Lifting the veil on al-Assad's sham drug crackdowns

His arrest preceded a scheduled meeting with the Arab Liaison Committee in Baghdad on 7 May, where drug trafficking from Syria was a key agenda item. Similarly, it preceded the Arab League summit in Manama, attended by al-Assad in the same month. However, just two weeks after the arrest announcement, reports surfaced that the regime had released him after he reportedly paid over $80,000 for his freedom.

Detention for extortion has been increasingly prevalent in Syria for years. The release of drug dealers in exchange for money suggests that the primary aim of such arrests is not solely to send political messages. Releasing drug traffickers in exchange for money is common, even when extortion is not the primary objective behind their arrest. This practice becomes evident in cases where arrested drug traffickers, caught in the act or during trafficking operations, secure their release by paying for their freedom, reportedly occurring frequently.

Politicised crackdown

Beyond scoring political points and engaging in extortion, the regime reportedly employs detention to assert its authority over drug dealers and eliminate those who resist. Informed sources suggest that Syrian law enforcement primarily targets small-scale dealers and smugglers without connections to the regime's core security apparatus. This tactic serves to consolidate the illicit trade within regime-controlled networks and intimidate those who do not comply with regime demands.

In stark contrast, the regime continues to offer protection to publicly known narcotics kingpins like Samer Kamal al-Assad, Wassim al-Assad, or Noah Zeiter, allowing them to operate freely in regime-held Syria. This highlights, yet again, the regime's reluctance to curb the supply of narcotics to the wider region.

Reports also indicate that the regime has exaggerated the number of arrests to amplify the significance of its anti-drug operations. For instance, in September 2022, Brig. Gen. Nidal Jreij, the director of the Syrian Drug Control Department, claimed that the regime's counter-narcotics efforts in the first nine months of that year led to the arrest of 851,621 individuals on narcotics-related charges—a figure equivalent to nearly 15% of Syria's adult population.

However, the regime failed to provide further details about the location of these detentions, the profile of the arrested individuals, the size of the seizures, and the legal proceedings against them. The lack of transparency and the discrepancy between the claimed numbers and open-source data, which indicates just 343 reported arrests by the regime during the same period, cast doubt on the credibility of these figures.

Media stunts

Moreover, the regime has often announced the launch of anti-drug campaigns, but many of these are dismissed as mere media stunts, yielding few, if any, substantial arrests. This was exemplified by a security campaign announced last July following a meeting in Amman aimed at coordinating anti-drug efforts between Syrian army and security offices and their Jordanian counterparts. Despite the high-profile nature of the campaign, it reportedly failed to result in the arrest of drug dealers.

As the regime escalates its announcements of crackdown operations against drug traffickers, recent on-the-ground monitoring conducted by the Syrian organisation Etana uncovers a concerning pattern.

There has been a significant spike in cross-border smuggling attempts from Syria, with the number more than tripling since the previous smuggling season, usually taking place between October and March. In the 2024 season, Etana documented 282 smuggling attempts, a marked increase from the 108 recorded in the previous season.

Despite its pretences, the regime remains the primary supplier of Captagon, demonstrating little motivation to curtail production and smuggling activities. Therefore, the reported figures and measures from its purported crackdowns—often driven by ulterior motives—require rigorous independent scrutiny and should not be accepted at face value.