Key Players in Syria's ‘Narco State’ Hit With Western Sanctions

The UK and US governments have imposed sanctions on some of the major players behind Syria’s $57 billion captagon trade, which experts believe is fuelling the country’s brutal war and repressive regime.

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said on Tuesday it was sanctioning senior officials within Bashar al-Assad’s regime who it has accused of facilitating the trade, such as manufacturers of the drug, and key associates in Hezbollah – a Lebanese Shia Islamist group – responsible for trafficking it across the Middle East. 

The sanctions list includes 11 people, including prominent businessmen, militia leaders, and two of Assad’s relatives. Those sanctioned will have their UK assets frozen and will be banned from travel to the UK. 

Captagon is an amphetamine which is used throughout the Middle East, with 80 percent of the world’s supply produced in Syria, making Assad’s regime one of the world’s biggest drug cartels. 

Those hit with sanctions include two cousins of the president, Samer Kamal al-Assad, who is alleged to oversee key captagon production facilities in Latakia, Syria, and Wassim Badi al-Assad, accused of supporting the Syrian military and of having been a key figure in the regional drug trafficking network.

Another key figure sanctioned was Khalid Qaddour, a Syrian businessman responsible for managing the huge amounts of money made from selling captagon. He is a close associate of the president’s brother, Maher al-Assad, who is head of the army's Fourth Division, and also believed to be linked to the trade.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said it was sanctioning key Syrian and Lebanese individuals connected to Syria’s state-run captagon trade in an action it said “underscores the al-Assad family dominance of illicit captagon trafficking and its funding for the oppressive Syrian regime”.

“Syria has become a global leader in the production of highly addictive captagon, much of which is trafficked through Lebanon,” said OFAC Director Andrea M. Gacki. “With our allies, we will hold accountable those who support Bashar al-Assad’s regime with illicit drug revenue and other financial means that enable the regime’s continued repression of the Syrian people.”

Charles Lister, director of Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism programmes at the Middle East Institute, a think tank based in Washington DC told VICE World News: “The UK’s sanctions, in coordination with similar steps taken by the US, represents a crucially important first step in what’s long been needed: a concerted international response to the Assad regime’s enormous international trade in captagon.”

Lister said Syria’s $57 billion a year captagon trade was worth three times the combined value of all of Mexico’s cartels, and more than 60 times Syria’s national budget. 

“When taking into account Syria policy writ-large, cutting off the regime’s drugs trade has fast become one of the most important opportunities to pressure or coerce the regime into concessions. Without its drugs income, it would quite literally have no revenues left of any meaningful importance,” said Lister.

Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, Minister of State for the Middle East, said: “The Assad regime is using the profits from the captagon trade to continue their campaign of terror on the Syrian people. The UK and US will continue to hold the regime to account for brutally repressing the Syrian people and fuelling instability across the Middle East.”

The UK government said it “remains committed to supporting the Syrian people both in their quest for accountability and in providing humanitarian assistance”. The FCDO said it had provided over £3.8 billion in humanitarian assistance to Syria and the region since the conflict began.