While overwhelming attention has concentrated on the captagon trade’s foothold in Syria and the Middle East, there is a concerning transformation taking place well outside of the Gulf and Levant in Northeast Africa, anchored in a conflict-ridden Sudan. With Syria’s state-sponsored captagon industry dismantled and key production hubs destroyed, trafficking and production networks are taking root in new areas – some existing transit and destination markets, some completely new environments – all marked by the same conditions that enabled captagon to thrive in civil war-era Syria: conflict, weak governance, and geographic proximity to markets.
Data from New Lines Institute’s Captagon Seizure Database indicates that Sudan is increasingly emerging as a hub for captagon production, with 19 seizure and manufacturing incidents recorded in the last 10 years. The project identified a particular surge in captagon-related activity, particularly production activity, since the April 2023 beginning of Sudan’s civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). This marks a change in the geographic distribution of captagon production. Three laboratories have been seized within this period – a number comparable to other major emerging production sites for captagon, such as Iraq, Kuwait, and Türkiye. Large-scale laboratory busts in Khartoum that occurred when the RSF controlled the city, coupled with the group’s track record in illicit activity, suggest that captagon production could integrate into Sudan’s war economy and reflect a new nexus between captagon and conflict.
As RSF forces retreat westward in the face of territorial losses to the SAF, production is likely to follow, relocating to strongholds in Darfur and along smuggling routes that connect Sudan to regional markets. These developments threaten to prolong Sudan’s civil war by providing the RSF with a profitable revenue stream.
The Captagon Landscape
The captagon trade landscape has undergone a dramatic transformation since the fall of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, altering global production and trafficking patterns. Syria’s new interim government has sought to dismantle the heavy production infrastructure and widespread captagon economy that the former regime cultivated. The new authorities in Damascus have destroyed several industrial-scale laboratories and seized around 100 million pills, with plans to feature counternarcotics as a central pillar of cooperation with regional neighbors.
The disruption in industrial-scale production and gradual interest from the new administration in a counternarcotics strategy has forced criminal networks to establish alternative manufacturing sites and routes closer to destination markets in the Gulf, ideally in countries with similar conflict conditions and weak state control.
The rise in captagon’s proliferation in Sudan stems from a gradual process of criminal syndicates’ experimentation with synthetic stimulants, with conflict and corruption providing conducive conditions for illicit activity. Additionally, spillover from major production hubs like Syria and Lebanon after the fall of the Assad regime, reduced influence of Iran-aligned militias, and improved state capacity have affected Sudan’s captagon landscape.
Sudan has served as a location for the captagon trade for at least a decade. Findings have indicated 19 captagon seizure incidents in the country between 2015 and 2025, four of which were laboratory busts, with Sudan serving as the southernmost country in Africa with manufacturing interdiction rates comparable to some of the largest captagon transit countries like Iraq, Türkiye, Kuwait, and Jordan.
Sudan’s captagon production capacity has risen sharply since the outbreak of the civil war, with authorities discovering three significant production sites. In June 2023, the General Administration for Drug Control seized a manufacturing site in the Blue Nile region that had the capacity to produce around 7,200 pills per hour. In August 2024, the Internal Security Police discovered a production facility in the Qari area of north Khartoum and seized approximately 10 million pills. Then in February 2025, the Sudanese General Intelligence Service dismantled a production facility in a northern Khartoum suburb near the oil refinery in Al-Gaili that had $3 million worth of captagon and equipment capable of producing 100,000 pills per hour, its largest lab bust to date. The equipment discovered in the lab was similar to that found in lab busts in Syria.
The escalation of production capacity signals Sudan’s transformation from a transit corridor to a manufacturing hub. The progression from the 7,200 pill-per-hour facility in 2023 to the 100,000 pill-per-hour operation in 2025 points to increased scale, scope, and sophistication of manufacturing operations.
Sudan’s Advantages for Captagon Production
Sudan’s civil war has fractured the country into contested territories with no unified authority. This breakdown in state control has created a permissive environment for illicit activities and a renewed need for alternative revenue streams among combatants. Synthetic drug production and trafficking offers an attractive opportunity for those groups, given its relatively simple production process that requires little scientific expertise, cheap and easily accessible chemical inputs, a low-profile manufacturing process that helps dodge interdiction, and high yield of pills. The war has strained the resources of nonstate militias and state-sponsored paramilitary groups, prompting them to seek new ways to generate income. The conflict has also imposed widespread food and income insecurity among Sudanese communities, making amphetamine-type stimulants like captagon – a drug commonly used to dull hunger, boost productivity, stave off sleep, and repress trauma – creating a new consumption market.
