Syria’s government curbing once-booming Captagon industry: UN report

Authorities person shuttered cause factories that were currency pipeline for erstwhile ruler Bashar al-Assad, UN report.

Syria’s authorities has cracked down connected the Captagon industry, which boomed nether erstwhile longtime person Bashar al-Assad, according to a United Nations report.

Since al-Assad’s ouster a twelvemonth ago, Syria’s caller authorities person dismantled a web of factories and retention sites, a probe little published connected Monday by the UN Office connected Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said.

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For much than a decade, Syria produced astir of the world’s Captagon, a highly addictive, amphetamine-like pill, bringing successful billions of dollars for al-Assad’s government.

However, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has carried retired a clampdown arsenic helium tries to legitimise his government and strengthen diplomatic ties globally.

Overall, 15 industrial-level laboratories and 13 retention sites person been shuttered, according to the UNODC report. The bureau said the enactment has “drastically changed” the Captagon marketplace crossed the region.

Syria’s relation successful the cause commercialized had antecedently drawn scrutiny from galore Gulf states, wherever the pill is popular, including Saudi Arabia. It besides helped to punctual Western sanctions.

‘Political volition and planetary cooperation’

For years, the Captagon commercialized provided billions of dollars successful nett for networks and individuals aligned with the erstwhile authorities “either wrong the enactment of the regime’s information apparatus, Syria’s commercialized assemblage and concern elite, and/or household members of Bashar al-Assad”, according to Caroline Rose, an adept connected Syrian cause trafficking astatine the New Lines Institute deliberation tank.

Maher al-Assad, Bashar’s member and erstwhile commandant of the army’s elite Fourth Division, was identified arsenic a cardinal player, profiting from protecting shipments done Latakia, a erstwhile al-Assad stronghold.

Despite the existent Syrian government’s targeting of the industry, ample seizures of the cause crossed the portion suggest that important stockpiles of the pills originating from Syria stay successful circulation, the study noted.

Smaller-scale accumulation is besides apt continuing wrong Syria and successful neighbouring countries, the UNODC added, with Gulf countries inactive the apical buyers of the drug.

The UN bureau said the disruption of the Middle East’s Captagon manufacture shows that with “political volition and planetary practice … adjacent highly analyzable cause markets tin beryllium destabilised wrong a comparatively abbreviated play of time”.

However, it warned that the displacement risks pushing determination consumers towards caller synthetic substances, similar methamphetamine, which has precocious grown successful popularity.

“Without addressing the underlying request for ‘Captagon,’ trafficking and usage are apt to displacement toward different substances, specified arsenic methamphetamine, with caller routes and actors emerging to capable the gap,” it said.