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, August 14, 2025.
[26] Rose and Söderholm.
[27] Karam Shaar and Roaa Obeid, “Captagon After the Fall of Assad: Transformations, Challenges, and Regional Implications,” New Lines Institute, June 17, 2025.
[28] Compiled from the private New Lines Institute Comprehensive Captagon Trade Database.
[29] “Internationalizing the Fight against Hubs of Illicit Trade: HIT Project White Paper,” Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC), George Mason University, May 2023.
[30] “[Nearly four million Captagon pills seized in the Syrian port of Latakia],” Kurdistan24, April 12, 2025; “Syria Seizes 9 Million Captagon Pills Bound for Turkey,” Turkish Minute, May 15, 2025.
[31] “Drug Smuggling in Syria’s South Fuels Violence and Instability,” Levant24, August 2025; Christian Vianna de Azevedo, Cultural Heritage Smuggling and the Nexus with Terrorism (Rome: United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute [UNICRI], July 2024; ETANA Syria, “Brief: Cross-Border Smuggling After the Regime’s Collapse,” ETANA Syria, February 2025.
[32] Karam Mansour, “How Suwayda Became a Drug-Smuggling Hub,” Syria Direct, March 26, 2024.
[33] “Recap: Suweida Revolts Against Corruption,” Syrian Observer, July 29, 2022.
[34] Paloma Dinechin, “In Suwayda, Captagon Barons Survive the Fall of Assad,” Forbidden Stories, February 8, 2024.
[35] Paloma de Dinechin, “In Suwayda, Captagon Barons Survive the Fall of Assad,” Forbidden Stories, February 8, 2024; Caroline Rose, “Illicit Economies Play Big Role in Syria’s Post-Assad Flashpoints,” Al Majalla, August 2, 2025.
[36] “Manufacturing Division: The Assad Regime and Minorities in South-west Syria,” ETANA Syria, Middle East Institute, March 11, 2020; Haian Dukhan, “From Sectarianism to Tribalism: Rebuilding Syria’s Power Structures,” Arab Center, August 6, 2025; ETANA Syria, “Manufacturing Division: The Assad Regime and Minorities in South-west Syria,” Middle East Institute, March 11, 2020; Tom Rollins, “Kidnappings, Cross-Border Clashes Threaten Increasingly Fragile Status Quo in Syria’s South,” Middle East Institute, May 20, 2020.
[37] Caroline Rose, “Illicit Economies Play Big Role in Syria’s Post-Assad Flashpoints,” Al Majalla, August 2, 2025.
[38] “Tensions High as New Violence Spirals in Syria’s Suwayda Despite Ceasefire,” Al Jazeera, August 3, 2025.
[39] Compiled from the private New Lines Institute Comprehensive Captagon Trade Seizure Database.
[40] “Syria’s Druze, Kurds Criticize Exclusion from Upcoming Vote,” Deutsche Welle, August 28, 2025.
[41] “[A Syrian security official told Al-Quds Al-Arabi: We have arrested officers in the regime’s army involved in drug trafficking],” Al-Quds Al-Arabi, February 13, 2025; “[A second Captagon factory was seized on the Syrian-Lebanese border, belonging to remnants of the former regime],” Alfurat Agency via YouTube, February 11, 2025.
[42] Nicholas Blanford, “Inside the Sectarian Skirmishes on the Syria-Lebanon Border,” Atlantic Council, March 25, 2025.
[43] Louise Greenwood, “Border Clashes Prompt Shia Clans to Leave Syria for Lebanon,” Middle East Eye, February 10, 2025.
[44] “Clashes Erupt at Border Between Syrian Authorities and Lebanese Clans,” L’Orient Today, February 6, 2025.
[45] Rose, “Redefining Counter-Narcotics in a New Syria.”
[46] Edmond Sassine, “Lebanon’s Drug Cartels Under Siege: Authorities Take Down Leading Drug Dealers,” LBC Group, August 9, 2025.
[47] Nemtala Eddé, “Who is ‘Abu Salleh,’ Lebanon’s ‘King of Cocaine and Captagon’?” L’Orient Today, August 10, 2025.
[48] Compiled from the private New Lines Institute Comprehensive Captagon Trade Seizure Database.
[49] Shaar and Obeid; Caroline Rose and Rafaella Lipschitz, “Sudan’s Emergence as a New Captagon Hub,” New Lines Institute, August 12, 2025.
[50] “Isolated Syria’s FM Arrives in Saudi Arabia,” Yahoo News, April 12, 2023.
[51] Maya Gebeily, “Arabs Bring Syria’s Assad Back into Fold but Want Action on Drugs Trade,” L’Orient Today, May 10, 2023.
[52] Shaar and Obeid.
[53] Shaar and Rose.
[54] “Saab: Pretendían distribuir droga captagón en marcha convocada por la derecha para este sábado,” DiarioVea, August 15, 2024.
[55] Caroline Rose, “The Reach of the Trade in Captagon Beyond the Middle East,” European View 22:2 (2023): pp. 295-303.
[56] Christopher Sims, Antonio Ruiz, and Nicholas Krohley, Evidence Synthesis: Captagon in Iraq and Jordan: Understanding the Problem and Evaluating Solutions (London: XCEPT, 2024).
[57] Baria Alamuddin, “Hezbollah’s Role in the Global Drugs Trade — the West Africa Connection,” Arab News, October 9, 2021.
[58] Frederic Wehrey, “Assad’s Downfall Echoes Across the Mediterranean,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December 12, 2024.
[59] Lemma Shehadi, “Captagon Produced ‘On Demand’ in Netherlands for Middle East Export,” National, September 13, 2023.
[60] Beirut Time, “[14 tons of TNT and Captagon pills seized in Sierra Leone, and those involved are …],” X, September 12, 2025.
[61] Compiled from the private New Lines Institute Comprehensive Captagon Trade Seizure Database. See also Rose and Lipschitz; and Shaar and Obeid.
[62] Compiled from the private New Lines Institute Comprehensive Captagon Trade Seizure Database.
[63] Ahmed al-Jarallah, “Houthis Fill Post-Assad Captagon Void, Entering Lucrative Drug Market,” Arab Weekly, August 5, 2025.
[64] “[Security forces in Al Mahrah seize a huge drug factory with a massive production capacity],” Al Omana, September 4, 2025.
[65] “Al-Mahra Security Seizes Drug Lab Linked to Houthis,” South24, September 5, 2025.
[66] “[Security forces in Al Mahrah seize a huge drug factory with a massive production capacity].”
[67] Simon Speakman Cordall, “Syria Avoids Regional Cold Shoulder Despite Captagon Drug Trade,” Al Jazeera, March 10, 2024.
[68] Shaar and Obeid.
