Syria's highly sophisticated Captagon industry goes global

However, if there is an increased risk of law enforcement discovering and raiding production facilities, synthetic drug producers can commandeer smaller pieces of equipment that can be quickly disassembled and transported across borders—useful for small-scale producers that have transported Captagon labs across the Lebanese-Syrian border region.

The role of law enforcement paralysis and complicity have played a large, looming role in the development of Syria's growing illicit drug landscape. In territories under the control of the Syrian regime, complicity and even active collaboration with criminal actors have greatly provided cover to industrial-scale Captagon production.

With the active involvement in trafficking and production from high-level officials from the regime's Fourth Armored Division, such as Maher al-Assad and Major General Ghassan Bilal, there has been a major gap in large-scale and consistent seizures, laboratory busts, and raids on criminal networks from regime authorities. There is evidence that regime law enforcement have engaged in cosmetic reporting of drug busts and arrests, with the Ministry of Interior stating that it arrested 851,621 Syrians in the first nine months of 2022—what constitutes 15% of the adult population and is a plausible figure.

The lack of physical law enforcement presence, effective detection technologies, actionable intelligence on networks, and active intelligence have also offered opportunities for criminal groups to exploit in Syria. In areas beyond regime-controlled territories, such as Syria's northwest and northeast, local authorities are often distracted with competing security concerns, often lacking the capacity to consistently monitor drug flows stemming from regime-held territories, apart from the occasional seizure and bust.

These areas, however, are strategic for trafficking networks seeking to smuggle drugs to nearby markets and transit routes, given their proximity to Turkey and Iraq. Remote areas, such as Syria's Badia, also provide traffickers with a 'no man's land' where the chances of detection and intervention are remarkably low and can provide a route to porous border areas.

For decades, trafficking syndicates have utilised the border triangle of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan to shift illicit supply chains and smuggling activities, taking advantage of porous borders with little-to-no enforcement presence and informal ports staged along the Lebanese and Syrian coast to dispatch illicit shipments across the Mediterranean Sea.

The lack of routine enforcement of Syria's border with Iraq, too, provides an open opportunity for smuggling networks to bolster trafficking operations. Criminal enterprises have utilised roadways like Al Qaim—a major transnational highway that is intermittently controlled by Iran-aligned militias, closer to Iraq's border with Syria—to smuggle illicit, counterfeit goods. Iraq, in particular, has been a site of spillover for drug trades like Captagon from Syria, with the country's first identified laboratory seized in July 2023 and numerous storage warehouses raided by Iraq's Anti-Narcotics Directorate and law enforcement, indicating that trafficking networks are seeking to expand their footprint in the country to be closer to Gulf destination markets.

Expansion into Europe and Africa

Syria-based criminal networks have been able to meet rising demand levels for synthetic substances like Captagon with industrial-scale production. This has ushered the Captagon trade into an illicit industry estimated to be valued at around $10mn—accounting for both seized and unseized consignments in 2022–that has offered nearly $2.4bn in revenues to regime-aligned actors in Syria.

However, while the Captagon trade has grown immensely in the last four years, data from seizures indicates that demand may have stabilised, leaving less room for growth amongst traditional consumption markets in the Gulf region. This reality has forced criminal actors in Syria to seek out new, creative pathways to develop synthetic drug trades like Captagon further while potentially diversifying with new, more potent drugs like crystal methamphetamine.

There has been an incremental spillover of Syrian-based Captagon production and trafficking operations into Europe and Africa. Criminal groups from Syria first relied upon southern European and North African ports strung along the Mediterranean Sea as key transshipment sites to help hide suspicious origin ports, like the Port of Latakia, and 'bounce' illicit consignments into destination markets in the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.

By using commercial ships and seaplanes, traffickers were also easily able to increase the size of individual consignments of drugs—something that was risky, if detected, but efficient if not interdicted. This was evidenced by an uptick of industrial-scale Captagon seizures conducted across Greek, Italian, Libyan, Egyptian, Moroccan, and Romanian ports between 2018 and 2023 that originated from Syria and/or Lebanon.

However, recent trends indicate that Syria-based criminal actors are no longer solely relying upon European maritime ports for transshipment but are looking further into mainland Europe and Africa to re-route shipments and even produce illicit drugs, such as Captagon. In mainland Europe, the first marker of their presence began with a Lebanese-Syrian criminal network operating in Bürmoos, Austria.

This network used a pizzeria as a shell company to traffic Captagon through Belgian ports into Austria, shrouded in machinery like pizza ovens, washing machines, and electrical equipment and then shipped to destination markets like Saudi Arabia. Austrian law enforcement conducted arrests for trafficking over 13.8 million pills, and the culprits were put on trial in late 2021.

Then came a bust of a storage warehouse containing 200 kilogrammes of Captagon tablets in Germany's eastern Bavaria in May 2021, indicating that trafficking organisations were seeking to use Northern European hubs for transshipment and, potentially, local distribution. This was further confirmed by a Captagon laboratory later identified in the same region in Germany in July 2023, operated by two Syrian nationals, indicating that Captagon producers were starting to diversify production far away from the Middle East, let alone Syria.

In September 2023, a second site of Captagon production was confirmed when the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) reported that Captagon production and trafficking operations were flagged in the Netherlands—an existing hub for synthetic production and criminal activity. These signs, collectively, have indicated that Syria and Lebanon-based synthetic drug producers and traffickers are starting to perceive more opportunities in mainland Northern Europe to further develop transnational illicit drug industries.

In Africa, these same groups are, too, seeking out new ways to smuggle illicit drugs to existing destination markets and identify new hubs for consumption. Like southern European ports, many African countries—particularly concentrated in Northern Africa, the Ivory Coast, and the Horn of Africa—were used as transshipment sites. Many consignments interdicted at key choke points, such as the Port of Beirut, were reported to have destinations in Togo, Nigeria, and Sudan, some of which have final destinations listed in Gulf countries.

However, while this region largely remains a key blind spot for illicit, synthetic trades—let alone their connection to Syria-based criminal actors—recent seizure analysis has indicated that trades like Captagon and methamphetamine have begun to expand. Libya, in particular, has been reported as a key corridor for both maritime, aerial, and overland consignments of drugs like Captagon, particularly in Haftar-controlled eastern Libya, which has cultivated a close relationship with the al-Assad regime and its great-power backer, Russia. As criminal actors seek to identify new spaces to grow demand and market illicit, synthetic drugs, African markets signify a major opportunity for Syria-based groups to expand.

Conclusion

While illicit activity is, by no means, a new phenomenon in Syria, the emergence of major, industrial-scale synthetic drug production marks a new chapter in the country's illicit landscape. In the last five years alone, Syria has become the chief production hub for the amphetamine-type stimulant Captagon and a major trafficking hub for other drugs such as methamphetamine, Tramadol, and other illicit trades.

Recent analysis of seizures and arrests has shown that illicit trades like Captagon have reached a major crossroads. Seizure rates have slightly dipped between 2022 and 2023, and consumer demand has largely stabilised. However, this reflects an incremental shift in strategy and sophistication of Syria-based drug producers and traffickers seeking to expand markets both transnationally and transregionally.

Actors aligned with the Syrian regime, armed groups, and criminal syndicates involved in the industrial-scale production, marketing, and distribution of illicit trades will likely continue to redirect flows and expand into new markets both within and outside the Middle East region. These networks will identify new loopholes and opportunities to establish production processes, transit routes, and consumer markets in places like Iraq, Libya, Germany, the Netherlands, and other countries, using existing alliances and established exploitable routes.