DECRIMINALIZE DRUGS

Captagon connection: how Syria became a narco state

Rouba EL HUSSEINI, Jean Marc MOJON
Wed, November 2, 2022 


LONG READ

A decade of appalling civil war has left Syria fragmented and in ruins but one thing crosses every front line: a drug called captagon.

The stimulant -- once notorious for its association with Islamic State fighters -- has spawned an illegal $10 billion industry that not only props up the pariah regime of President Bashar al-Assad, but many of his enemies.

It has turned Syria into the world's latest narco state, and sunk deep roots in neighbouring Lebanon as its economy has collapsed.

Captagon is now by far Syria's biggest export, dwarfing all its legal exports put together, according to estimates drawn from official data by AFP.


An amphetamine derived from a once-legal treatment for narcolepsy and attention disorder, it has become a huge drug in the Gulf, with Saudi Arabia by far the biggest market.

AFP interviewed smugglers, a fixer who puts together multi-million dollar deals, and 30 serving and former law enforcement officers from Syria and beyond, as well as diplomats and drug experts in a bid to grasp the scope of the phenomenon.


Given the danger of speaking publicly -- particularly for those inside the trade -- the majority asked for their identities to be protected.

- 'I can work for days' -

In Saudi Arabia, captagon is often talked of as a party drug, but its hold extends far beyond the gilded lifestyles of the kingdom's wealthy elite.

Cheap, discreet and less taboo than alcohol, many poorer Saudis and migrant workers go to work on the drug.

"I can work for two or three days non-stop, which has doubled my earnings and is helping me pay off my debts," said Faisal, a skinny 20-year-old newlywed from a working-class background, who spends 150 riyals a week ($40) on the pills.

"I finish my first job exhausted in the early hours of the morning," but the drug helps him push through to drive for a ride-hailing service.

An Egyptian construction worker told AFP that he began taking the pills after his boss secretly slipped some into his coffee so he could work faster and longer.

"In time my colleagues and I became addicted," he added.

The retail price of a pill varies wildly from $25 for the premium tablets sold to the Saudi jetset to low quality adulterated pills that go for a dollar.

Many begin their journey to the Gulf in the lawless badlands between Syria and Lebanon.

- Border barons and tribal networks -

Hidden behind dark glasses and a mask in the middle of a vineyard in the Bekaa Valley, a Lebanese fixer and trafficker told AFP how he organised the shipments.

"Four or five big names typically partner up and split the cost of a shipment of say $10 million to cover raw material, transport and bribes," he said.

"The cost is low and the profits high," he said, adding that even if only one shipment out of 10 gets through, "you are still a winner".

"There's a group of more than 50 barons... They are one big web, Syrians, Lebanese and Saudis."

While the captagon trade spans several countries, many key players have tribal ties, particularly through the Bani Khaled, a Bedouin confederation that reaches from Syria and Lebanon to Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

A shipment can stay within the Bani Khaled's sphere of influence the whole way from manufacture in Syria to delivery in Saudi Arabia, said multiple sources, including a smuggler, an intelligence officer and Syrian army deserters.

The economics of the trade are dizzying.

More than 400 million pills were seized in the Middle East and beyond in 2021, according to official figures, with seizures this year set to top that.

Customs and anti-narcotics officials told AFP that for every shipment they seize, another nine make it through.

That means even with a low average price of $5 per tablet, and only four out of five shipments getting through, captagon is at least a $10 billion industry.

With Syria the source of 80 percent of the world's supply, according to security services, the trade is at least worth three times its entire national budget.

- Assad's brother -

The Syrian state is at the heart of the trade in Assad-controlled areas, narcotics experts say.

The shadowy network of warlords and profiteers Assad indebted himself to to win the war has benefited hugely from it, including Lebanon's powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah group, which experts say plays a significant role in protecting the trade along the Lebanese border.

"Syria is in dire need of foreign currency, and this industry is capable of filling the treasury through a shadow economy from importing raw materials to manufacturing and finally exporting" the pills, an ex-Syrian government adviser now outside the country told AFP.

One major mover keeps coming up ==in all the AFP interviews -- Assad's much-feared brother Maher, the de facto head of Syria's elite unit, the 4th Division.

A dozen sources told AFP that the division was deeply involved in the trade, including smugglers, a regional law and order official, a former Syrian intelligence officer, a member of a tribe that smuggles captagon and a pharmaceutical industry insider.

The British Army-linked CHACR think tank and the independent Center for Operations Analysis and Research (COAR) have also pointed the finger at Assad's brother.

The Syrian authorities did not reply to AFP requests for comment after being contacted at the United Nations and through the country's embassy in Paris.

"Maher al-Assad is one of the main beneficiaries of the captagon trade," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"He receives his own share from the profit. Drug money has become a main source to pay the salaries of an armed group affiliated with the 4th Division," he added.

Some captagon labs get "the raw material directly from the 4th Division, sometimes in military bags", said a Syria monitor, with a trafficker telling AFP that it even supplied rebel groups opposed to the regime.

The division controls large parts of the porous border with Lebanon that is key to the trade, with the Mediterranean port of Latakia another of its bastions.

Caroline Rose, of the Washington-based Newlines Institute, said it has "played an active role in guarding, facilitating and running a lot of captagon in Homs and Latakia" and then "transporting shipments to state-owned ports".

The Lebanese frontier, which has never been clearly demarcated, has long been a happy hunting ground for smugglers, with captagon operations now booming in the north.

"Wadi Khaled is the new hub, the place is full of traffickers," a judicial source told AFP, referring to a remote northern border region where much of the population on the Lebanese side identifies as Syrian.

At the height of the war, arms were smuggled into Syria through Wadi Khaled. Now captagon and migrants attempting to make the perilous crossing to Europe flow in the other direction.

- Rebel involvement -

The southern Syrian provinces of Sweida and Daraa, which border Jordan, are other key smuggling routes to Saudi Arabia, with the latter also home to many drug labs.

Sweida teems with gangs transporting captagon, with Bedouin tribes bringing consignments down from major production plants around Damascus and Homs.

"The smuggling is organised by the tribes who live in the desert in coordination with over 100 small armed gangs," said Abu Timur, a spokesman for the local Al-Karama armed group.

Across Syria the money to be made from captagon trumps old enmities.

"Captagon brought together all the warring parties of the conflict... The government, the opposition, the Kurds and ISIS," the ex-Syrian government adviser said.

Even in the north, home to the last pockets where rebel and jihadist groups are holding out against Assad, the drug has forged unlikely alliances.

"I work with people in Homs and Damascus who receive the pills from 4th Division depots," a smuggler in the Turkish-dominated region told AFP.

"My job is to distribute the pills here or to coordinate with rebel groups to send them to Turkey," he said.

"This job is very dangerous and very easy at the same time."

The trafficker said he also sold pills to leaders from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham jihadist group that dominates the Idlib enclave in northwestern Syria.

He said myriad groups working as Turkish proxies and under the rebel umbrella known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) had aggressively moved in on the captagon business recently.

"The area is teeming with rebel groups. It's a jungle, everyone is hungry out there and wants to eat," he said.

He said the new captagon kingpin in the region is Abu Walid Ezza, a commander from the Sultan Murad faction of the SNA.

