It is a thriving economy born out of the still-burning ashes of civil war. An export product that has become almost commonplace. The spread of captagon in the Middle East is inseparable from Syria. Sometimes nicknamed “Captain Courage”, “Abou Hilalain” or “Capti”, this drug has gone from being a marginal production a few years ago to a formidable industry in the loyalist areas of the country, thanks to an economy of weakened post-war period, failing institutions and complicit power.
To understand this Syrian specificity, we have to go back to the 1990s. Bulgaria, which massively produced what was then still a recognized drug, “captagon”, saw the demand for amphetamines drop. The fall of the USSR and the war in the Balkans precipitate the end of production. Bulgarian experts then turned to Syria, the second largest pharmaceutical producer in the region. A unique technical and scientific partnership, according to the experts.
A market valued at $5.7 billion
In 2013, in the early hours of the war in Syria, the production of this synthetic drug took on a new dimension, on a large scale. A recent report by the American think tank New Lines Institute estimates this market at more than 5.7 billion dollars in 2021, compared to 3.46 billion in 2020.
Captagon is easy to produce, with few means, accessible raw materials and without great technical skills. Although the regime accuses the rebels of being behind the traffic, most of the factories housed in abandoned warehouses are located along the M4 international highway which leads to the port of Latakia, stronghold of the Assad family.
The shadow of Maher Al Assad
It is from there and from Tartous that the main shipments leave for other countries in the Middle East, but also in Europe and Asia. One proof among others of the involvement in this traffic of the regime, for whom captagon has become the main means of subsistence. “Elements of government are key players in the captagon trade with ministerial-level complicity in production and trafficking, using the trade as a political and economic means of surviving economic sanctions,” explain the authors of the New Lines Institute report, Caroline Rose and Alexander Söderholm.
“Bashar Al Assad’s younger brother, Maher, commander of the 4th division (elite army unit, editor’s note), supervises many factories – which proves that there is knowledge and complicity at the highest level. Just like the fact that the business is run by the Alawite community,to which the circle closest to Assad, the structures affiliated with power and the military high command belong”, says Caroline Rose, who recognizes that it is nevertheless impossible to determine the amount of direct income affected by the plan.
Increasingly local consumption
Has Syria become a “narco-state”, as ex-US special envoy Joel Rayburn says ? “This expression omits non-state partners of the regime, engaged in this trade and remunerated for it, such as criminal networks, Hezbollah or many Iran-aligned militias, and sometimes the Revolutionary Guards themselves…”, slice the expert.
At the same time as this production intended for export, captagon is increasingly being consumed locally, particularly among prisoners, students and refugees, who pay between 0.5 and 2.78 dollars for it. According to testimony from a member of the 4th division quoted in the report, the Syrian army would even use it as a loss leader, offering it at a more attractive price to new recruits.
“Captagon promises to suppress hunger, to be more productive, not to feel tired, which makes it attractive in the difficult circumstances of the post-war period, constate Caroline Rose. This amounts to exploiting the existing trauma and economic devastation that Syrians have suffered. »