In this episode of the Contours Podcast, New Lines Director of the Strategic Blindspots portfolio Caroline Rose sits down with Non-Resident Senior Fellow Dr. Karam Shaar and U.S. Department of State counter-narcotics expert Jonathan Earles. Together, they discuss how the fall of Assad’s Syria may affect the captagon trade, including its production and state-sponsored distribution, and the demand for the drug in the region.
Caroline Rose:
Thank you so much for tuning in into today’s episode of Contours, a New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy podcast. My name is Caroline Rose and I’m the director of the Captagon Trade Project at the New Lines Institute, where we track and analyze economic, security, and political trends related to the illicit trade in the amphetamine-type stimulant Captagon in the Middle East.
Today, just weeks after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the Institute’s Captagon Trade Project has the pleasure of hosting two esteemed experts on Syria and the crime–conflict nexus to discuss what exactly happened in Syria, how this will impact the illicit trade in the amphetamine-type stimulant Captagon, and what we can expect for this trade in the future. First, we have Jonathan Earles. Jonathan Earles is a foreign affairs officer with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and its Office of Global Policy and Programs, serving on the Counter Narcotics Team.
Prior to this assignment, he served as an IT specialist in the Secretary’s Bureau and Exec Tech, supporting the Secretary of State’s senior advisors and staff. Jonathan started his law enforcement career as a full-time police officer in the Fifth District of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia for five years. Jonathan started his National Capital Region career as the assistant director for operations and analysis for Babel Street, where he provided open-source intelligence analysis and collection on ISIS, Boko Haram, and narcotics trafficking globally on the dark web.
Before moving to the National Capital Region, he was contracted with the U.S. Army’s Seventh Special Forces Group for its advanced special operations technique course at the Eglin Air Force Base. Jonathan is a graduate of Florida State University, where he obtained his BS in social science with a certificate in emergency management from the Institute for World Politics, with a graduate certificate in counterintelligence. He recently completed his MS in cybersecurity and data privacy, focusing his research on drone operations and privacy, and is now finishing his second master’s in the National Intelligence University’s Strategic Intelligence Studies Program.
Second, we have Dr. Karam Shaar, a senior nonresident fellow at the New Lines Institute, where he focuses on illicit narcotics flows and their nexus with security and political systems in the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon and Syria. In addition to his work with New Lines, Dr. Shaar is also a consultant on Syria’s political economy and an establishing partner at the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks. Originally from Aleppo, Syria, he’s traveled extensively and is currently based in New Zealand.
Prior to joining New Lines in March 2023, Karam was affiliated with the Middle East Institute. He also previously served as the research director of the Operations and Policy Center. Before focusing solely on Syria and the region, he worked as a senior analyst at the New Zealand Treasury, a researcher at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and a senior lecturer on the Arab-Israeli conflict at Massey University. Karam’s work on Syria has been published by the Middle East Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Guardian, the Brookings Institution, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He’s a frequent media contributor and has been interviewed, quoted, or hosted by the Washington Post, CNN, the Sunday Times, Al Jazeera, the New York Times, and Chatham House.
Jonathan and Karam, thank you so much for being here with us today to discuss this monumental shift that we’ve seen in Syria. I want to start with a question for the both of you, just reflecting on the series of Captagon laboratories and warehouses that have been discovered in the wake of the Assad regime’s fall. We’ve seen them in Douma. We’ve seen them in Latakia, Yarfour, Maza, and more, most of which that have had strong ties with key high-level officials affiliated with the regime or the Assad family directly.
For individuals like Mudar al-Assad, Amer Khiti and his siblings, Maher al-Assad, and more, we’ve done quite a bit of work compiling evidence about the regime’s suspected involvement in the illicit Captagon drug trade, along with other investigations conducted by the Center for Operational Analysis and Research, OCCRP, the BBC, Al Jazeera English, and others. But I have to ask you both, are you surprised by the scale and the scope of these laboratories that have been seized in post-Assad Syria?
Jonathan Earles:
Thanks, Caroline. Yes, definitely, I am surprised, having worked on this with INL and with you both since 2020. And then while I was at Babel Street in 2015, the lab side of it that we’re seeing now in the media never really came to fruition like it is. And when you’re factoring in all the aircraft that are being seized, whether it’s at the Maza Airport or other locations, it’s really a larger nexus that’s been unfolded. And it’ll just continue to grow and more will be uncovered. But definitely on the lab side, we’ve been caught off guard on how big it’s really been and just more that’ll unfold.
