News Right Now: The Latest Narco State

A stimulant named Captagon, nicknamed “Abu al-hilalain” (two crescent moons) is Syria's main export. It is Syria who exports 80% of it to the world, making it the biggest narco state in the world- surpassing Mexico. Ninety percent of Syrians live below the poverty line while 70% depend on foreign aid. Struggling to find work opportunities, families have turned to burning pistachio peels, rubber, and even feces just to keep warm. This leaves Syrians weak to desperation and despair thinking of how to gain money to survive, some turn to what is Haram. One of the things they turn to is selling drugs, but the main drug that is sold is Captagon.

Sweida teams with gangs transporting captagon, with Bedouin tribes bringing consignments down from major production plants around Damascus and Homs. "The smuggling is organised by the tribes who live in the desert in coordination with over 100 small armed gangs," said Abu Timur, a spokesman for the local Al-Karama armed group.

Captagon, a drug derived from a once legal treatment for narcolepsy and attention disorder, has become Syria’s main export! This drug is also known as “poor man’s cocaine”, for depending on the quality it can range from $1 - $25. For some who take it, take it as a party drug while others take it to boost their energy for work. In Saudi Arabia, Captagon is often talked of as a party drug, but its hold extends far beyond the gilded lifestyles of the kingdom's wealthy elite.

Cheap, discreet and less taboo than alcohol, many poorer Saudis and migrant workers go to work on the drug. "I can work for two or three days non-stop, which has doubled my earnings and is helping me pay off my debts," said Faisal, a skinny 20-year-old newlywed from a working-class background, who spends 150 riyals a week ($40) on the pills. "I finish my first job exhausted in the early hours of the morning," but the drug helps him push through to drive for a ride-hailing service.

It also causes violent and psychotic behavior and it can be used to transition into harder drugs like methamphetamines and amphetamines. While the captagon trade spans several countries, many key players have tribal ties that reach Syria and Lebanon to Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Customs and anti-narcotics officials told AFP that for every shipment they seize, another nine make it through. That means even with a low average price of $5 per tablet, and only four out of five shipments getting through, captagon is at least a $10 billion industry.

Private investigators found that the Captagon industry is linked to a list of businessmen. One of which is Bashar al Assad’s younger brother, Maher Al Assad, the head of the Republican Guard and the Fourth Division. "Maher al-Assad is one of the main beneficiaries of the captagon trade," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "He receives his own share from the profit. Drug money has become a main source to pay the salaries of an armed group affiliated with the 4th Division," he added.

Some captagon labs get "the raw material directly from the 4th Division, sometimes in military bags", said a Syria monitor, with a trafficker telling AFP that it even supplied rebel groups opposed to the regime. The division controls large parts of the porous border with Lebanon that is key to the trade, with the Mediterranean port of Latakia another of its bastions.

The impact of this joint cooperation between the Assad regime and the international ‘peacemakers’ leaves the Middle East’s most beautiful regions, known for its historical and educational institutions, destroyed to oblivion. The idea that the former seat of the Khilafah (Caliphate) is now the drug capital of the MENA region is a catastrophe that needs correction.

We have seen the war against Islam take place either by prisons, concentration camps, missiles, brainwashing, and now by drugs. They have put in the effort to not only weaken us physically, but now by taking away our minds; making us unable to function and think! Narcotics are just an additional weapon being used to weaken this Ummah! The youth and vulnerable of this region are being poisoned with these destructive chemicals, and our future is being diverted to kufr. We urgently need Khilafah to have effective and sincere means to ban narcotics effectively. We call upon the Ummah to work for the cause of the Khilafah without delay and answer the call of Allah (swt);

(يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اسْتَجِيبُوا لِلَّهِ وَلِلرَّسُولِ إِذَا دَعَاكُمْ لِمَا يُحْيِيكُمْ)

“O you who believe! answer (the call of) Allah and His Apostle when he calls you to that which gives you life.” [Al-Anfaal 8:24].

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