Redefining counter-narcotics in a new Syria

Challenges lie ahead for the new Syrian government as it seeks to close the gap in security policy

A member of the Syrian security forces searches a defunct drug factory inside an abandoned building near the village of Hawik in the countryside of Al-Qusayr on February 12, 2025.
LOUAI BESHARA / AFP
A member of the Syrian security forces searches a defunct drug factory inside an abandoned building near the village of Hawik in the countryside of Al-Qusayr on February 12, 2025.

Redefining counter-narcotics in a new Syria

Six months into Syria’s post-conflict, post-regime landscape, the new government is seeking to transform its security sector. Having achieved full-scale sanctions relief from the US—the largest goal for the HTS-led government—the key challenge for the regime now boils down to how it maintains relative security and momentum toward stable governance within the country.

A key element of this is how Syria restructures its police, intelligence, and security agencies, as well as how the Syrian people perceive and relate to these forces. As Syrians depart a dark period of 14 years of civil war, 53 years of Assad rule, and 61 years of Baathist governance in the country, the new government will have to carefully unwind intergenerational distrust and fear that so many citizens have towards civil services. And while dismantling decades of a hardened, malevolent reputation amongst the Syrian public, it will also have to prove itself capable of protecting Syrian human security in the first place.

Syria’s Ministry of Interior is now tasked with filling this tall bill. In early June, Interior Minister Anas Khattab outlined a new list of priorities that the ministry is pursuing to restore the trustworthiness and operational capacity of Syria's security agencies.

Thus far, the ministry’s emerging strategy has been shaped along the lines of police and security integration, the development of domestic counter-terrorism and border security programmes, the establishment of a counter-terrorism programme, and the initiation of a major counter-narcotics strategy. However, as it seeks to move ahead, the interior ministry will find itself in a perpetual war with its former self, battling the biggest spoilers to rebuilding both capacity and public trust: the memory and remnants of the Assad regime.

From the moment that HTS forces drove out al-Assad’s forces from major, regime-held governorates, there was a new ‘tune’ to Syria’s counter-narcotics strategy. Both local communities and HTS forces immediately turned to Syrian streets, airports, suburbs, and compounds controlled by the regime’s intelligence apparatus and Assad family allies suspected of manufacturing or storing illicit drugs like the amphetamine-type stimulant, Captagon.

Omar Haj Kadour/AFP
Fighters affiliated with Syria's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) display Captagon pills seized at a checkpoint they control in Daret Ezza, in northern Aleppo, on April 10, 2022.

Read more: Syria's drug networks remain active despite Assad's ouster

Drug dens seized

HTS forces and civilians uncovered several laboratories and storage warehouses associated with the Captagon trade. Sites affiliated with al-Assad forces—even al-Assad’s younger brother, Maher, and political allies like Amr Khiti—were uncovered across former regime-held territories, primarily along the coast and around central Syria in and around Damascus, Homs, and Hama. Thousands of Captagon pills were found in the Air Force Intelligence wing of the Mezzeh Airport. Syrian civilians stormed a car dealership belonging to a distant cousin of the Assad family and found trunks full of thousands of Captagon pills, many of them thrown into the street drains of Latakia.

In Douma, an industrial-scale manufacturing operation was raided, housed in a former potato chip factory and controlled by Assad affiliates Maher al-Assad and Amr Khiti. In the Damascene suburb of Yarfur, hundreds of thousands of Captagon pills, manufacturing equipment, vats of chemicals, and smuggling materials were found spanning across the rooms of a luxury villa affiliated with the former regime’s Fourth Armoured Division.

The string of laboratory raids and seized stockpiles of drugs was both sudden and shocking, though not surprising, given the extent of open-source literature that documented the Syrian regime’s sponsorship of drug trades like Captagon. The spike in interdictions accompanied a public, clear repudiation from Ahmed al-Sharaa himself during a victory speech at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, the same day that opposition forces ousted al-Assad and his regime from Syria’s capital.

“Al-Assad has turned Syria into "the largest Captagon factory in the world...Today, Syria is being cleansed, thanks to the grace of Almighty God,” the HTS leader-turned-Syrian-president stated. It was a clear repudiation of the regime’s relationship to Captagon and intention to turn a new page on Syria’s reputation as a hub of drug production and smuggling.

Yet while the regime’s defeat put an official end to state-sponsored illicit activities in Syria, it has not been able to drive out these networks—many of them remnants of the regime—completely. After the sharp increase in interdictions in Syria that took place in the aftermath of the regime’s fall in December and January, the new administration’s counter-narcotics activity quieted down. However, it was clear that after identifying and busting the ‘big fish’ in drug smuggling, the administration began to struggle to counter the more dormant, rank-and-file targets that perpetuated production and smuggling operations.

AFP
This picture taken on July 27, 2022, shows a view of sacks of confiscated captagon pills at the judicial police headquarters in the town of Kafarshima, south of Lebanon's capital, Beirut.

To make matters worse, many of these networks had downsized Captagon production activities, shifted them to harder-to-reach areas in Syria’s borderland regions where the new administration lacked influence and capacity, and began to collaborate with cross-border partners, such as Hezbollah.