Vast areas, particularly in Khartoum, Darfur, and the border regions, have been operating outside the reach of formal authority. The conflict has debilitated Sudan’s already strained law enforcement and interdiction capabilities, with authorities lacking the resources necessary to effectively detect and dismantle drug production facilities. Security and policing institutions are fragmented, with many forces redeployed to front lines or co-opted by local militias. Border security is similarly insufficient: Sudan shares porous borders with its neighbors, especially Chad and the Central African Republic, making it difficult to monitor cross-border flows of illicit products. Furthermore, with potential paramilitary control over smuggling routes, checkpoints, and production sites, militant groups can operate with relative impunity. With low interdiction capacity, little surveillance infrastructure, and no centralized authority, Sudan serves as an ideal landscape for captagon production.
Sudan geographic position has also contributed to its emergence as a captagon production hub. The country’s strategic access to Red Sea shipping routes and proximity to traditional captagon-producing countries in the Levant help explain its value as a transit country in the captagon trade. Destination markets in the Gulf have come to expect captagon consignments transiting or originating from elsewhere in the Middle East or European ports, making Sudan a less suspicious origin site for consignments containing captagon and reducing interdiction risks. Further, Sudan’s access to the lucrative consumer markets in the Gulf states makes the country attractive for production. This is evident in the four documented captagon interdictions since April 2024 occurring in Red Sea state, particularly in Port Sudan. Seizures often only represent the tip of the iceberg, particularly given low law enforcement capacity. Four incidents in just over a year, even in a time of low law enforcement and surveillance capacity, demonstrate the value of Sudan’s access to consumer markets in Gulf states.
Possible Role of the RSF
The RSF’s control over known production sites, their record of profiting from multiple illicit and informal economies, and the financial incentives of the drug trade suggest the group is either directly involved in or enabling captagon production in Sudan.
The two major captagon lab seizures in northern Khartoum occurred while these areas were under the effective control of the RSF. Until March, the RSF had established strongholds throughout northern and central Khartoum following their early gains in the conflict, assuming de facto authority over infrastructure, movement, and security. The presence of large-scale captagon production facilities in these areas points to the group’s potential involvement or complicity in captagon manufacturing. Both facilities operated in neighborhoods that had been heavily fortified by RSF units, including checkpoints. It is unlikely that operations of such a scale could have functioned without at least implicit approval from the RSF.
The RSF have long relied on illicit and semi-licit revenue streams to finance operations and consolidate power, making their potential involvement in captagon production a logical extension of their existing economic strategy. Over the past decade, the group has built a significant financial portfolio rooted in gold smuggling, cross-border livestock trade, and control over commercial supply chains in conflict-heavy areas of the country. The gold sector is particularly lucrative, with RSF-controlled mines in Darfur reportedly producing around $860 million worth of gold in 2024 alone. These activities have enabled the RSF to operate with financial autonomy amid national economic collapse, which has been instrumental in sustaining its military operations.
The SAF’s recapture of Khartoum in March could disrupt RSF-linked captagon production in the capital and could lead to production labs relocating west of Khartoum. As RSF fighters retreat westward to their strongholds in Darfur, captagon production facilities could increasingly be propped up in these areas. The RSF could establish new facilities near borders with Libya or Chad, where the group can leverage existing trafficking networks across the region. Proximity to these transnational routes could allow for easier movement of captagon shipments while keeping operations in areas the RSF can securely control.
Both the RSF and SAF have reportedly engaged in illicit practices, corruption, and looting activities related to food, medicine, fuel, and even Starlink satellite dishes. Corruption and susceptibility to bribery have been reported across both forces, illustrating an emerging checkpoint economy. Many captagon consignments are directed through the SAF-controlled Port of Sudan on the Red Sea. While the SAF’s interdiction capacity is low, repeated captagon consignments routed through the Port of Sudan could point to potential bribery and corruption among local forces and customs agents.
Recommendations
The rise of captagon production in Sudan has significant implications for both regional stability and international drug control efforts. The RSF’s apparent involvement in captagon production risks prolonging the civil war by providing the group with an additional lucrative revenue stream.
Sudan’s role in captagon manufacturing and trafficking demonstrates a new need to expand the U.S. and partner strategies countering the captagon trade beyond its current and outdated mandate of limiting the former Assad regime’s control over the trade. It also illustrates a need to expand the U.S. strategy beyond the Levant and across the Red Sea into Northern and Central Africa.
The U.S. should revise its current interagency strategy on captagon, expanding beyond its existing focus on Syria and Lebanon, to include new countries and networks of interest. The United States and its partners should closely track Sudan’s emergence as a center of post-Assad captagon production and include Sudan as a country of interest in its existing counter-captagon interagency strategy. Ongoing monitoring of RSF-controlled territories, particularly west of Khartoum in Darfur and South Kordofan, will be necessary to understand the evolution of this drug economy. Additionally, the U.S. and its partners should seek to understand if and how local corruption among SAF forces and port customs officials could factor into an increased proliferation of captagon production and trafficking in Sudan and identify areas of potential cooperation.
U.S. policymakers must recognize Sudan as an emerging hub in global synthetic drug production networks and monitor how captagon could prolong its ongoing conflict by providing a funding source for a violent paramilitary group.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not an official policy or position of New Lines Institute.