Karam Shaar:
I must say for myself, I don’t know if it’s just a case of confirmation bias, but I have not been surprised actually by what emerged following the downfall of the regime. Caroline, you, myself, and many other investigative journalists have actually been talking about the role of the Syrian regime. And all we saw following the downfall of the regime is actual tangible evidence pointing to what we had already been saying.
For example, talking about Amer Khiti, who has been sanctioned for his role in Captagon, got some people saying, well, how can you prove that he’s associated. For Maher al-Assad, it’s the same case. Now we can actually say, well, look, there is a facility that if you enter it, you see all Captagon pills, and pressing machines, and chemicals, and there is evidence of Amer Khiti all over it. There is a card with his name actually on it promoting himself for the parliamentary elections, for instance.
For Maher al-Assad, the evidence now is undeniable. Some documents actually showing how many funds he has been receiving from different people who are involved in the industry. So I feel like it finally provided us with undeniable evidence of what we had already known. I think we analysts have known this for a long time, but actually some countries were either refusing to believe it or didn’t know the extent of the regime’s involvement. And this applies maybe to countries like the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia, and I think they must now know that the regime was the sponsor of the industry.
Caroline Rose:
Absolutely. And I think it’s quite telling and fascinating as well to see how fast both residents and forces associated with the opposition were able to identify these facilities, whether laboratories or warehouses, and whether it was, for example, the stench of the drugs or the precursor chemicals that were there, or years of seeing convoys come in and out of these facilities that raise suspicions.
I think it’s really interesting to see how just in the immediate days of the fall of the regime, we were able to find at least three major laboratories, as well as, of course, additional storage sites and trafficking nodes associated with the regime. And this comes after years of no laboratory or major warehouse seizures inside regime health territories. There were seizures, sure, but there was no big raid on some of these key production sites. So that, to me, is quite interesting.
Karam, I want to turn to you. There’s this huge question about the fate of the trade following the fall of its top sponsor that adopted industrial-scale resources to manufacture and traffic this drug. HGS’s leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, of course, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, vowed that the new caretaker government would, quote, cleanse Syria of its former drug producing image, as he stated in his victory speech at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. But Karam, do you think the caretaker government will be able to do this and to accomplish such a task, especially when we’ve seen the Captagon trade really spill over throughout Syria?
Karam Shaar:
I think the new interim government is adamant to stop the industry, and I think they will be able to. And in fact, if we look at the way they’ve been running the enclave of Idlib since 2017, it’s quite telling. They have zero tolerance for drugs, and I think they will impose that throughout the areas they control, aided by the fact that the public broadly support that. For the vast majority of Syrians, the industry has been a reason for shame. Some of their children have also been using these pills.
But I think there are a few other factors also to consider when answering this question. Because what will happen to the industry as a whole isn’t only contingent on what happens within Syria, but what happens to supply overall. Because what we’ve been seeing over the past couple of years is a proliferation of production from Syria into other countries, as you and I have discussed extensively, Caroline, and it’s the topic of one of our future reports.
So we see now, countries like Egypt, for instance, like Iraq, and even Kuwait and Türkiye, where production is starting to sprout. And I think this is part of this story, but I doubt these countries would ever have production facilities that can produce Captagon on a scale comparable to that in Syria. Because you need political sponsorship to be able to have massive factories that can work for long hours every day and yet not be caught by the authorities. So the authorities need to be either sponsoring the industry or be co-opted. In Syria, they were basically the masters of the industry.
But then, on the flip side, actually, the question is also about demand. Because yes, production might actually decline. But what matter to us are also the profit margins. So if supply declines and consumers are highly addicted to this drug, will the price actually rise sufficiently so that profit margins are actually protected? This is very difficult to answer. We don’t know. But what we know from comparing with other drugs, it seems that Captagon isn’t as addictive as drugs like crystal meth, for example. But it’s a combination of all those factors that we need to take into account when thinking about the outlook for the industry, in my opinion.
Caroline Rose:
Absolutely. And I think it’s conjuring up a very interesting discussion about supply, demand, and some of these big shock waves to supply that we’ve seen with many other regional cases and cases throughout the international community. And it has also sparked a discussion about basic economic conditions inside Syria in the wake of sanctions, in the wake of economic isolation.
