Syria: Inside the drug factories that bankrolled Assad’s narco state

Published

9 months ago

December 17, 2024

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Now Bashar al Assad has gone, there is so much to see and film in Syria which was impossible to document before.

The extent, for example, of the regime’s involvement in the captagon trade, a speed-like amphetamine which flooded out of Syria and across the Middle East, was widely known but impossible to film, barring stashes discovered at customs or its prevalence across the Gulf party-scene.

Now Syria’s new guard, Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), has taken over the villas and factories which belonged to the nation’s drug lords and are more than happy to show journalists how the captagon was produced and by whom.

Assad regime falls

We visit two locations, one a private villa near the Lebanese border and another, a captagon factory in a suburb outside Damascus. What hits you first is the smell. It’s tangy and metallic and sticks in your nostrils.

The guards at the villa, which looks like a stage set for Breaking Bad, say it gives them headaches. They’ve burnt the stash of captagon pills they discovered but they’ve kept the raw materials – barrels of caffeine, piled up sacks of what looks a bit like flour, and alcohol. They say they’ve been advised it might come in useful for medicines.

“In Idlib, as you know, we were separate,” says Abu Baker, an HTS soldier who’s happy to show me around. “Anyone who engaged in such activities would be kicked out of the city.

“But of course we knew about what was going on in the rest of Syria and with the regime. The regime was broke. The economy was dead. So they financed themselves with drug money.”

The villas in this neighbourhood belonged to officers from Syria’s 4th armoured division which was run by Assad’s notoriously thuggish brother, Maher. The one we’re in was owned by a man the HTS guards call Colonel Baseem.

“Baseem was the big guy here in this area and he instilled fear in everyone who lived here, everything was off limits,” says Abu Bilal, a farmer who lives next door.

He’d been ordered to leave his home when construction on the villa started and he’d only dared to return when the regime fell. “I was honestly shocked when I found out about the drugs here, about these scary operations that were destroying the country. We didn’t know anything about this drug.”

Syria’s neighbours had long warned of the pernicious effects on their home soil of the captagon it trafficked. Many of the regime drug lords were under US, EU and UK sanctions. Limiting Syria’s illicit captagon exports was to be a bargaining chip in Assad’s attempts at normalising relations with other Arab states.

It was, according to the World Bank, the most valuable sector of Syria’s war-shattered economy, worth between US$1.9bn (£1.5bn) and US$5.6bn (£4.4bn), with Syrian GDP valued at not much more – US$6.2bn (£4.9bn) in 2023.

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The factory produced chocolate and crisps above ground, narcotics below. Pills were stashed inside electrical switching systems, even plastic fruit. They carpeted the floors. Huge piles of captagon pills, worth anything from $2 to $20 each, depending on where they were sold.

“I fled the war to Egypt in 2014,” says factory owner Mohammad al Toot, who has just returned to Syria after a decade away.

“I found out while I was there that Amer Khayti took over my factory under the power of Maher Al Assad the terrorist, and alongside Bashar Al Assad and their gangs. They turned my food production facility into a drug operation. I went to the relevant authorities to claim my factory back but no one helped me.”

The 4th division may be gone but the captagon trade involves numerous different actors. Syria’s transition to narco state was relatively quick. Transitioning back out may not happen so fast.

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Romania scrambles fighter jets after Russian drone ‘breaches airspace’ – as Zelenskyy warns of war ‘expansion’

Published

17 hours ago

September 14, 2025

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Romania scrambles fighter jets after Russian drone 'breaches airspace' - as Zelenskyy warns of war 'expansion'

Romania has said a drone breached its airspace during a Russian attack on neighbouring Ukraine.

Fighter jets were scrambled on Saturday, coming close to taking down the aircraft as it was flying very low before it left national airspace toward Ukraine, defence minister Ionut Mosteanu said.

Romania is the latest NATO member state to report an incursion, with Poland deploying aircraft and closing an airport in the eastern city of Lublin on Saturday, three days after it shot down Russian drones in its airspace.

They are the first known shots fired by a member of the Western alliance during Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, military exercises are taking place over the Barents Sea, with Russia and Belarus conducting joint drills.

Russian MiG-31 fighter jets equipped with hypersonic ballistic missiles completed a four-hour flight over the neutral waters as part of ongoing “Zapad 2025” military exercises, the Interfax news agency reported on Saturday.

Romania has had Russian drone fragments fall on to its territory repeatedly since Russia began waging its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

Two F-16 fighter jets were initially scrambled by Romania, and later two Eurofighters.

Citizens in the southeastern county of Tulcea near the Danube and its Ukrainian border were warned to take cover, the defence ministry said.

The ministry said the drone dropped off their radar 20km (12 miles) southwest of the village of Chilia Veche.

While helicopters were surveying the area looking for possible drone parts, Mr Mosteanu told private television station Antena 3 that “all information at this moment indicates the drone exited airspace to Ukraine”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media that data showed the drone breached about 10km (six miles) into Romanian territory and operated in NATO airspace for around 50 minutes.

He said Belarusian airspace was also used for entry into Ukraine’s airspace.

Mr Zelenskyy described the reported incursion as “an obvious expansion of the war by Russia,” and called for “tariffs against Russian trade” and a “collective defence”.

