From narco-state to recovery: Syria’s war on drugs begins

In a decisive move against the remnants of Syria’s narco-state legacy, the new Syrian authorities torched a massive stockpile of narcotics on Wednesday, including over one million pills of captagon—an amphetamine widely produced under the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The scene unfolded in the courtyard of former regime security offices in Damascus, where masked security personnel, dressed in khaki uniforms, doused piles of drugs with fuel before setting them ablaze. The destruction included cannabis, tramadol boxes, and dozens of bags filled with captagon pills.

The crackdown follows the dramatic fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. On December 8, a coalition of rebel forces, led by the Islamist group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTC), seized Damascus in a rapid 11-day offensive. Assad, abandoned by his Russian and Iranian allies, fled to Moscow, ending over 50 years of Assad family rule.

Assad’s regime had long been accused of turning Syria into a narco-state, with industrial-scale captagon production fueling a multibillion-dollar drug trade that flooded markets across the Middle East, from Iraq to Saudi Arabia. Several key regime figures faced U.S. sanctions for their role in this illicit trade.

Syria’s conflict, which began in 2011 after a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests, has left over half a million dead and millions displaced. As the new authorities work to rebuild the country, dismantling the remnants of Assad’s drug empire is a critical first step.