"He has very good relations with the 4th Division, since he used to be based in Homs," the trafficker said. "He brings excellent pills."

The faction told AFP they had nothing to do with the trade.

Turkish players are also deeply involved, said one regional judicial investigator.

"Diethyl ether, a kind of chloroform, is one of the main precursors needed for (making) captagon, and most of it enters from Turkey," the source said.

- Candy machine -

Beyond the chemicals, the biggest investment for a captagon lab is a tablet press or candy-making machine.

One Chinese website even advertises a "captagon tablet press" for $2,500 that can spew out tens of thousands of pills an hour.

For a few dollars more you can get the pill stamps with captagon's trademark logo -- the two Cs that have earned it the nickname "Abu al-hilalain" (two crescent moons).

Once the chemical precursors have been procured, it only takes 48 hours to set up a captagon manufacturing laboratory with relatively rudimentary equipment.

Which means even when drug units swoop, the captagon cooks can quickly start working again. They have even been known to set up mobile labs in the back of utility vans, especially after a recent clampdown in eastern Lebanon.

The Syrian government also acts but most seizures "are nothing but pure farce... the enforcers are themselves the thieves," said a Syrian pharmaceutical company worker interviewed outside the country. Some pharma plants are also involved in the trade, he added.

Slick videos from Saudi Arabia's customs and police boast of how they are battling captagon with state-of-the-art detection technology and dog units.

But senior security and judicial officials in the region told AFP that the traffickers are always a step ahead.

"At (Lebanon's) Tripoli port, for example, the scanner always needs repairing on the wrong day, or is inadvertently switched off," said a senior Lebanese official.

"And when arrests are made, the security services always bring the driver to court, the only guy who doesn't know anything," the official added.

Corruption also helps to load the dice in the smugglers' favour. Several anti-narcotics officials told AFP that some senior officials were on the take and had even sold off seized drugs

- 'Captagon king' –

"Captagon king" Hassan Dekko used to run his empire out of the Lebanese border village of Tfail, which sits at the tip of a tongue of land jutting into Syria north of Damascus.

But Dekko, a binational with high-level political connections in both countries, was arrested in April last year after major captagon seizures.

In court documents obtained by AFP, Dekko denied any involvement in drug trafficking.

But anti-narcotics chiefs in Lebanon claim that some of the businesses he owns, including a pesticide factory in Jordan, a car dealership in Syria and a fleet of tanker trucks, are common covers for drug barons.


However, a senior security official said Dekko's influence had been on the wane.

Several security sources as well as deserters from the Syrian army described Syrian MP Amer Khiti, who is under US sanctions, as another major figure in the business.

"Khiti is involved in smuggling captagon," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed, and he has also been named in CHACR and COAR reports.

One of his workers told AFP that he had seen captagon being delivered to a warehouse near Damascus.

"He is a good man. We don't care what he does, so long as he helps the people," the employee said.

"The Khiti family has been involved in this since before the war. They used to put pills in plastic bags and stitch them inside sheep" to smuggle them, he added.

Khiti could not be reached for comment.

- 'No smoking gun' -

With no end in sight to their economic and political crises, the fear is that captagon will become an even bigger pillar of life in Syria and Lebanon, where up to a fifth of the pills are produced.

Multiple sources told AFP that the captagon barons have built strong political connections there.

"Syria became the global epicentre of captagon production by conscious choice," said Ian Larson, chief Syria analyst at the COAR political risk consultancy.

With its economy crippled by war and sanctions, "Damascus had few good options", he added.

From the Syrian regime officials and millionaire businessmen at the top of the chain down to the villagers and refugees employed to cook and conceal the drugs, captagon dollars get spread far and wide in both countries.

"There is still no smoking gun directly linking Bashar al-Assad to the captagon industry, and we shouldn't necessarily expect to find one," said Larson, who has written extensively on the drug.

On September 20, the US House of Representatives passed an act with the catchy acronym CAPTAGON -- Countering Assad's Proliferation Trafficking And Garnering Of Narcotics Act -- but the drug has generally received scant attention in Western policy-making circles.

Meanwhile, both the dealers and those tracking them believe the captagon era is only just beginning.

"The trade will never stop, generation after generation will keep working in it," the Lebanese fixer insisted.

A senior judicial source agreed. "They are never convicted and the money is huge. Give me one reason why this would stop."

(Additional reporting by Haitham el-Tabei in Saudi Arabia and Patrick Lee in Kuala Lumpur.)

‘Captagon connection’: How Syria became a narco state

A smuggler describes the inner workings of the captagon trade in northern Syria, where the stimulant is trafficked across frontlines between areas under the control of Syrian government forces, Turkish-backed rebels, and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham jihadist group. "It's a jungle out there, everyone is hungry and everyone wants to eat.” The stimulant – once notorious for its association with Islamic State group fighters – has spawned an illegal $10-billion industry.

 

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CAPTAGON 

‘A dirty business’: how one drug is turning Syria into a narco-state

Martin Chulov 

Middle East correspondent

THE GUARDIAN 

In the summer of 2015 a businessman in the Syrian province of Latakia was approached by a powerful security chief, seeking a favour. The official wanted the merchant, an importer of medical supplies, to source large amounts of a drug called fenethylline from abroad. The regime, he said, would readily buy the lot.

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: 

AP A Saudi customs officer opens imported pomegranates containing Captagon pills in Jeddah.

After an internet search, the merchant made a decision. He left his home that same week, first sending his wife and children to exile, then following after, scrounging what he could from his businesses for a new start. “I know what they were asking me to do,” he said from his new home in Paris. “They wanted the main ingredient for Captagon. And that drug is a dirty business.”


Other businessmen in Syria’s north have not shared his reservations. The manufacture of Captagon in the regime heartland has become one of Syria’s only recent business success stories; a growth industry so big and sophisticated that it is starting to rival the GDP of the flatlining economy itself.

From the ruins of Syria, and the similarly disastrous collapse across the border in Lebanon, where this week a shipment of Captagon hidden in pomegranates and exported from Beirut was found by Saudi officials, a reality is crystallising: both countries are fast becoming narco-states - if they have not met that definition already.

© Provided by The Guardian Captagon is one of several brand names for the drug compound fenethylline hydrochloride. Photograph: NapoliPress/Rex/Shutterstock

Before last Sunday’s seizure of millions of Captagon pills, which led to a ban in Saudi Arabia on all agricultural imports from Lebanon, at least 15 other shipments of the drug had been intercepted in the Middle East and Europe in the past two years. Six police and intelligence officials in the Middle East and Europe have told the Guardian that all were shipped from Syria’s Captagon heartland, or across the frontier in Lebanon, where a network of untouchables – crime families, militia leaders and political figures – have formed cross-border cartels that make and distribute industrial scale quantities of drugs.

“They are very dangerous people,” said one senior official in Beirut. “They are scared of no one. They hide in plain sight.”

Captagon is one of several brand names for the drug compound fenethylline hydrochloride. A stimulant with addictive properties, it is used recreationally across the Middle East and is sometimes called a “poor man’s cocaine”. It is also used by armed groups and regular forces in battle situations, where it is seen as having properties that boost courage and numb fears.

