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Ralph Outhwaite

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The Fall of the Captagon Kingdom

The term “narco-state” comes with its own baggage, with many academics who study the crime-conflict nexus seeing it as having minimal conceptual value. It is often deployed by journalists and policymakers without being properly defined. When the term is used, it is generally meant to refer to a country with two distinct features: an illicit drug economy of comparable size to its licit economy and a state that has become “penetrated by the power and wealth of traffickers.” Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy is among those who dismiss the term as a form of categorization because of its vague and discursive nature. Any country could be labeled a narco-state, especially if there is malicious intent motivating the labeler, because the definition is too broad – or so the claim goes.  

However, President Bashar al-Assad’s Syria was a prime example of what a modern narco-state looks like. The regime had sponsored the production and trafficking of the amphetamine-type stimulant captagon to markets in the Gulf. This drug trade was both a vital alternative revenue source for the regime and the glue that bound together Assad’s patronage network. The rapid collapse of his regime has likely changed the dynamics of one of the most lucrative drug trades in the world. 

The term “narco-state” has hitherto been largely synonymous with the concept of “state failure,” a linear process whereby declining state authority leads to criminal infiltration of institutions and the emergence of competing, narco-governance structures. Under these conditions, the “boundaries between authorities and criminal gangs are often blurred.” The “state failure” thesis works under the assumption that the branches of the state are motivated by the ambition to stamp out the narcotic trade. 

Syria does not fit neatly into this thesis because the growth of the captagon trade was indicative of the Syrian government’s strength, rather than its weakness. Through its affiliates in the 4th Armored Division, the Military and Air Force Intelligence directorates, and the shabiha militant networks, the Assad regime actively sponsored the captagon trade. The state had not been infiltrated by criminal syndicates; rather, it was the state that had been doing the infiltrating. The regime played a central role in industrializing the captagon trade and expanding the narcotic’s popularity in the region. Between 2020 and 2023, around 300 million captagon pills were confiscated by law enforcement agencies. The Assad regime turned Syria into the poster child for narco-states. Now that Assad is taking refuge in Moscow, the future role of Syria in the captagon trade is in doubt. 

State Failure vs. State Sponsorship 

The first indicator that Syria did not follow the linear tradition of failed states becoming narco-states was the regime’s willingness to sponsor the captagon trade. Illicit economies can often be seen as a buffer against the centralized state in traditional crime-conflict literature. Scholar Jaremey McMullin found that the Taliban’s strategy of making farmers plant poppies for narco-production instead of cereals helped push rural populations into illicit economies outside Kabul’s newly established governance structures. The criminalization of the economy and communities led to “parallel or dual sovereignties” during that conflict. This is a classic example of where declining state authority over the periphery can lead to criminal actors cultivating a ubiquitous narco-economy. 

If Syria conformed to the state failure thesis, one would expect territories controlled by opposition forces such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or the Syrian Democratic Forces to be the primary hotspots of captagon production. This was not the case. Researchers have geo-located 43 facilities that were driving captagon production, and 80% were located in regime-held areas. Since the regime regained large swaths of territory in 2018, captagon laboratories had been set up under the protection of the 4th Division, which was headed by Assad’s brother Maher, along with the Military Intelligence and Air Force Intelligence directories. 

An investigation by Syrian TV identified four major captagon factories in Mudira, Qalamoun, Jaramana, and Asal Al Ward that all had direct ties to the regime. These factories had the capacity to produce tens of millions of captagon pills per month, which were then trafficked across the Gulf under the protection of the 4th Division and with aid from Iranian-backed militias such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah.  

The state’s co-option of this illicit economy for its own financial benefit and as a means of offsetting the economic damage done by sanctions goes against the grain of traditional crime-conflict literature. Most narco-states emerge after decades of criminal infiltration. This was the case in the 1990s for Colombia, where major drug traffickers and paramilitary militias under the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia were integrated into the country’s legal, political, and financial institutions. This criminal infiltration led to the emergence of what scholars like Oliver Villar and Drew Cottle called Colombia’s “narco-bourgeoisie.”  

