Middle East Methamphetamines Project
A staggering proliferation of methamphetamines—particularly crystal meth—has emerged across the Middle East region. After the Assad regime’s fall in Syria and the seizure of major, industrial-scale labs has created a likely regional shortage of captagon, the supply and demand of methamphetamines are likely to increase. This shapes an emerging crisis for regional public health, security, and governance that should be addressed with urgency and concern by local and international stakeholders.
Criminal networks trafficking methamphetamines are taking advantage of the drug’s relatively small size and competitive cost-to-weight ratio, to develop new, innovative smuggling methods to bypass detection. Methamphetamine’s highly addictive nature poses serious risks to public health, with many countries in the Middle East ill-equipped to address the growing need for rehabilitation and harm reduction. Furthermore, methamphetamine’s high price and rising popularity have offered criminal groups—some of them armed actors—opportunities to build alternative revenue streams and accrue both economic and political leverage.
The Middle East Methamphetamines Project seeks to generate new actionable intelligence and analyses about all aspects of the regional methamphetamine trade. Through open-source intelligence methods, the project maintains a comprehensive database that monitors all methamphetamine-related arrests, seizures, laboratory raids, and other developments—data that can help determine trade patterns and emerging challenges. The project also maintains a live interactive map that journalists, researchers, and policymakers can use to monitor the trade’s evolution over time and geographic scope, which can be found below. Through its intelligence reports, articles, podcasts, hosted Track II dialogues, and public events, the project serves to encourage innovative, effective policy solutions to address methamphetamine’s security, geopolitical, and health implications in the Middle East region.
The Middle East Methamphetamines Project was created and is led by Caroline Rose and is part of the Crime-Conflict Nexus Portfolio.