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Drug trafficking: how the captagon finds itself at the heart of a geopolitical conflict in the Middle East
Audio 15:59
Officers from the Narcotics Control Directorate of the Saudi Interior Ministry sort through captagon tablets seized during a special operation on March 1, 2022. © Fayez Nureldine / AFP
By: Alexandra Cagnard Follow
3 mins
Captagon is a synthetic drug that belongs to the amphetamine family.
Its traffic is constantly increasing.
Mainly produced in Syria and Lebanon, captagon is very popular with young people in the Gulf countries.
In this episode, Nicolas Falez, from RFI's international service, lays the foundations for an investigation which is just beginning and which will continue with two other journalists, Nicolas Feldman and Nicolas Keraudren, in Jordan and in the Gulf.
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In this new episode of
Witnesses to the News
,
Nicolas Falez
begins by detailing the reasons that led him to investigate this captagon sector: "
In recent years and even more in recent months, we have seen an increase in information relating to seizures of this product.
We feel that this trafficking and the consumption of this drug appears essentially in the landscape in the Middle East.
We have also seen conflicting accounts around the captagon.
We try to answer the following question: what does the captagon tell us about the Middle East today?
".
In Lebanon, Nicolas tried to find out more.
He notably went to the Bekaa plain, near the Syrian border, a place where clandestine workshops for the manufacture of captagon are suspected: “
It is very easy to manufacture this drug.
Once you have the chemicals and the small machine to make the tablets, you can install it in your kitchen or in your garage
”.
Part of the mystery around the captagon is trying to figure out which states or cross-border organizations or networks are being funded by this trafficking.
Nicolas Falez therefore met political leaders, but also members of the Lebanese Hezbollah, a party close to Iran and the Syrian power of Bashar el-Assad.
“
The border between Lebanon and Syria is very porous.
Lebanon officially acknowledges having illegal criminal production on its soil.
For Syria, it is much more opaque.
Nevertheless, numerous information suggests that there is today a significant production of captagon in Syria
”
.
The destination
end of these tablets are the Gulf countries: “
The captagon tells us something about the region.
We can clearly see today that the tensions that are developing correspond to the major geopolitical blocs.
Hezbollah assures that the production, trafficking and consumption of drugs are prohibited by Islam, but the perception of a number of Gulf countries is that enemy countries are behind this flow of an illegal substance that is consumed on their soil
”
.
According to a recent report by the American institute,
Newlines Institute
, in 2021, captagon trafficking represented an amount of more than 5 billion dollars: “
We realize how essential the lure of profit is in this business.
Here again, this raises geopolitical questions insofar as suspicions fall on countries in serious financial difficulty, Lebanon and Syria.
We can well imagine that the economic turbulence that these two countries are going through can very well encourage unscrupulous players to seek financing in this way
”
.
And Nicolas Falez concludes: "
With the journalists Nicolas Feldman and Nicolas Keraudren, we will continue to investigate in order to be able to offer in the coming months, on RFI, a series of reports on these different countries to understand how captagon, once a drug and now prohibited, feeds both traffic and fantasies in the region
”.
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Lebanon
Jordan
Syria
Saudi Arabia
Drug
Geopolitics of drugs
Hezbollah
Bashar al-Assad
Our guests
Nicolas Falez