Captogan trade will ‘spill over’ outside Syria, says expert

We spoke to Caroline Rose, who’s Director of the New Lines Institute think tank.

She runs projects on the Captagon trade and post-withdrawal security landscapes, and regularly briefs governments, parliaments and intelligence agencies on the Captagon trade.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: How big is this in Syria? How many factories are there like the one Lindsey managed to get into today?

Caroline Rose: First off, thank you so much for having me on. I have to say, after researching the Captagon for many years and really assessing the amount of Captagon factories like this, it’s really amazing to finally see footage from inside of these facilities. When it comes to assessing just how many there are, we saw that there are numerous industrial-scale factories and warehouses like these concentrated around Latakia, Aleppo, Duma, Damascus, as well as quite a few small-scale factories that are quite mobile and can cross the border between Syria and Lebanon.

It’s very difficult to put a number on just how many there are in the south, but at least in the north, we expect there to be over at least ten large-scale industrial factories. It’s possible, though, as this was just reported, that many of the regime’s members, as well as some of their allies, tried to disassemble some of these factories as the regime was being ousted in the last few days of the offensive.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: I mean, we don’t precisely know what will happen to them yet and whether they will all just be destroyed or whether the lack of revenue in this country will force people to get them back into gear. But if we assume for a moment that they all stop, does that stop the trade?

Caroline Rose: No, it does not. In fact, I think what will happen is that the Captagon trade will only complicate further. Ultimately, over the last two years really, we’ve started to see the the spill-over of Captagon into neighbouring transit markets, for example, like Lebanon, into Iraq, even into Turkey as well. Kuwait, there have been some signs of production and trafficking, as well as some countries that are further away. For example, in Germany and the Netherlands there have been Captagon manufacturing centres. In Austria, there was a trafficking ring that was busted and there’s been some activity, Captagon-related activity, with trafficking in Libya as well as in Egypt.

So I think that ultimately what this is going to do, it’s going to push some of these criminal actors to get creative, to identify some existing networks as well as identify new routes, new locations for production. And we’ll see this really this large-scale spill-over of the Captagon trade outside of Syria as there is a likely crackdown on industrial scale production. This really means that we’ll see a short-term halt or at least a pause in supply. But ultimately criminal actors will be creative, will try and fill that gap, especially since demand levels continue.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: As a drug, I mean, is it addictive? A lot of the fighters were thought to have used this in the field. If it stops in Syria, is it going to cause other social problems?

Caroline Rose: Certainly. I think Captagon is a very interesting drug because unlike others where you have maybe a narrow level and or a narrowed pool of demographics and user profiles, Captagon is quite large because it’s got mass appeal. If you want to stave hunger or if you’re income- insecure or food-insecure, Captagon is very lucrative because it allows you to subsist on maybe one to two meals per day. Also, if you need to stay up late, if you’re working multiple shifts, Captagon is useful for that because it allows you to stay up at night. So, you know, taxi drivers, lorry drivers, workers who are working their second or third shifts, Captagon is very lucrative to use.

But also on the flip side, wealthy classes are also attracted to Captagon for recreational purposes. For example, university students flock to Captagon. Nightclub goers also flock to Captagon. And because in the region there’s such a large taboo with illicit drug use, it is a very attractive drug for that region because there is a licit history of Captagon from the 1960s to the 1980s.