This engaged the Syrian government’s intelligence and security agencies in a complex battle with their former selves, tasked with a difficult objective: disrupting former regime-aligned smuggling networks without ‘poking the bear’ too far, thereby risking clashes and even political support among key constituencies the government is seeking to gain favour with. This dynamic was on full display along Syria’s border region with Lebanon.

Prominent criminal syndicates and families closely aligned with the former regime’s Fourth Armoured Division, such as the Zeaiter family, launched a series of targeted kidnappings, killings, and clashes against Syrian Army forces, with exchanges resulting in a total of 72 dead. Inciting violence, following a string of interdictions by Syrian forces in the previous month, was a way for criminal networks to signal their intent to control key cross-border routes and intimidate the new Syrian government.

This careful dynamic with former regime-aligned smuggling remnants was also evident in recent seizures—or lack thereof—in contested areas and borderland regions in Syria. In 2025, there have been few interdictions in Syria’s southern Daraa and Sweida regions, despite years of widespread evidence of small-scale production facilities in the region and a steady stream of interdictions conducted in transit markets neighbouring this region, such as Jordan.

It’s worth noting that some communities in Daraa and Sweida have expressed intense scepticism of al-Sharaa’s administration. Already, Damascus has found its forces engaged in violent clashes with Druze community members.

The absence of state security presence and drug interdictions ultimately indicates that the new administration, while aware of drug-related activity in Syria’s southern areas, still feels ill-equipped and unprepared to contest the smuggling networks in those regions—many of which were directly affiliated or co-opted by the Assad regime—that still present a flashpoint for the new government.

Syria will have to heavily invest in employment opportunities that create long-term alternatives to illicit drug economies

New tune?

Still, the new Syrian government has demonstrated a clear commitment to building out a counter-narcotics strategy and putting an end to Syria's global reputation as a 'narco-state'. And while contested borderland regions with Lebanon and Jordan have proved difficult for the new administration to tackle, it has begun to push the envelope in other contested areas of Syria, such as the coastal region of Latakia and the borderland with Lebanon.

In February, lingering tensions between sectarian communities, regime loyalists, and the new interim government incited intense violence in Latakia. The clashes and resulting in a 1,311 death toll represented a major flashpoint for post-conflict Syria, as unhealed wounds between Syria's Alawite and Sunni communities, paired with the challenge of local elements loyal to the Assad family, risked continual violence and unstable governance. The Syrian administration was able to deploy forces to Latakia and initiate a relative ceasefire and launch a national investigation into the incident, though the risk of resumed hostilities is very much still there.

Despite Latakia being a flashpoint and contested area where caution and sensitivity are necessary for the new interim government, progress has been made in combating smuggling syndicates that are either new or aligned with the former regime. The interim government conducted three seizures in Latakia in April alone: one involved a major consignment hidden in 5,000 metal bars, which was about to be shipped out of the Port of Latakia; the other was a bust of a 3-person criminal syndicate operating in Latakia; and the third was a manufacturing site in rural Qardaha. These seizures were the first since December 2024.

A similar trend has taken place along the contested Syria-Lebanon border region, just months after major clashes and kidnappings ensued between Hezbollah and smuggling-linked groups and Syrian Army forces. After conducting two laboratory seizures along Syria's border with Lebanon in the immediate aftermath of the Assad regime's fall, Syria's Anti-Narcotics Department and General Security Directorate conducted additional surges in the early and late spring.

In February, Syrian forces identified another laboratory manufacturing pills with the traditional 'Lexus' logo—a marker of regime-aligned production—as well as a production site in the Hanna Valley. These interdictions conducted by Syrian forces notably preceded the clashes initiated by Lebanon-based smuggling syndicates with ties to the former regime and the new Syrian Army, likely indicating that, similar to interdictions in contested Latakia. After the clashes subsided and a ceasefire agreement was made in March, Syrian forces carried out a Captagon laboratory bust along the border with Lebanon in May, with promises to further focus on this area as it built out its counter-narcotics strategy.

Getty Images
A security officer displays confiscated captagon pills that were hidden in 7 tons of tea boxes to be smuggled, at the ministry building in Beirut, Lebanon on January 25, 2022.

Conclusion

Increased seizure rates in new, contested areas outside of Damascus' orbit are signs that the new administration in Syria is building momentum for its emerging counter-narcotics strategy. After intense cross-border and sectarian clashes that took place in February and March, the new administration's security forces are attempting to build momentum to pursue the more rank-and-file, 'middle men' that comprised Syria's black market under the Assad regime.

However, as Syria's Ministry of Interior seeks to establish inter-communal trust, capacity, and a comprehensive strategy against the country's underground, illicit economies, it will have to continually confront its history and remaining remnants loyal to the Assad regime. And the new administration will be forced to recognise that this task cannot be accomplished through security reform alone.

To effectively break the cycle of Syria's drug problem, Syria and its partners will have to heavily invest in economic and employment opportunities that create long-term alternatives to underground economies like Captagon, weapons smuggling, and other illicit products. It will also be important for the new administration's approach to factor in demand reduction strategies in addition to its heavy focus on supply, identifying both causes and solutions for drug dependency.

Syria cannot accomplish these tasks alone, however, and requires consistent support, engagement, and informational exchange from its neighbours like Iraq, Türkiye, Jordan, and other countries affected by illicit flows from Syria. For the new administration's counter-narcotics strategy to be effective, Syria will need to rely on regional collaboration and support.

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