For all intents and purposes, the border between both countries is redundant, a lawless zone where smugglers operate with the complicity of officials on both sides. The smugglers move precursors and finished products, both hashish and Captagon, along a route that takes in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, the Syrian border town of Qusayr and the roads north through the Alawite heartland of the Assad regime, towards the ports of Latakia and Tartus.

© Provided by The Guardian The port of Latakia is favoured by smugglers. Photograph: Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images

Latakia in particular has been under the intense scrutiny of European and American police and intelligence agencies. A cousin of the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, Samer al-Assad is an influential figure at the port. According to the exiled merchant and three other Latakia businessmen, anyone who wants to operate must pay a substantial cut from proceeds in return for access to networks and protection. Despite the scrutiny on the port, few interdictions have been made at the source. Instead the roll call of hauls found since 2019 has rivalled the heyday of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel for scale and efficiency.

They include five tonnes of Captagon tablets found in Greece in July that year, two similar hauls in Dubai in subsequent months, and four tonnes of hashish uncovered in the Egyptian city of Port Said in April 2020, wrapped in the packaging of the Milkman company. At the time the company was owned by the regime tycoon Rami Makhlouf.

There was also a Captagon shipment to Saudi Arabia hidden in tea leaves, as well as seizures in Romania, Jordan, Bahrain and Turkey. In July last year, the biggest ever haul of the drug, with a street value of more than €1bn (£870m), was intercepted in the Italian port of Salerno, which is believed to have been intended as a waypoint en route to Dubai.

© Provided by The Guardian Naples law enforcement officers inspect a huge seizure of Captagon tablets in Salerno in July 2020. Photograph: Ciro Fusco/EPA

The consignment was hidden in paper rolls and machinery sent from a printing plant in Aleppo, and officials in Rome initially blamed the import on the Islamic State terror group. Last December, blame was shifted to the powerful Lebanese militia-cum-political bloc Hezbollah. The party denies involvement and claims it has no hand in a regional and global trade in Captagon that is rapidly becoming associated with both failing states.

The research organisation the Centre for Operational Analysis and Research, which focuses on Syria, this week released a report highlighting the role of Captagon and hashish in the country, where the economy has been crippled by a decade of war, western sanctions, entrenched corruption and the collapse of Lebanon, where billions of dollars have disappeared in the pit of the country’s banking system.

“Syria is a narco-state with two primary drugs of concern: hashish and the amphetamine-type stimulant Captagon,” the report says. “Syria is the global epicentre of Captagon production, which is now more industrialised, adaptive, and technically sophisticated than ever.

“In 2020, Captagon exports from Syria reached a market value of at least $3.46bn [£2.5bn]. Though conjectural, a market ceiling significantly higher than this is distinctly possible. Although Captagon trafficking was once among the funding streams utilised by anti-state armed groups, consolidation of territorial control has enabled the Assad regime and its key regional allies to cement their role as the prime beneficiaries of the Syrian narcotics trade.”

An exiled former regime insider who retains connections with some officials inside the country said: “The war in Syria has not only caused the death of hundreds of thousands, over 6 million refugees, 8 million internally displaced, around 1 million injured, [and] the complete destruction of towns and cities, but [also] a total collapse of the economy following the Lebanese banking crisis, followed by the pandemic and the Caesar Act [of US sanctions] which has turned the country officially into a ‘narco-state’ … with a few regime businessmen and warlords turning into drug lords.

“At the start of the conflict, $1 was equal to 50 Syrian pounds. The exchange rate dropped but managed to stay at 500-600 Syrian pounds throughout eight years of the war until the Lebanese crisis began in 2019. Then we started seeing the total collapse of both currencies simultaneously, which shows how interconnected they are. Lebanon had been acting as Syria’s respirator. And it suddenly lost its oxygen supply.”

Several months after the Latakia merchant fled Syria, a visitor arrived in Lebanon on a private jet from Saudi Arabia. His name was Prince Abdulmohsen bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, a member of the royal family, then in his late 20s. As the prince prepared to fly home, on 26 October 2015, he was arrested, allegedly with two tonnes of Captagon pills in his luggage. For the next four years, he was held in a room above a police station in Beirut’s Hamra district, where he was given more perks than other prisoners as negotiations for his release continued.

“He was set up by Hezbollah,” said a Lebanese intelligence official. “He walked right into a trap, and it took them [Riyadh] a long time to free him, because the people here were looking for the right prize for him. The state was not involved. It was all made to go away. The right people were paid, and he went home in 2019. Captagon can get things done.”

A little-known drug brought billions to Syria’s coffers. Now it’s a bargaining chip

Story by Celine Alkhaldi • Yesterday

Ahighly addictive drug that became Syria’s economic lifeline over a decade of isolation may now be serving as a bargaining chip as it tries to normalize ties with neighboring states, analysts say.

Captagon, a drug that is relatively unknown outside the Middle East, helped Syria turn into a narco-state after much of the international community cut off its economy due to its brutal crackdown on an uprising in 2011.

It is a synthetic amphetamine-type stimulant, fenethylline, which goes by the trade name captagon, and has become the center of an increasing number of drug busts across the Middle East. Experts say the vast majority of global captagon production occurs in Syria, with the Gulf region being its primary destination.

The growth of the industry has raised alarms in the international community. Last year, the US introduced the 2022 US Captagon Act, which linked the trade to the Syrian regime and called it a “transnational security threat.”

After more than a decade of boycotting him, Syria’s Arab neighbors are now in talks to bring President Bashar al-Assad in from the cold. The Syrian leader has been received in some Arab capitals, but he is yet to be awarded the ultimate normalization with Saudi Arabia, one of Syria’s staunchest foes – and the biggest market for its drugs.

Following the deadly February 6 earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, Saudi relief planes landed for the first time in a decade at regime-controlled airports. And last month, Saudi state media reported Riyadh was in talks with Damascus to resume providing consular services between the two countries.

Analysts say captagon is likely to be high on the agenda in attempts at normalization.

Saudi media has been sounding the alarm lately over the rise in drug use. In September, Saudi authorities announced the largest seizure of illicit drugs in the country’s history after nearly 47 million amphetamine pills were hidden in a flour shipment and seized at a warehouse in the capital Riyadh. Millions more pills have been intercepted since. The UN says amphetamine seizures in the region refer predominantly to captagon.

“Captagon has been touted as a ‘card’ in rapprochement talks between the Syrian regime and counterparts pursuing normalization,” said Caroline Rose, a senior analyst at the New Lines Institute in Washington, DC, who has studied the captagon trade.

“The regime has been leveraging its agency over the captagon trade, signaling to states considering normalization that they could reduce captagon trafficking as a goodwill gesture,” Rose told CNN.

Exported by several actors, including Syrian smugglers, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and pro-Iranian Iraqi militias, “the captagon smuggling is worth more than Syria’s legal export,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC and an expert on the topic. Hezbollah has denied ties to any drug trades.

The United Kingdom, which last month imposed new sanctions on Syrians connected to the trade, said the Assad regime has benefited from the captagon trade to the tune of $57 billion. It described it as a “financial lifeline” for Assad that is “worth approximately three times the combined trade of the Mexican (drug) cartels.”

Syrian state media regularly reports on captagon drug busts, saying that the interior ministry is cracking down on its trade as well as that of other narcotics.

