A new film by BBC News Arabic Investigations reveals the roles played by members of the Syrian armed forces and the family of President Bashar al-Assad in a multi-billion dollar drug trade. Previously unseen evidence, WhatsApp conversations, and insider testimony show how these powerful individuals are connected to the manufacture and trafficking of Captagon, an illegal drug that is flooding the Middle East.
Relatively unknown outside the Middle East, Captagon is a highly addictive amphetamine-like substance. BBC News Arabic reporter Rasha Qandeel reveals how it’s smuggled across the Middle East, often in quantities of millions of pills, in a trade now estimated to be worth more than five billion dollars a year. In Jordan she witnesses how the army is attempting to prevent the traffickers, but it's a huge challenge; in just the first three months of 2023 the country's counter-narcotics forces seized 12 million Captagon pills smuggled from Syria.

Syria’s economy has been ravaged by twelve years of civil war and sanctions. A generation of young smugglers and drug users have been pulled into a highly organised illegal trade that generates huge revenues for members of the Syrian elite.
At a time when regional states are normalising relations with Syria - partly to prevent Captagon entering their countries - one former Syrian officer tells us: “If Bashar al-Assad stops the narcotics for more than twenty days, the economy will collapse.”
In a court case in Germany, convicted Syrian traffickers name members of the al-Assad family as business partners. Wiretaps reveal one smuggler bragging about his links to Bashar al-Assad's cousins while officers from the Syrian army tell us how high-ranking commanders are also profiting from Captagon.
The BBC has obtained other private communications that show links between one of the Syrian army’s most powerful generals – the righthand man of President al-Assad’s younger brother, Maher – and Lebanon’s so-called ‘King of Captagon’.

The BBC's new evidence also includes recordings of phone calls by Raji Falhout, the leader of a militia allied to the Syrian regime, showing that he purchased Captagon-manufacturing equipment from a fighter linked to Hezbollah, which has always denied involvement in the drug business.

In May 2023 Syria was readmitted to the Arab League on condition that it take steps to control the drug trade. A former US Special Envoy for Syria tells the BBC he doubts President al-Assad will give up so profitable a trade, since - as the film points out - his country has become the ‘Narco State’ of the Middle East. Show less