Great report
Captagon connection (3/4): geopolitics of the captagon
Audio 7:30 p.m.
Geopolitics of captagon.
© Baptiste Condominas / RFI
By: Nicolas Feldmann Follow |
Nicolas Keraudren Follow |
Nicolas Falez Follow
11 mins
RFI is devoting an investigation to captagon, a drug produced and consumed in the Middle East, where tens of millions of pills have been seized in recent years.
After taking an interest in consumers and retailers, then going as close as possible to the borders of this illegal trade, Nicolas Feldmann, Nicolas Keraudren and Nicolas Falez looked at the geopolitical implications of a traffic that weighs on the regional chessboard.
Advertising
On April 22, Saudi Arabia announced that it had seized 3.7 million captagon pills at King Abdulaziz International Airport near Jeddah.
A spectacular seizure that the authorities did not hesitate to stage against a background of martial music.
#ارقد_وآمن |
إحباط 3 محاولات لتهريب أكثر من 300 ألف حبة كبتاجون في منفذ الحديثة، وذلك بعد العثور عليها مخبأة بطرق مختلفة، وبعد التنسيق مع @Mokafha_SA تم القبض على مستقبلي المضبوطات داخل المملكة وعددهم 3 أشخاص.
🔗|
https://t.co/5iWY97KZIb#زاتكا pic.twitter.com/70q3uIiIxG
— هيئة الزكاة والضريبة والجمارك (@Zatca_sa) June 10, 2022
In recent years, large-scale operations follow one another, benefiting in passing from a feverish media treatment.
At the end of December 2021, Lebanese customs find 9 million tablets hidden in a shipment of citrus fruits at the port of Beirut.
At the end of June 2021, Saudi authorities discover 14.4 million amphetamine tablets in the port of Jeddah hidden in iron barriers.
Seizures that reveal the extent of captagon trafficking in the region.
The testimonies collected by RFI in Lebanon and Jordan point to Syria as the main place of production of this drug, also manufactured in smaller quantities in the Bekaa plain, in eastern Lebanon.
In addition to these testimonies, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) centralizes information on drug seizures around the world.
"
Two countries - Lebanon and Syria - are the two countries most often identified as the origin of captagon tablets
", confirms the
report of this branch of the UN
.
Is captagon trafficking just an illegal business, with traffickers and law enforcement playing cat and mouse?
Or does it tell us something about the Middle East today?
Illustration based on photographs of seizures made by Saudi Customs.
© Baptiste Condominas / RFI
In the first five months of 2022, the Jordanian army announces that it has seized 19 million captagon pills.
This is already 5 million more than the total seizures of the previous year.
On the spot, the authorities did not respond to RFI's interview requests.
But on May 23, on a Jordanian television channel, Colonel Mustafa al Hiyari described the strategy of traffickers on the borders of the kingdom, divided into several units with well-defined tasks.
“
One of the groups is in charge of surveillance, another is responsible for distracting the attention of the army, while the third is waiting for the right moment to smuggle the drugs.
»
In this interview, the military official did not hesitate to qualify the situation as a "
drug war
" and pointed to the responsibility of groups affiliated with Iran.
“
In Syria, there are many terrorist organizations: Daesh, Jabhat al-Nosra or Ansar Dine.
But you also have another terrorist component: these are the Iranian organizations, they are more dangerous, because they are based on external agendas and target Jordanian national security.
»
A pill on the regional chessboard
If Bashar al-Assad's regime has remained in power in Syria despite ten years of war, it is because it has received foreign military support: that of Russia but also that of Iran and its allies. regional ones, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah.
Does this axis play an active role in captagon trafficking in the Middle East?
For Makram Rabah, professor of history at the American University of Beirut, there is no doubt: Tehran and its allies in the Levant, including Hezbollah – the powerful Lebanese Shiite organization led by Hassan Nasrallah – seek to destabilize the wealthy Gulf monarchies.
"
Captagon is clearly being used by Iran as a weapon to target Gulf countries, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia
," said this well-known analyst in Lebanon and the Gulf.
Captagon is a registered trademark of Iran.
Humorously, this drug is called "Nasrallah's pill" in Lebanon.
Iran's objective “
is first of all to create a social problem in these countries
” and to impose itself “
as an essential actor
” with whom it is essential to negotiate in the region.
And then there is of course the money generated by this traffic which represents a financial windfall for Tehran, underlines Makram Rabah.
According to him, even if it turned out that Hezbollah and Iran were not behind this business, they would remain "
responsible
", because they protect and cover the networks involved in the smuggling.
Captagon trafficking in the Middle East weighs on the sometimes tense relations between certain States in the region.
© Baptiste Condominas / RFI
Accusations firmly denied by Hussein Hajj Hassan, Hezbollah deputy since 1996. "
We consider that the production and trafficking, trade, even the use of drugs is haram in the religious sense, it is a divine fault
", insists this elected official from Baalbek-Hermel, in the Bekaa plain.
Close to the Syrian border, this region of Lebanon has the reputation of hosting both part of the production and trafficking of captagon.
But
“it is not a question specific to Baalbek-Hermel
”, defends the politician.
He assures that his constituency is no more affected than other territories in the country.