Smugglers ‘get military training’

Salah Malkawi, a Jordanian analyst who follows the trade closely, says that despite Syria’s denial, it is impossible for the drug to cross borders without the involvement of several actors closely tied to Assad and his regime.

“Commanders of militias, security agencies, military forces are involved in the drug smuggling operation,” Malkawi said. “The drugs cannot reach these areas without passing through dozens of barriers and checkpoints that fall under the Fourth Division, which is under the leadership of Maher al-Assad, the brother of the Syrian president.”

“I’ve spoken to several (smugglers),” he said. “They have received military training … using war tactics … to carry out sophisticated raids.”

The Syrian government didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Jordan, which supported anti-regime groups at the start of the Syrian civil war, has in recent months also been on the road to rapprochement with Assad.

Its foreign minister this year made his first visit to Damascus since the start of the Syrian civil war and has been sending humanitarian aid following the February 6 earthquake.

Jordan has been directly impacted by Syria’s captagon trade due to the prevalence of its use in border regions in the northeast of the country, said Saud Al-Sharafat, a former brigadier general in the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate, as well as founder of the Shorufat ِCenter for the Study of Globalization and Terrorism in Amman, Jordan.

“There is also the high cost of securing the borders and the increase in pressure on the armed forces and security services,” Al-Sharafat told CNN.

He welcomed the US Captagon Act as “the first serious international effort” to prevent the regime from expanding its use of the drug “to destabilize security in the region and the world.” Syria could potentially flood Europe and Western countries with the drug through Turkey and use it as a bargaining chip against them, he said.

But even if agreements are reached between Syria and its neighbors over stopping exports of the drug, experts say it is unlikely that Assad will fully abandon the trade.

“That’s asking the key trafficker to stop his business,” Felbab-Brown said. “It is very unlikely that the Assad regime would give up on its crucial revenue source.”

At best, he may offer cosmetic solutions to the problem, experts say, promising tighter restrictions and tougher law enforcement at home on producers and traders, whom the regime denies it is involved with.

Rose of the New Lines Institute said that the regime may maintain its captagon businesses as a form of long-term leverage against its neighbors, while maintaining “some level of plausible deniability with the trade, blaming opposition forces and non-state actors, while undertaking a wave of cosmetic seizures at home to shift the blame away from the government.”

Nadeen Ebrahim contributed to this report.

Conflict, corruption turning Lebanon, Syria into narco-states: Report

Both countries exporting massive quantities of drug Captagon to prop up ailing economies

Expert: ‘All countries which are under Iranian occupation are technically narco-states’

https://arab.news/psuu8
Updated 18 January 2022
ARAB NEWS


LONDON: The large-scale export of Captagon from Syria and Lebanon is the legacy of a decade of conflict combined with widespread corruption, and reliance on the drug revenues is turning both countries into narco-states, according to a new report by Britain’s Channel 4 News.

In Lebanon, militias and gangs operating in Hezbollah-controlled areas such as the Bekaa Valley are producing up to 600,000 Captagon pills per week — worth around $3 million if sold in the Gulf.

Captagon, a brand name for the amphetamine-type stimulant fenethylline, is a cheap, readily produced drug previously used by Daesh fighters to battle without fear.

An anonymous producer of the drug told Channel 4 News: “Poverty and need forced me to trade in Captagon.”

Lebanon has been grappling with an economic collapse that has driven many of its people out of the country or into illicit activities.

The corruption of the Lebanese state, of which Iran-backed Hezbollah is a major constituent, eases the process for manufacturing and exporting drugs.

“Crime exists alongside corruption in this country. If there was no corruption, there would be no crime,” said the Captagon producer.

The Assad regime in Syria, which is dealing with its own currency crisis and economic collapse, is also becoming a narco-state, said Makram Rabah, a history lecturer at the American University of Beirut.

“At the moment both Lebanon and Syria, and all countries which are under Iranian occupation, are technically narco-states — and we’re being dealt with accordingly,” Rabah told Channel 4.

“This is, unfortunately, a reality which the Lebanese up until now haven’t yet admitted, and it’s something that will prevent us recovering from the ongoing economic collapse.”

For the Assad regime, the trade of drugs is now a lifeline for an economy ravaged by a decade of civil war and crippling international sanctions.

In 2020, legal exports from the country were worth just a fifth of the value of Captagon seized from Syrian drug traders.

According to a report by the Cyprus-based Center for Operational Analysis and Research, “Captagon exports from Syria reached a market value of at least $3.46 billion” in that year.

Some of those Syrian drug dealers are known to operate out of the port of Latakia, a stronghold of the regime and under the direct control of President Bashar Assad’s brother, who commands some of the country’s most elite and loyal fighting units.

Rabah said the export of Captagon is not only keeping the Syrian economy from total collapse, but is also being used to seek revenge on Gulf countries that opposed the regime’s violent crackdown on protesters and the war that ensued.

“This drug, particularly recently with the start of the Syrian civil war, has become a weapon, a tool that the Syrian regime, as well as the Iranian regime, uses against both Lebanon and the Gulf,” he added. Captagon “has become synonymous with Hezbollah and also the Assad regime,” he said.

The trade of the drug also presents a problem for Lebanon’s border officials, whose responsibility it is to prevent their export, which is pushed by other factions within the state, namely Hezbollah.

Col. Joseph Musalim of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces said: “The manufacture and smuggling of Captagon didn’t exist in Lebanon before the Syrian crisis. It came after the crisis, and showed traders and manufacturers that it’s a profitable trade.”

Gulf countries have responded to the deluge of Captagon coming out of Lebanon and Syria by tightening customs restrictions of goods often used by drug smugglers.

In April last year, Saudi Arabia announced the suspension of fruit and vegetable imports from Lebanon after the seizure of more than 5 million Captagon pills hidden in fruit.

DECRIMINALIZE DRUGS
'You feel invincible': Inside Lebanon's thriving underground Captagon scene

In-depth
Niko Vorobyov
12 August, 2022

In-depth: Delivering euphoria and alertness, Captagon is popular with partygoers and soldiers alike. The New Arab spoke with smugglers, psychiatrists and drug policy experts about the drug's effects, trafficking, and the emergence of narco-states.

"During the war I saw slaughter, barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, everything you can imagine," Hamza, now a refugee in neighbouring Lebanon, remembered of his time in the Free Syrian Army.

Hailing from the city of Hama, where dictator Hafez al-Assad ruthlessly crushed a Sunni uprising in the 1980s, left him with a burning hatred of the Assad dynasty. So at the time of the Arab Spring, he joined first the protests then the rebellion against Bashar al-Assad.

Throughout history, armies have relied on chemical courage for their troops, and this time was no different. A slightly bitter-tasting pill was handed out among the fighters along with food and water.

“You feel invincible, like Jean-Claude Van Damme; you can defeat anyone,” Hamza recalled. “The effects last up to 48 hours, depending how much you take. Afterwards you feel down, with no power to move, so if you miss the feeling you can take some more. But it’s up to you. I don’t take it any more.”