Over the course of the Syrian civil war, it has been the regime that infiltrated and developed illicit economies. The four factories identified in by Syrian TV were managed by Amer Tayseer Khaiti, a member of the pro-regime Syrian People’s Assembly. Each of those in charge of the factories was also affiliated with the 4th Division.  

The Qalamoun factory was run by Mahmoud Nassar and Issam Shaaban, who are both former members of the National Defense Force, a pro-regime militia that was formed in 2013 as a reserve contingent of the Syrian army. The Jaramana factory was headed by Khaled Nasr al-Din, who was part of the pro-regime Ghaith Forces militias. Similarly, Mahmoud Al-Qassar, who ran the Mudira factory, was a former militia leader.  

The regime cultivated a network of pro-Assad affiliates to produce, traffic, and sell captagon both in Syria and across the wider Gulf. This sponsorship of the captagon trade is where Syria differs from the fellowship of narco-states. Where other countries have fallen victim to state decay, which then has led to the emergence of illicit economies, the Assad regime sought to industrialize narco-output as a key source of revenue. 

Syria’s Drug Economy 

The second indicator of a narco-state is that the drug trade makes up a disproportionate share of the economy. When issuing a warning about Afghanistan’s slide toward narco-state status, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, warned that “drugs are now Afghanistan’s largest employer, income generator, source of capital, export and foreign investment.” A similar dependence has developed in Syria, with the World Bank reporting that captagon has likely become “the most valuable sector of Syria’s economy.” The report put the value of Syrian captagon between $1.9 billion and $5.6 billion per year – almost equal to Syria’s total gross domestic product in 2023. 

However, the proceeds of the captagon trade do not help finance state services. At the same time as the World Bank forecasted record-breaking growth in captagon-related revenue, the Syrian government cut public spending. In 2023, the total public spending was 1.65 trillion Syrian pounds (around $127 million), a 10 percent reduction in real terms when compared to the year before. Profits from captagon sales were not helping to pay for schools, public employee salaries or new hospitals; instead, the proceeds were helping pro-regime contingents. The 4th Division was the most prominent paraeconomic actor with the drug trade. Its Security Bureau was the profit center for the division. Extortion, scrap-metals cultivation, kidnap-for-ransom, and, increasingly, captagon trafficking were among the illicit activities that helped pay for salaries, housing, and weaponry.  

It was because the regime, rather than the state, profited from the captagon trade that a new lexicon was added to the crime-conflict literature. Terms like “narco-regime,” “narco-oligarchy,” and “narco-kleptocracy” have all been used to describe Syria. The New Lines Institute has tended to focus on the role of the regime in the captagon trade, rather than the state per se because captagon profits do not benefit state services. Instead, the regime effectively mobilized the security apparatus to participate in the production and trafficking of captagon for its own benefit. 

It is not unusual for state services to miss out on the financial benefit of a narco-economy, however. In Afghanistan, the UNODC estimated that only 1 percent of profits from the opium trade ended up in the hands of farmers, with most of the rest siphoned off by rural warlords and other criminal actors. It is well within the norm for local communities, let alone state services, to miss out on the proceeds of drug economies. Whether state services benefitted or not from captagon revenue should not distract from the fact that the Assad regime turned Syria into the exemplar narco-state. The regime encouraged the 4th Division, Military and Airforce Intelligence directorates, and shabiha networks to participate in production and trafficking of captagon. 

Chouvy was wrong when he dismissed the narco-state as a myth. The cultivation of a pro-captagon, pro-Assad patronage network meant that a narco-state developed in Syria, not through “state failure” but by design. The toppling of Assad now means that a new government will have a choice: It can perpetuate the cycle of state sponsorship of the captagon trade or attempt to dismantle this devastating narco-network once and for all. 

Ralph Outhwaite is a graduate of King’s College London with a master’s in Conflict, Security and Development. He is a contributor to The Spectator magazine and completes civilian impact assessments of airstrikes in the Middle East for a nonprofit. His research explores defense issues, illicit supply chains, and geopolitical strategies in Europe and the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not an official policy or position of the New Lines Institute.