“
The Lebanese armed forces have discovered factories in many other regions, but we are focusing on Baalbek-Hermel for political reasons
”, advances this former minister, denouncing the “
media and political campaigns
” carried out against his party.
Hussein Hajj Hassan indeed accuses certain Gulf countries of wanting to “
use this issue
” for “
political reasons.
»
Syria, a “narco-state”?
If Professor Makram Rabah fears that Lebanon will become a "narco-state", a Western diplomatic source contacted by RFI already uses this term to describe Syria as Bashar el-Assad.
And this is also the analysis of the New Lines Institute, which recently
published a very comprehensive study
of captagon trafficking and its challenges.
If the civil war created "
conditions conducive to the production
" of this drug, the Syrian regime also sought "
alternative sources of income
", explains Caroline Rose, researcher in this American research center.
The Damascus authorities then requisitioned this production – already present in the Syrian landscape for decades – to “
generate new sources of income
”, both for members of the government, militias or for their allies, affiliated armed groups. Iranian Revolutionary Guards or Hezbollah.
And the clues that implicate the Syrian state are numerous, points out Caroline Rose.
First, there is the origin of many captagon shipments of industrial dimensions: these are state ports or ports accessible to the state, such as the port of Latakia.
Then there is the origin of the materials used to conceal the pills (cardboard rolls, citrus fruits, soap packaging, etc.): all come from regions controlled by the Syrian government.
"
And this allows us to go back to businessmen and personalities from the agricultural sector and the industrial sector very close to the regime of Bashar el-Assad
", explains the analyst from the New Lines Institute.
Last but not least, there is evidence that the Syrian Army's 4th Division, commanded by Maher, Bashar al-Assad's brother, "
facilitated the production and transport of captagon pills to state-controlled ports and by this 4th division
”.
►
The New Lines Institute report is available here in full
From left to right: Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah and Mohammed ben Salman, crown prince and strongman of Saudi Arabia.
© Baptiste Condominas / RFI
Business impact
Accomplices.
Beneficiaries.
Instigators?
What is the exact involvement of certain states, leaders and armed groups in the region?
The answer is hidden in the opacity of authoritarian regimes.
While captagon trafficking has geopolitical roots, it also has geopolitical consequences.
By 2021, Saudi Arabia had had enough of flushing out millions of captagon pills in products imported from Lebanon.
The kingdom then suspended its imports from this country.
A real blow for the Lebanese economy which is already going through a historic crisis.
"
Since the captagon problem appeared between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, the Saudis have stopped all their imports of goods from Lebanon
," laments Antoine Seif, head of the Lebanese industrial bakery group Moulin d'Or, who exports frozen donuts to the kingdom, for McDonalds in Riyadh.
The baker describes a "
very critical situation
", forcing in particular many industrialists who relied on their exports to Saudi Arabia to "
separate some of their employees
".
Antoine Seif denounces a “
Lebanese mafia
” which exports captagon to Saudi Arabia “
directly
via
the port or transiting through other places such as Greece or Africa
”.
The CEO of Moulin d'Or calls on the Lebanese authorities to monitor the port of Beirut more and to increase their controls to "
preserve our ties with all friendly countries
", so that the situation is resolved "
as quickly as possible
".
The suspension by Saudi Arabia of imports from Lebanon, because of captagon trafficking, weighs on Lebanese companies, such as Antoine Seif's Moulin d'Or bakeries.
© Baptiste Condominas / RFI
To date, the Saudi authorities have not responded to RFI's interview requests.
The myth of the “jihadist drug”
Mafia networks that produce and export captagon, regimes and economies that directly benefit or suffer from it, trafficking that fuels and exacerbates regional tensions... Tablets with half-moon designs are a cause for concern.
And they therefore generate a lot of rumours.
In the Middle East, as in the West, the idea still circulates that captagon is “
the drug of the jihadists
”.
The governor of the Lebanese province of Baalbek-Hermel, Bachir Khodr himself, still seems convinced.
He considers captagon to be the “
favorite drug of terrorist fighters
” because of its effects: “
They are no longer sleepy, they are aggressive, they lose physical and emotional sensations.
The Lebanese representative assures that jihadists from the Islamic State group and the al-Nusra Front have been “
seen under the effect of captagon
” and that terrorist organizations “
need it to wage war.
»
What has been the consumption of captagon among jihadists in Iraq and Syria in recent years?
Impossible to say... But the myth of a "jihadist drug" has spread when attacks have been committed in Europe in recent years, particularly in the wake of the attacks that killed more than 130 people on November 13, 2015 in Paris.
However, there is "
no tangible proof
", warns Laurent Laniel, principal analyst at the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, based in Portugal.
The toxicological analyzes carried out by the French scientific police on the bodies of the jihadists who attacked the Bataclan showed that they had taken "
neither alcohol nor drugs and in particular no captagon
", recalls the specialist.
For him, “
it is clear and clear
”, nothing proves that “
they had taken captagon or other drugs
”, including in the attacks which followed in Belgium or Sweden.
Security, commercial, social and political problems, the captagon raises many questions that societies and states in the Middle East must face today.
Editing and drawings: Baptiste Condominas
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Dope
Geopolitics of drugs
Lebanon
Syria
Jordan
Kuwait
Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates
captagon login