"Much as cocaine once did in the Americas, [Captagon] is playing an increasingly important role in the Middle East, from powering the Syrian civil war and the Assad regime to fruit exports"

Captagon is a stimulant popular with both Middle Eastern combatants and wealthy partygoers in the Gulf. The effects kick in after about an hour: you feel alertness and a sense of euphoria. Much as cocaine once did in the Americas, it’s playing an increasingly important role in the Middle East, from powering the Syrian civil war and the Assad regime to fruit exports.

Captagon, chemical name fenethylline, was originally produced as a medication to treat narcolepsy and ADHD in the 1960s, but was taken off the shelves in the 1980s for side-effects such as inducing anxiety and paranoia. Production has moved to Syria and Lebanon. After the 2015 Paris attacks, it gained an unfair reputation in Europe as “jihadi speed”, even though the autopsy found no drugs or alcohol in the terrorists’ bodies.

Although most customers are in rich Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, there’s a market at home in Lebanon as well, with tablets stamped with a double-C logo selling for 50,000 Lebanese pounds (roughly 1.70 USD) a pop.

Fenethylline, which metabolises into amphetamine, is generally considered safer than other drugs of its kind since it doesn’t raise your blood pressure to the same degree, and less addictive because of the indirect route the chemical takes to your brain. But partakers should be cautious.

RELATED

Syria Insight: Assad regime captagon trade goes unchallenged

Syria Insight

Paul McLoughlin

“The risks are real and cannot be minimised,” warned psychiatrist Ramzi Haddad. “It can produce delusions, worsen pre-existing psychiatric conditions. It's not frequent but yes, it can be fatal, mainly by cardiac arrhythmias. Even if it is less potent than the classic amphetamine, the fact that it is cheap and readily accessible increases its potential for dependence.”

Captagon pills nowadays are rarely the real deal, and more commonly contain a cocktail of speed, caffeine and other stimulants. Since the last batch of legal fenethylline was produced in 2009, the criminal world has filled the vacuum with dodgy alternatives.

In drug policy circles this is known as the iron law of prohibition: traffickers prefer dealing in more potent substances because they‘re more expensive and take up less space, meaning they’re easier to smuggle. By 2020, Syria was importing 50 tonnes of pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient for crystal meth, for Captagon production.

“For the past three years we’ve been witnessing a trend of young people using synthetic drugs,” said Nadia Badran, the executive director of SIDC, an organisation which provides harm reduction and mental health services to drug users in Lebanon.

Nine million Captagon pills hidden in a shipment of oranges, destined to one of the Gulf countries, were intercepted by customs at the port of Beirut, Lebanon on 29 December 2021. [Getty]

“After a while they become addicted and start to have mental health disorders as an effect of all these drugs. Even though they don't consider themselves addicted, they cannot stop using. They only ask us for support when they are down and they are starting to lose everything, or they have problems with the police and their family.”

Badran added that the situation has worsened since Lebanon’s financial meltdown began in 2019, as more young people lost their jobs and turned to drugs to escape depression and uncertainty.

On top of suffering addiction, the stigma and persecution of drug users further complicates their lives.

“The mindset of the general public is perhaps these people need a jail term because they’ve had no discipline before, and this is why this person became a criminal and a drug addict,” Badran explained to The New Arab.

"Upon arrival, a Captagon trafficker in his mid-thirties told us to leave our phones in the car in case we were being tracked before we sat down at the house of his business partner, a Syrian smuggler"

“If the police suspect someone is using drugs, they can take your phone, search through your numbers, call your friends and parents. And if you are arrested, it stays on your criminal record and you cannot clean it for three years. So imagine, you could stay unemployed for three years because of your record.”

Only an hours’ drive east of Beirut lies the Bekaa Valley, the heart of Lebanon’s narco-business for the past century. Cannabis and poppy plantations sprouted here in the 1920s, at the start of global drug prohibition, then flourished during the 1975-1990 civil war as the various armed factions tried to bankroll their war effort. To this day, the Lebanese government has only a tenuous grip on the valley, which is ruled by tribal clans and the Shia militant group Hezbollah.

Upon arrival, a Captagon trafficker in his mid-thirties told us to leave our phones in the car in case we were being tracked before we sat down at the house of his business partner, a Syrian smuggler.

“I dropped out of school at thirteen to work on the family business - first hash, then Captagon,” said the smuggler.

RELATED

The drug war unfolding on the Jordanian-Syrian border

Analysis

Osama Al Sharif

“I ask the owner of the secret factory to prepare an order, for example one million pills, then I liaise with my partner who sends them elsewhere. The main components are caffeine and amphetamine. Once, we bought an M&M machine to press the pills - it was confiscated by customs, but we brought a chocolatier before the judge to say it was his and we got it back! I buy the tablets for one US dollar each and sell them for ten, leaving me nine dollars profit.”

The trafficker explained that Syria is central to the enterprise.

“Before 2011, the factories were mainly in Syria, and Lebanon was just a passageway. During the war, refugees came here and established factories. Now there are factories on both sides, and those on the Syrian side are protected by their government.”

Figures in Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle have been accused of taking payoffs in return for guarding Captagon shipments and factories. One estimate put the value of intercepted shipments as $5.7 billion in 2021, several times greater than Syria's legitimate exports which stood at merely $860 million in 2020.

Soldiers in the Jordanian army patrolling along the border with Syria to prevent drug trafficking, in response to an increase in Captagon smuggling operations, on February 17, 2022. [Getty]

The trafficker told The New Arab that since he can’t ship to the Gulf directly, he uses Lebanese ports to export to Turkey or Africa, where it’s repackaged and rerouted.

“They hide it in all sorts of ways,” imparted a senior Beirut customs officer, who asked to remain nameless. “Inside shoes, fruits, steering wheels. Inside lemons - it looks fresh but you open it up and there’s Captagon inside. Among animal hides, because they smell so bad no-one wants to check.”

A Captagon shipment hidden in Lebanese pomegranates was uncovered by Saudi officials in April last year, leading the Kingdom to block all agricultural imports from Lebanon. Other loads cross by land.

In January, a convoy of Syrian smugglers drove into Jordan under the cover of a snowstorm. A gun battle erupted with Jordanian soldiers: 27 smugglers were killed, and many others were wounded or escaped back to Syria, leaving behind 3.4 million Captagon tablets and 2,500 packets of hash.

"The banning of Captagon may have caused more trouble than it was worth: the relatively mild fenethylline replaced with stronger substances by a powerful and violent underworld"

“Usually we pay off the customs and our officer tells his men to look another way while we sneak through, but sometimes the elements don’t come together and there’s a firefight. In that case we drop the cargo and run,” said the smuggler.

In the past few years authorities have uncovered some very large shipments. In 2020, 84 million pills were found in the port of Salerno, Italy, possibly after a tip-off from a mafiosi upset at someone else moving drugs through their territory.

“Our biggest risk is informers. We hide it in a professional manner so we’re sure it cannot be found. So when it’s discovered, it’s usually because of an informant,” the smuggler claimed.

Despite these mega-busts, the flow of Captagon continues. Studies have shown that even huge hauls of drugs rarely dent the market, since cartels are ready to lose a portion of their product as an inevitable cost of doing business. In fact, the illusion of scarcity created by drug busts helps keep the business profitable.

RELATED

Afghanistan's drug trade: Will the Taliban's poppy ban work?