And what about this large question, this broad question: Can we incentivize individuals and networks that have been implicated in illicit drug trafficking and illicit drug production? Can we encourage them to participate in the formal, licit Syrian economy? I think that that’s going to be something that will have to be questioned and also answered with some of the policies that we see undertaken by this new caretaker government, and, of course, by some of these regional governments in the Middle East and partners abroad.
Jonathan, I want to turn to you. Your work at INL concentrates on a multiplicity of narcotics trading, not only Captagon. But you look at a number of types of different illicit trading that affect law enforcement capacity and governance around the world. Does the situation in Syria compare with any other cases that you’ve worked on, especially given the fact that this is a very interesting case because the Syrian government was so heavily implicated in Captagon production and trafficking? And are there any lessons from, for example, Colombia, or Afghanistan, or elsewhere, that we could look to when piecing together really the future of Captagon and how the region will be affected?
Jonathan Earles:
Yes, absolutely. Obviously, a large part of what we do is focus on our workers overseas, but how can it affect the U.S.? So fentanyl, for example, in synthetics, is our big hot button issue right now because of all the overdoses in the U.S. and in other countries. But Captagon, for example, has high morbidity and low mortality because we’re not seeing fentanyl in the drug mixtures of Captagon. So the big question is what would happen if, say, the cartels or the PRC ended up working with Captagon labs in some capacity and brought in fentanyl? Could that increase mortality? Could that completely change the way we, at our office or as the U.S. government, work on this from a drugs perspective?
Also, how could the economy, the future of the economy, shake out within Syria and other countries facing Captagon as well? So it’s unique. The Captagon topic specifically is unique to us because it’s very specific to the Middle East rather than facing the U.S. But I think, as we’ve seen, what’s unfolded with the fall of the regime could completely change the way we look at this and completely change the way we see our future for this topic.
The MEDD, for example, the Middle East Drug Dialogue, just had an event in Budapest for that, and that was the first, so it was essentially a spinoff of the NADD, the North America Drug Dialogue. And that happened just before the fall of the regime and everything that’s been going on. But the timing, ironically, could not have been … I don’t know if “better” is the right word, but the timing was unique. Because you have the MEDD, we’re able to come together from a variety of different countries talking about Captagon and what they’re seeing, and then this happened, this unfolded. And it’s going to be skyrocketing from here on.
So this is a whole new … It is January 3rd, 2025, a new year, and this is going to be a new way that we focus our work in the Middle East for not just being a global office, but even our Middle East colleagues as well in our Middle East office here in D.C., and how we engage with this topic.
Caroline Rose:
Absolutely. I think that, even looking at trends and patterns in the year 2024, it’s quite interesting to see how traffickers, whether related to the regime or not, started to set the conditions for a very different 2025. And the fall of the regime, I think, accelerates some of these trends. For both Karam and myself at the Captagon Trade Project, we’ve been ringing the alarm bell about some trends of concern, such as the overspill of production into neighboring countries like Iraq, or the acceleration of violent clashes along the Syrian-Jordanian border, or the emergence of new production sites, for example, in Kuwait and in Türkiye.
And I want to shift to Karam because this relates to our next question. You and I have spent a lot of time this last year compiling data on these new labs, and also arrest data and seizure stats. And we’ve seen that the trade started to slightly move out from Syria into new transit and destination markets. There were also key changes that the regime undertook in its last year in power related to Captagon distribution and production. What do you think this will mean for the Middle East in 2025? Essentially, what are the key concerns that neighboring countries will have to watch out for as the Captagon trade experiences a potential balloon effect from Syria itself?
Karam Shaar:
I suspect we will see a decline in supply, overall supply. And this will have an impact on prices, which will definitely rise. By how much is yet to be seen, because it’s a function of the elasticity of demand or basically how addictive Captagon is. I mean, I think in general, when you look at the economics of narcotics, obviously there’s supply and demand. But actually, the factor that is driving most of the changes is actually supply. Demand tends to be much more stable.
And this also means that whatever changes happen to supply, they quite quickly reflect what happens in the market. So actually, in the month right after the downfall of the regime, yes, we have very partial data, but actually, looking at our New Lines Institute Counter Captagon Database, it is very, very telling. Because if you look at what happened starting the 1st of December, the regime fell in the first week, and then, for the remaining three weeks afterward, actually, there was a very clear decline in Captagon seizures in the Middle East, not just in Syria.
