US outlines new anti-captagon strategy
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The US State Department outlined on Thursday its strategy to combat the captagon trade in Syria and surrounding countries.
The new strategy, that was revealed in the annual report to the Congree, “synchronizes U.S. interagency efforts to disrupt, degrade, and dismantle the illicit captagon networks linked to the Assad regime through four lines of effort,” including diplomatic and intelligence support for law enforcement, sanctions, counter-narcotics assistance and training to neighboring countries, and exerting pressure on Damascus through diplomatic means.
According to the US State Department, Captagon trafficking now encompasses a network operating across 17 countries, “ranging from Italy to Malaysia”. Most Captagon, the report outlines, is produced by Syrian government-allied groups, such as Lebanese Hezbollah. It is then trafficked through the ports in Latakia and Beirut, or travels overland through Jordan and Iraq. While the main market for captagon has traditionally been rich Gulf countries, overland transit countries have offered a growing market for the drug.
The report makes clear that US forces in Syria are not part of Washington’s approach to curtail the drug trade, as their mission is strictly confined to defeating the Islamic State (ISIS).
An increasing number of Arab-majority states have endorsed the government of Bashar al-Assad, including some of the main captagon export countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Department of State says it will continue to use diplomacy “to highlight the regime’s involvement in the captagon trade and reiterate the United States’ belief that the Assad regime has not done anything to deserve normalization or reconstruction in regime-held areas of Syria.”
On Wednesday, June 29, Jordan announced that it had shot down the third captagon-carrying drone from Syria in a fortnight. Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, stated that they had confiscated 250,000 pills in a school building near the Syrian border this week.