In-depth

Mujtaba Haris

“We can’t do anything, I’ll be honest with you,” admitted the customs inspector. “It’s like if we seal one crack, another opens.”

The Middle East is repeating the usual mistakes in the war on drugs. The banning of Captagon may have caused more trouble than it was worth: the relatively mild fenethylline replaced with stronger substances by a powerful and violent underworld. Meanwhile, those suffering addiction are pushed to the edges of society by a system that seeks to lock them away.

“What we need now is a change in the law, to stop the criminalisation of people who use drugs,” Badran said in her office while a young man, one of her patients, anxiously waited outside.

Radwan Mortada contributed to reporting.

Niko Vorobyov is a freelance journalist and author of the book Dopeworld.
Follow him on Twitter: @Narco_Polo420

WAR ON DRUGS
The US is joining the fight against Captagon - will it make a difference?

DECRIMINALIZE DRUGS
The notorious party drug has ravaged the Middle East, and America is taking notice

IT'S FUNDING SYRIAN WAR

THE NATIONAL
EDITORIAL

A Syrian officer examines seized Captagon pills. AP

Sometimes it comes hidden in a crate of tea. At others it’s disguised to look like a fava bean, or delicately moulded into the shape of a hummus bowl. No matter the method of concealment, for years millions of pills of Captagon, a highly addictive drug from the amphetamine family, have found their way into ports across the Arab world. For authorities in the region the scale of the problem has demanded constant vigilance. Captagon-related busts frequently make headlines in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

This week, the sense of urgency spread to the US, where Members of Congress are urging President Joe Biden to increase American support for Middle East allies combatting the Captagon trade. The drug, known to pharmacologists as fenethylline, was developed in the 1960s as a treatment for ADHD and depression. But its addictive nature and negative side effects quickly became known, and the US took steps to ban it in 1981, with most other countries following suit.

Nearly a decade ago, however, the drug gradually re-emerged as an illicit stimulant of choice in the Middle East, where it was first introduced by criminal gangs from South-East Europe. Its manufacture and distribution was swiftly co-opted by an established nexus of militants and drug runners.

The problem is particularly severe in Syria, where civil war has left huge swathes of the country in the hands of corrupt officials and organised crime, as The National highlighted in an in-depth investigation last year. Thomas Pietschmann, an expert at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), warned that the Captagon trade had become a hallmark of business in government-held Syrian territory. The drug is thought to be one of Syria’s largest exports, valued at more than $3 billion a year, giving the government in Damascus little incentive to crack down.

“The problem is,” one Jordanian official told The National last year, “there is no security partner on the [Syrian] side of the Jordanian border.”

Captagon-related busts frequently make headlines in Saudi Arabia and the UAE

The drug’s connections to Syrian regime-held areas are the primary impetus for the Captagon Act, a bill introduced by US Congressman French Hill, which was passed in the House of Representatives in September and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.

The aim of the Captagon Act, Mr Hill told The National, is “to think through how do we…cut off the funding as a result of Captagon to [the Syrian] regime?”

But the challenges posed by Captagon extend far beyond Syria. The web of middlemen with a hand in the trade features a wide array of terrorist groups.

Smuggling routes reach deep into Iraq, and sometimes follow tortuous paths that lead to ports in Europe before doubling back to the Middle East. Hezbollah, the militant political party controlling much of Lebanon, is an especially influential player; it has been a force in the regional drug trade since the 1980s.

While America’s sudden attention towards the Middle East’s Captagon crisis is driven largely by its security concerns in Syria, greater efforts on the part of the US, the region’s largest security partner, towards getting to the root of the problem and helping to bring criminal enterprises to justice will be welcome. For Washington’s allies in the Middle East, the problem has always been much more intimate than geopolitics – a matter, first and foremost, of public safety and public health.

Arabs embracing Assad: Will it help ordinary Syrians?

Cathrin Schaer | Omar Albam in Syria

DW
04/14/2023

The Syrian government is being taken back into the fold by Arab neighbors in controversial rapprochements. At the same time, 90% of ordinary Syrians are now living in poverty. Could this help them?

"Death by consuming poison is a thousand times easier than reconciling with the criminal gang that destroyed Syria and exterminated its people," an official statement by the Syrian Islamic Council, an Istanbul-based organization set up in 2014 to represent the religious interests of the Syrian opposition, said.

There's no doubt that many Syrians who participated in the peaceful anti-government revolutions of 2011 feel the same way, whether they are religious or not. But there is also no doubt that reconciliation with the Syrian government, headed by the dictator Bashar Assad, is coming — at least in the MIddle East.

After the brutal crackdowns on protesters that eventually led to a civil war, Syria was suspended from the pan-Arab organization for regional cooperation, the Arab League, in 2011 and many Arab nations cut official ties.
Increasingly warm relations

But over the past five years that has slowly been changing, with countries like the United Arab Emirates and Jordan quietly reestablishing contact. More recently, there has been an acceleration in that process — a flurry of activity that, some observers suggest, could end up with Syria being readmitted to the Arab League at its next summit in mid-May. Even if that doesn't happen, Syria might be allowed back as an "observer" state, they say.

The signs are there. For example, Syria's foreign minister met with his counterpart in Egypt this month, their first encounter in over a decade. Also this month, Tunisia announced it would appoint a new ambassador in Damascus after cutting ties in 2012. And this week, Syria's foreign minister and deputy prime minister arrived in Saudi Arabia on a previously unannounced visit, the first since 2011.

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad met with his Egyptian counterpart in late February 

Louai BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images

Previously, Saudi Arabia was staunchly opposed to recognising the Assad regime, having supported opposition fighters during the civil war. The Saudis were one of the last holdouts to bringing the Assad regime back in from the cold.

But in February, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud told journalists at the Munich Security Conference that, "in the Arab world there is a growing consensus that the status quo [in Syria] is not workable."

He added, however, that any reconciliation would have to take into account the region's problems with Syrian refugees as well as the suffering of Syrian civilians inside the country.

Will normalization help Syria's economy?

An estimated 90% of Syrians now live under the poverty line, the local currency has devalued by 75% and inflation is running at an estimated 55%. There are continuous power and water outages and, with 6.8 million of them, Syria also has the highest number of internally displaced persons in the world.

But could Syria's neighbors help with any of this?

Any immediate benefit from warmer relations between Syria and its neighbors seems unlikely because this process is not really about ordinary Syrians, experts told DW.

These moves are "most definitely not driven by a primary focus on the plight of Syrians inside the country or any unified regional desire to improve the country's pretty desperate circumstances," Julien Barnes-Dacey, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said. "This is first and foremost about the regional order and about the external ramifications of the Syrian conflict for the region, in terms of issues like Captagon flows and refugees."

The Syrian government is known to be behind an ever-expanding and increasingly problematic trade in Captagon pills — a highly addictive amphetamine — worth around $50 billion (€45.5 billion) in the region.

There are other reasons for normalization too: Arab states would like to see Iran's influence in Syria reduced, as well as the establishment of conditions that allow the return of Syrian refugees. In return, Syria would get political recognition and funds for reconstruction.