So I think the impact will be felt clearly and quickly across the region. Some other countries, some other labs in the region, will try to pick up that additional demand and fill the void. I highly doubt they will be able to fill much of that supply because of the absence of regime sponsorship in any country other than Syria before the downfall of the regime.
Caroline Rose:
Certainly. And I think this also relates to your comment before, too, Karam, about demand and also potentially other related substances, for example, other amphetamine-type stimulants or stimulants that are chemically related to Captagon, such as methamphetamines, and more specifically crystal methamphetamine. That, I think, could potentially be a big concern as we look ahead into 2025, especially given the fact that crystal meth consumption in the region had already been on the rise.
And relatedly, Jonathan, reflecting on this and this larger and emerging amphetamine-type stimulant crisis in the Middle East, how do you think the U.S. and its partners can help equip governments in the region to tackle these new challenges? And are there any existing mechanisms or platforms that the United States or its partners have that we can all garner to address this challenge?
Jonathan Earles:
Yes, absolutely, for a lot of U.S. foreign assistance training overseas. Case in point, what we do with the Colombo Plan. The Colombo Plan is an international organization out of Colombo, Sri Lanka. The CEO was actually going to try to hop on today, but he wasn’t able to make it. His name is Thom Browne. Thom is the CEO of Colombo Plan. He’s actually retired out of my office at INL. Before that, he was a DEA Chief of Latin American Intelligence and wrote cocaine strategy for the Reagan administration in a first-ever DEA clandestine lab curriculum.
Before that, he was the drug czar for Prince George’s County, Maryland. And he had been working on Captagon back in 2011 ,when he was still at INL trying to get some analysis from over there. And when this started popping up around 2020 or 2021, we had a very successful forensic lab, international lab directors meeting every two years with the Colombo Plan and our global chemistry partners from forensic labs in multiple countries. And so we reached out to our Jordanian counterparts at the Public Safety Directorate, and we were able to actually do a fellowship for a lieutenant colonel over there who had just retired. And we had a massively successful Captagon analysis as part of that as well.
So what we did was be able to bring in these chemists from overseas, train them at CFSRE, which is the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education, which is under the NMS, or National Medical Services Labs umbrella, in the Willow Grove–Horsham, Pennsylvania, area, outside Philadelphia. And bring them there to get a more advanced analytical training on the LCMS and the GCMS forensic lab equipment that they have in their home country labs, and then go back to their respective countries, such as Jordan, and conduct training.
By doing that, this gentleman’s last name is actually, funnily enough, Asaad, spelled differently. So he was able to go back to Jordan and conduct more Captagon analysis. So we have a Captagon analysis report from August 2023 from Jordan. That’s probably our strongest and most accurate analysis, just broadly, that we’ve done in the program. We also have different clandestine laboratory trainings that we’ve been able to go in country and dismantle labs. So I would say those are probably two great programs that you can see that would be helpful.
There are also different canine programs that we have with the World Customs Organization. They have a … Prior to me getting involved in the program, the WCO, World Customs Organization, had a successful program in Saudi Arabia, where they’ve had Captagon seizures as part of their training. They have a regional dog training center there that’s been quite successful. And there’s also the UNODC, which does world drug reports that have great analysis of the global supply chain. So there are multiple avenues.
Caroline Rose:
Thank you so much, Jonathan. That was fabulous. And I think, really, it illuminates the really solid foundation of collaboration and coordination between the U.S. government and a lot of regional partners in the Middle East when it comes to building capacity and equipping law enforcement agencies and governments as a whole to deal with this sudden surge in stimulant demand and trafficking.
And I think that while there are, of course, a lot of uncertainties post-Assad with how the Captagon trade will change, I think there are also a lot more opportunities, particularly now with the oust of Assad, who has of course been an adversary of the United States and certainly not a partner, to collaborate with when it comes to counternarcotics. And so, I think really, 2025 can be filled with a lot more opportunities for coordination and collaboration in the region.
And with that, I do want to wrap up. Thank you so much for joining us for this insightful Contours episode on the future of the Captagon trade in a post-Assad Syria. For more work on this illicit drug trade, please check out the New Line’s Captagon Trade Project website (https://newlinesinstitute.org/initiative/special-project-on-the-captagon-trade/), where you can find written and recorded analyses as well as our interactive Captagon mapping tool, which was just launched last month, that can allow you to track patterns in the Captagon trade. Thank you all for tuning in, and a very happy 2025. Thank you so much. Take care.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not an official policy or position of the New Lines Institute.
