Captagon crisis: Middle East’s $5.7 billion drug trade fuels Hezbollah - report

The captagon drug has led to a multibillion-dollar drug trade in the Middle East that has funded terror groups, fueling the conflict in the region, a Sunday Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report disclosed. 

Captagon, described in the report as an "amphetamine-like drug,"  is used among a wide range of groups and individuals, including students, executives, and terrorists, the report said. The drug is highly sought after in the Gulf states; over a billion pills were seized in Arab countries from 2019-2022, according to the Atlantic Council. Terrorist organizations like Hezbollah use this as some of their main funding.

According to the report, the money from drug smuggling has been used to fund Iran-back terrorists, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, which has allegedly spent vast amounts of the funds acquired from the drug for weapons against Israel.

The WSJ emphasized that US officials have become increasingly worried that captagon trade in the region has the ability to destabilize the Middle East entirely. 

It noted that the trade of the drug could undermine the relative stability in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, countries that are considered important American allies.

The report noted that a Washington think tank, The New Lines Institute, has estimated that the global captagon market is worth approximately $5.7 billion and that the figure is "half as much as the cocaine market in Europe."

It added that the Syrian Assad regime gained an average of $2.4 billion in profit from it between 2020 and 2022.

Furthermore, in October, the US treasury reportedly sanctioned three people who were allegedly involved in the "illegal production and trafficking of captagon," intended to be used for the benefit of the Assad regime and the Hezbollah terror group.

Of the three people sanctioned, the WSJ said that one of them was the owner of a Syrian factory, which served as a front and reportedly sent pills worth "over $1.5 billion to Europe concealed in industrial paper rolls."

Additionally, the report acknowledged that since the Israel-Hamas war began, captagon seizures on the border of Joran and Syria  "increased fourfold." US officials have also reportedly expressed their fears that the continued drug smuggling could result in " increased Iranian weapon smuggling to Palestinian factions in the West Bank."

Oscar D’Agnone, medical director of the OAD Clinic in London, called captagon the "cocaine" of the Middle East, the report said.

“The regime continues to fully rely on captagon…They can’t operate without these drugs,” said  Col. Farid al-Qassem, a Syrian defector who fought in the civil war against Assad to the WSJ.

The Jerusalem Post reported on Hezbollah's involvement in the criminal underground as early as 2021. An unnamed former Hezbollah member who used to export arms and drugs to various countries once told The Media Line that the organization  “relies mainly on [the sale of] drugs since the lack of funding caused by US sanctions on a number of party members and against Iran, in addition to the collapse of the Lebanese state.

“The Lebanese security services are aware of all these transactions, but they cannot talk about them what with the collapse of the Lebanese state."

Various drugs smuggled into Middle East 

The report also highlighted that other types of drugs had been carried into the Middle East by traffickers, saying that Hezbollah has assisted the Syrian regime in "facilitating trafficking in areas under their control," a Jordanian security official told the WSJ.

At a Jordanian army base, intelligence agents reportedly showed footage to the WSJ depicting smuggling operations from Syria.

The surveillance videos allegedly included scenes of drones and homing pigeons carrying drugs across the border, children using pack donkeys to drop drugs by the Yarmouk River, and smugglers in backpacks passing Syrian army outposts without interference.

Additionally, videos provided by the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) showed men in fatigues, thought to be Syrian regime soldiers, accompanying smugglers as they transported sacks of captagon.

US attempts to crub drug trafficking 

The report explained that in December 2022, US President Joe Biden signed the Captagon Act, requiring a US strategy to curb captagon trafficking, with the US providing Jordan with satellite-guided bombs and surveillance assistance, though no troops.

The Jerusalem Post previously reported that a key part of the act's strategy is to disrupt the supply chains for precursor chemicals used in Captagon production, as well as to enhance the counter-narcotics capabilities of nations most affected by Captagon trafficking, like Jordan.

However, despite normalization agreements between Syria and Arab nations in 2023 aimed at controlling the trade, captagon smuggling persists, the WSJ reported, noting that Jordan’s antidrug operations have continued arrests and large seizures destined for Saudi Arabia.

The Jerusalem Post previously reported similar findings from The Telegraph earlier this month.