Syria's neighbors also fear that negative economic conditions within the country could cause further instability in the wider region. It's rare to see anti-government opinions expressed openly inside parts of the country controlled by the Assad government, but since last summer, there have been ongoing protests in Suwaydah, sparked by the deterioration in living conditions, including power and water cuts and crime.

"So this is effectively the region pivoting towards a strategy of engagement in order to address the issues that are still affecting them, rather than anybody trying to create new dynamics inside Syria that could open up some political space, that could lead to a more long-lasting, stable solution for the Syrians themselves," Barnes-Dacey told DW.
Long-term solution is needed

Radwan al-Atrash, a political activist from the Syrian opposition who lives in Idlib, an area not controlled by the Assad regime, agreed.

"It's only about politics," he told DW. "With regard to eradicating poverty, that will depend on achieving lasting stability, where funds are transferred into projects that provide services that could then offer job opportunities, rather than just focusing on humanitarian aid."

​​​​

Normalization has accelerated following the earthquake in February

Image: DW

"I don't think the situation will improve just because an embassy opened or some diplomats visited," added Khaled al-Terkawi, an economist and senior researcher at the Jusoor Center for Studies, an Istanbul-based think tank. "So we should distinguish between the short and long term. And in the longer term, it will depend on the response of the Assad regime and of other countries."

In a March 30 briefing, US diplomat Barbara Leaf acknowledged that while the US doesn't intend to come any closer to Syria, America's Arab allies are intent on normalizing relations with the Assad regime.

"Some of them have said very frankly, privately, and you’ve heard some of them publicly say, that in their view isolation hasn’t worked; they want to try engagement," the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs noted. "And our approach on that score is to say, then make sure that you get something for that engagement. And I would put ending the Captagon trade right at the top alongside ... providing relief to the Syrian people from the terrible decade of oppression that they’ve suffered."

Potential to do some good

In the medium term, there could be some advantages for ordinary Syrians.

For example, as Hamid, who lives in a regime-controlled area and therefore cannot give his real name for security reasons, told DW, he was actually happy about possible normalization.

"It will open a way for me to travel," he said. "The only thing I think about is getting out of here. Nothing is going well here. And emigration will be better than being conscripted [into the regular Syrian army] where I would be forced to contribute to the killing."

The movement of people is one of the potential upsides for ordinary Syrians, confirmed Zaki Mehchy, an associate fellow at the UK-based think tank Chatham House.

"This could actually benefit ordinary Syrians," he told DW. "For example, people could visit their families inside Syria more easily, they will bring money with them and this could help revive the local economies."

Increased numbers visiting from Gulf countries could also help revive the fortunes of some small and medium-sized businesses in Syria.

With around 6.8 million internally displaced people, Syria has the highest number in the world

Ahmad al-ATRASH/AFP/Getty Images

While direct investment from Gulf states is unlikely — Syria doesn't offer great prospects for making money right now — they might provide funding for reconstruction projects in, for example, power generation. "That, too, will eventually benefit ordinary Syrians," Mehchy said.

"We can only hope for the sorts of smaller gains that effectively help Syrians survive and live a better life," the ECFR's Barnes-Dacey said. "That means questions related to the role of the regime's security branch, access to detainees and I think crucially it does mean providing a way for Syrians to grow their economy so they can provide for themselves. These are little things. But it [normalization] is still going to feel very unsatisfactory for many Syrians and for many in the West today."

Chatham House's Mehchy agreed. There are pros and cons for ordinary Syrians in the normalization of the Assad regime, he told DW. "But I believe the disadvantages for them are greater due to widespread corruption, inefficient institutions and cronyism in regime-controlled areas."

Getting a good deal for ordinary Syrians out of normalization is highly unlikely, he said. "There is no good deal with an authoritarian regime," Mehchy argued. "And now we imagine there will be a good deal between two authoritarian regimes?" he said, referring to the governments of the Gulf states and countries like Tunisia. "There's no polite way to say this, but quite frankly, that's nonsense."

Edited by Timothy Jones

Arab League readmits Syria as relations with Assad normalise

2023/05/07


By Aidan Lewis and Sarah El Safty

CAIRO (Reuters) -The Arab League readmitted Syria after more than a decade of suspension on Sunday, consolidating a regional push to normalise ties with President Bashar al-Assad.

The decision said Syria could resume its participation in Arab League meetings immediately, while calling for a resolution of the crisis resulting from Syria's civil war, including the flight of refugees to neighbouring countries and drug smuggling across the region.

While Arab states including the United Arab Emirates have pushed for Syria and Assad's rehabilitation, others, including Qatar, have remained opposed to full normalisation without a political solution to the Syrian conflict.

Some have been keen to set conditions for Syria's return, with Jordan's foreign minister saying last week that the Arab League's reacceptance of Syria, which remains under Western sanctions, would only be the start of "a very long and difficult and challenging process".

"The reinstatement of Syria does not mean normalisation of relations between Arab countries and Syria," Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit told a press conference in Cairo on Sunday. "This is a sovereign decision for each country to make."

A Jordanian official said Syria would need to show it was serious about reaching a political solution, since this would be a pre-condition to lobbying for any lifting of Western sanctions, a crucial step for funding reconstruction.

CAPTAGON

Sunday's decision said Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and the Arab League's Secretary General would form a ministerial group to liaise with the Syrian government and seek solutions to the crisis through recipocral steps.

Practical measures included continuing efforts to facilitate the delivery of aid in Syria, according to a copy of the decision seen by Reuters.

Syria's readmission follows a Jordanian initiative laying out a roadmap for ending Syria's conflict that includes addressing the issues of refugees, missing detainees, drug smuggling and Iranian militias in Syria.

Jordan is both a destination and a main transit route to the oil-rich Gulf countries for captagon, a highly-addictive amphetamine produced in Syria.

Syria's membership of the Arab League was suspended in 2011 after the crackdown on street protests against Assad that led to the civil war. Several Gulf states including Saudi Arabia began backing rebel groups fighting to oust Assad from power.

Assad later regained control over much of Syria with the help of his main allies Iran and Russia, but the war cost hundreds of thousands of lives and led millions to flee the country. Syria remains splintered with its economy in ruins.

Recently, Arab states have been trying to reach consensus on whether to invite Assad to an Arab League summit on May 19 in Riyadh to discuss the pace and conditions for normalising ties.

Responding to a question over whether Assad could participate, Aboul Gheit told reporters: "If he wishes, because Syria, starting from this evening, is a full member of the Arab League."

"When the invitation is sent by the host country, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and if he wishes to participate, he will participate," he added.

Saudi Arabia long resisted restoring relations with Assad but said after its recent rapprochement with Iran - Syria's key regional ally - that a new approach was needed with Damascus.

Washington, which terms Assad's Syria a "rogue" state, has urged Arab states to get something in return for engaging with Assad.

(Additional reporting by Hatem Maher and Nayera Abdallah in Cairo and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman Editing by Mike Harrison, Frances Kerry and Angus MacSwan)









© Reuters

Arab League Votes to Readmit Syria, Ending a Nearly 12-Year Suspension

The country is poised for a triumphant return this month at the league’s next summit — perhaps represented by President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader accused of committing war crimes against his own people.