He warned: “Do not wait for dozens of “shaheds” [Iranian-designed drones] and ballistic missiles before finally making decisions.”

NATO has said it plans to strengthen eastern flank defence, following earlier Polish airspace violations.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio called the Polish incursion “unacceptable and unfortunate and dangerous”, and said while it was unclear if the drones were intentionally sent to Poland, if it was the case, it would be “a highly escalatory move”.

Experts, including Sky News international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn have previously suggested the Kremlin is testing the West with gradual but steady escalation – a tactic known as “salami slicing”.

On Saturday, Donald Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he was “ready to do major sanctions on Russia”, but only when all NATO nations “do the same thing” and “stop buying oil from Russia”.

Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened sanctions against Moscow, so far without any action.

The president also said NATO members should also put 50% to 100% tariffs on China – and only withdraw them if the conflict ends.

NATO member Turkey has been the third largest buyer of Russian oil since 2023, after China and India, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, with fellow members Hungary and Slovakia also buying energy supplies from Moscow.

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Donald Trump urges NATO countries to stop ‘shocking’ Russian oil purchases to end Ukraine war

Published

18 hours ago

September 14, 2025

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Donald Trump urges NATO countries to stop 'shocking' Russian oil purchases to end Ukraine war

The war in Ukraine would end if all NATO countries stopped buying oil from Russia, Donald Trump has said.

The US president, in a post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday, said the alliance’s commitment to winning the war “has been far less than 100%” and the purchase of Russian oil by some members is “shocking”.

Doing so “greatly weakens your negotiating position and bargaining power, over Russia,” he said.

A NATO ban on the practice plus tariffs on China would “also be of great help in ENDING this deadly, but RIDICULOUS, WAR”, he added.

The president said NATO members should also put 50% to 100% tariffs on China – and only withdraw them if the conflict ends.

‘China’s grip’ on Russia

“China has a strong control, and even grip, over Russia,” Mr Trump posted, and powerful tariffs “will break that grip”.

The US president has already placed a 25% import tax on goods from India over its buying of Russian energy products.

Mr Trump said responsibility for the war fell on his predecessor Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

He did not include in that list Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched the invasion.

Village changes hands

On the battlefield on Saturday, Russian troops took control of the village of Novomykolaivka in Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, the Russian Defence Ministry said.

A drone attack hit an oil refinery in the city of Ufa, around 870 miles (1,400km) from the border with Ukraine, the local governor said, calling it a terrorist incident.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Friday the 32-nation alliance would place military equipment on the border with Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to deter potential Russian aggression.

Operation ‘Eastern Sentry’ followed Wednesday’s provocative incursion by multiple Russian drones into the airspace of Poland, another NATO member.

Polish forces shot down the drones, which Moscow said went astray because they were jammed.

Prince Harry’s surprise visit

The Duke of Sussex made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Friday, promising to do “everything possible” to help the recovery of injured military staff.

Travelling on an overnight train to Kyiv, Prince Harry, who has since left the country, told The Guardian: “We cannot stop the war but what we can do is do everything we can to help the recovery process.

“We have to keep it [the war] in the forefront of people’s minds. I hope this trip will help to bring it home to people because it’s easy to become desensitised to what has been going on.”

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At least 32 people killed as Israel intensifies airstrikes in Gaza City, medical staff say

Published

18 hours ago

September 14, 2025

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At least 32 people killed as Israel intensifies airstrikes in Gaza City, medical staff say

A barrage of airstrikes has killed at least 32 people in Gaza City as Israel continued intensifying its offensive there, medical staff have said.

The dead include 12 children, according to the morgue in Shifa Hospital, where the bodies were brought.

Health officials said one of the strikes killed a family of 10, including a mother and her three children.

The Palestinian Football Association said a player for the Al-Helal Sporting Club, Mohammed Ramez Sultan, was killed with 14 members of his family.

Israel’s army did not immediately respond to questions about the strikes when contacted by the Associated Press news agency.

Israel has in recent days increased its strikes on Gaza City, having ordered residents to leave what it says is Hamas’s last stronghold.

Hundreds of thousands of people are still in the city, struggling under conditions of famine, which was declared by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) three weeks ago. Israel previously denied there is a famine in Gaza.

Aid workers say the number of people leaving has spiked in recent weeks, but many families remain stuck due to difficulties with transportation and housing.

Others have been displaced many times and do not want to move again, not trusting that anywhere in the Strip is safe.

In a message shared on social media on Saturday, Israel’s army told the remaining Palestinians in Gaza City to “leave immediately” and move south into what it is calling a humanitarian zone.

Sites in southern Gaza, where Israel is telling people to go, are overcrowded, the United Nations has said.

A spokesperson for the Israeli army said more than 250,000 people have left Gaza City – but the UN puts the number at around 100,000 between mid-August and mid-September.

The UN and aid groups have warned that displacing hundreds of thousands of people will exacerbate the dire humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said on Saturday that seven people, including children, died from malnutrition-related causes over the past 24 hours.

Israel has said it now controls 75% of Gaza, much of which has been reduced to fields of rubble. It has vowed to take the rest.

The current conflict followed Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, when militants killed 1,200 people and took around 250 people hostage.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,803 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health authorities. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.