Foreign ministers of the Arab League meeting on Sunday in Cairo

.Credit...Khaled Elfiqi/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Vivian Yee

Reporting from Cairo

The New York Times
May 7, 2023

Arab nations agreed on Sunday to allow Syria to rejoin the Arab League, taking a crucial step toward ending the country’s international ostracism more than a decade after it was suspended from the group over its use of ruthless force against its own people.

When Syria’s neighbors and peers ejected it from the 22-member league in November 2011, months after its Arab Spring uprising began, the move was seen as a key condemnation of a government that had bombed, gassed and tortured protesters and others in a conflict that metastasized into a long civil war.

Now, the region is normalizing relations, increasingly convinced that Arab countries are gaining little from isolating Syria, as the United States has urged them to. Refusing to deal with Syria means ignoring the reality that its government has all but won the war, proponents of engagement argue.

That leaves Syria poised for a triumphant return this month in Saudi Arabia at the Arab League’s next summit — perhaps represented by President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader accused of committing war crimes against his own people over the past decade. Syria’s rehabilitation could unlock billions of dollars in reconstruction projects and other investments for its tottering economy, further propping up Mr. al-Assad

The circumstances that led to Syria’s suspension have not changed; if anything, the bloodshed has only grown during the civil war that has consumed the country for the past 12 years, leaving Mr. al-Assad in power at home but a pariah nearly everywhere else.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died since the fighting broke out, and more than 14 million have fled their homes for other parts of Syria, neighboring countries or beyond, according to United Nations estimates.

“Today, Arab states have put their own cynical realpolitik and diplomatic agendas above basic humanity,” said Laila Kiki, the executive director of the Syria Campaign, a nonprofit organization that supports Syrian civil society groups.

“By choosing to restore the Syrian regime’s membership of the Arab League, member states have cruelly betrayed tens of thousands of victims of the regime’s war crimes and granted Assad a green light to continue committing horrific crimes with impunity.”

A photograph released by the Iranian presidential office showing Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, center right, and Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, center left, this month in Damascus, Syria.

Credit.../EPA, via Shutterstock

Revulsion at Mr. al-Assad’s actions, along with pressure from the United States, had left most of Syria’s Arab neighbors reluctant to engage with the government over the past decade. A few had openly supported the opposition fighting to topple Mr. al-Assad, and some remain loath to embrace him.

But the regional calculus has shifted. With the Syrian government in Damascus having retaken most of the country from opposition forces, it has been obvious for years that Mr. al-Assad is here to stay.

Deadly Quake in Turkey and Syria

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake on Feb. 6, with its epicenter in Gaziantep, Turkey, has become one of the deadliest natural disasters of the century.Families of the Missing: In the aftermath of the tragedy, with many victims still unaccounted for, the Turkish authorities turned to fingerprints, DNA tests and photographs to link unidentified bodies with their next of kin.

In Antakya: About 3,100 buildings collapsed in the city, killing more than 20,000 people. The damage is so profound that 80 percent of the structures still standing may need to be demolished.

Builders Under Scrutiny: The deadly quake has raised painful questions over who is to blame for shoddy construction and whether better building standards could have saved lives.

Needless Deaths: Middle-class landowners in Turkey got wealthy off a construction system rife with patronage. Our investigation reveals just how fatally shaky that system was.

Neighboring countries including Lebanon and Jordan have been eager to work with Syria on sending refugees who fled there back home, while others hope to cooperate on efforts to stop the trade of Captagon, an illegal, addictive drug that the Syrian government has produced and sold as sanctions have bitten and its economy has cratered.

The leading Middle Eastern power brokers, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were also looking for a new approach to dealing with Iran, which wields deep influence in Syria after sending fighters and other aid to help Mr. al-Assad cling to power. Deciding that regional isolation had only driven Syria into the arms of Iran, the Gulf monarchies now hope to peel Mr. al-Assad away from Tehran by engaging with him.

An early sign of where things were heading came when the Emirates normalized relations with Damascus in 2018. But the slow-burn movement to restore diplomatic and economic relations with Mr. al-Assad gathered momentum in recent months, after a major earthquake in February killed more than 8,000 people in northern Syria, opening the door for Arab countries to reach out.

Syrians in Atarib protesting a lack of international aid in February, after the earthquake.

Credit...Emily Garthwaite for The New York Times

Soon, planeloads of aid from Syria’s Arab brethren were landing in quake-affected areas, and Egypt dispatched its foreign minister to meet with Mr. al-Assad in Damascus. By mid-April, Tunisia had re-established diplomatic relations with Syria and Saudi Arabia had welcomed Syria’s foreign minister to Jeddah to discuss restoring ties.

After years of deep freeze, the Saudi-Syrian relationship has moved quickly in recent months as Saudi Arabia, wielding its regional clout, pushed other Arab countries toward normalization, as well. It appeared to be the main player fast-tracking Syria’s rehabilitation ahead of the Arab League summit in Jeddah on May 19, though Oman and the U.A.E. had been advocating the same for years, diplomats said.

The Arab rush to welcome Damascus back into the fold happened despite public objections from the United States, which imposed strong sanctions on Syria after its civil war began and has shown no inclination to lift them, still hoping to isolate Syria over its government’s brutality. But American efforts at easing Mr. al-Assad out and replacing him with an inclusive, democratic government have gone nowhere, leaving American officials on the sidelines.

On Twitter on Friday, two days before the Arab League meeting, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken reiterated that the United States continued to oppose normalization with Syria. A peaceful political transition that would eventually replace Mr. al-Assad through elections was “the only viable solution to ending the conflict,” he said.

Realizing they cannot stop Arab allies from restoring ties, U.S. officials have urged them to try to exact a price from Mr. al-Assad in exchange, whether it is guaranteeing the safe return of Syrian refugees, cracking down on the Captagon trade or reducing Iran’s military presence in Syria. The Arab League’s assistant secretary general, Hossam Zaki, said on Sunday that the league had formed a committee to discuss such conditions.

But renewed membership in the group, at least, was a done deal.

A poster of Mr. al-Assad on a destroyed shopping mall in Homs, Syria, in 2014.

Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

“Having Syria out of the league wasn’t useful, either to Syria or to the Arabs,” Bassam Abu Abdallah, a Damascus-based political analyst, said on Sunday, describing the decision as “very positive.”

American efforts to drive Mr. al-Assad from power had failed, he said, adding, “The U.S. political elite should abandon the mentality of regime change.”

Many of the countries in the Arab League have not yet formally re-established diplomatic relations with Syria and could still put further conditions on doing so. They include Egypt, a traditional Arab heavyweight that remains more hesitant about embracing Mr. al-Assad than its Gulf allies.

But readmitting Syria to the Arab League is a powerful statement, setting the stage for individual members to restore ties.

Even if some members were steaming ahead on their own, “normalization isn’t complete until they come to this building,” Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Arab League’s secretary general, said in a recent interview.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Vivian Nereim from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

After Shunning Assad for Years, the Arab World Is Returning Him to the Fold
April 13, 2023

Syria’s Assad Uses Disaster Diplomacy to Inch Back Onto World Stage
Feb. 16, 2023

Vivian Yee is the Cairo bureau chief, covering politics, society and culture in the Middle East and North Africa. She was previously based in Beirut, Lebanon, and in New York, where she wrote about New York City, New York politics and immigration. @VivianHYee