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Fall of Bashar Assad exposes Syrian government’s drug trade

Update Fall of Bashar Assad exposes Syrian government’s drug trade
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A Syrian opposition fighter throws away pills of Captagon at Mazzeh Military Airport in the west of Damascus on Dec. 12, 2024. (AFP)
Update Fall of Bashar Assad exposes Syrian government’s drug trade
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Pills of Captagon, a brand name of the drug psychostimulant Fenethylline, are pictured after their discovery at a drug manufacturing facility in the city of Douma in the Eastern Ghouta region on the eastern outskirts of Damascus on December 12, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 13 December 2024

Fall of Bashar Assad exposes Syrian government’s drug trade

Fall of Bashar Assad exposes Syrian government’s drug trade
  • Islamist-led fighters seize military bases and distribution hubs for the banned drug captagon

DAMASCUS: The dramatic collapse of Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime has thrown light into the dark corners of his rule, including the industrial-scale export of the banned drug captagon.

Victorious Islamist-led fighters have seized military bases and distribution hubs for the amphetamine-type stimulant, which has flooded the black market across the Middle East.

Led by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group, the militants say they found a vast haul of drugs and vowed to destroy them.

On Wednesday, HTS fighters allowed AFP journalists into a warehouse at a quarry on the outskirts of Damascus, where captagon pills were concealed inside electrical components for export.

“After we entered and did a sweep, and we found that this is a factory for Maher Assad and his partner Amer Khiti,” said black-masked fighter Abu Malek Al-Shami.

Maher Assad was a military commander and the deposed strongman’s brother, now presumed on the run. He is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.

Syrian politician Khiti was placed under sanction in 2023 by the British government, which said he “controls multiple businesses in Syria which facilitate the production and smuggling of drugs.”

In a cavernous garage beneath the warehouse and loading bays, thousands of dusty beige captagon pills were packed into the copper coils of brand new household voltage stabilizers.

“We found a large number of devices that were stuffed with packages of captagon pills meant to be smuggled out of the country. It’s a huge quantity. It’s impossible to tell,” Shami said.

Above, in the warehouse, crates of cardboard boxes stood ready to allow the traffickers to disguise their cargo as pallet-loads of standard goods, alongside sacks and sacks of caustic soda.

Caustic soda, or sodium hydroxide, is a key ingredient in the production of methamphetamine, another stimulant.

Assad fell at the weekend to a lightning HTS offensive, but the revenue from selling captagon propped up Assad’s government throughout Syria’s 13 years of civil war.

Captagon turned Syria into the world’s largest narco state. It became by far Syria’s biggest export, dwarfing all its legal exports put together, according to estimates drawn from official data by AFP during a 2022 investigation.

The warehouse haul was massive, but smaller and still impressive stashes of captagon have also turned up in military facilities associated with units under Maher Assad’s command.

Journalists from AFP this week found a bonfire of captagon pills on the grounds of the Mazzeh air base, now in the hands of HTS fighters who descended on the capital Damascus from the north.

Behind the smoldering heap, in a ransacked air force building, more captagon lay alongside other illicit exports, including off-brand Viagra impotence remedies and poorly-forged $100 bills.

“As we entered the area we found a huge quantity of captagon. So we destroyed it and burned it. It’s a huge amount, brother,” said an HTS fighter using the nom de guerre “Khattab.”

“We destroyed and burned it because it’s harmful to people. It harms nature and people and humans.”

Khattab also stressed that HTS, which has formed a transitional government to replace the collapsed administration, does not want to harm its neighbors by exporting the drug — a trade worth billions of dollars.


40 African migrants dead in shipwreck off Tunisia: judiciary

Updated 5 sec ago

40 African migrants dead in shipwreck off Tunisia: judiciary

40 African migrants dead in shipwreck off Tunisia: judiciary
“Initial investigations indicate that there were 70 people on board the vessel,” said Chtabri
Tunisia is a key transit country for thousands of African migrants seeking to reach Europe

TUNIS: Forty migrants from Africa were found dead on Wednesday following a shipwreck off Tunisia while 30 were rescued, a judicial spokesman told AFP.
“Initial investigations indicate that there were 70 people on board the vessel,” said Walid Chtabri, spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office in Mahdia.
“Forty bodies, including infants, were recovered, and 30 people were rescued,” Chtabri added.
Tunisia, whose coast is some 145 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa, is a key transit country for thousands of African migrants seeking to reach Europe by sea each year.
Over 55,000 irregular migrants have arrived in Italy since the beginning of the year, according to the UN Refugee Agency’s latest figures.
The majority of them had departed from Libya, while nearly 4,000 left from Tunisia, the agency said.
The central Mediterranean route is considered particularly dangerous, with 32,803 people dead or missing since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
With the European Union’s mounting efforts to curb migrant arrivals, many irregular migrants feel stranded in Tunisia.
In 2023, Tunisia signed a 255-million-euro ($290 million) deal with the European Union, nearly half of which was earmarked for tackling irregular migration.
The deal, strongly supported by Italy’s hard-right government, aimed to bolster Tunisia’s capacity to prevent boats leaving its shore.
Tunisian President Kais Saied earlier this year called on the IOM to accelerate voluntary returns for irregular migrants to their home countries.

Israel launches series of strikes on east Lebanon

Israel launches series of strikes on east Lebanon
Updated 30 min 20 sec ago

Israel launches series of strikes on east Lebanon

Israel launches series of strikes on east Lebanon
  • Two Israel strikes targeted the Hermel range in the country’s northeast
  • The Israeli military meanwhile said it had targeted Hezbollah sites in east and north Lebanon

BEIRUT: Israel launched a series of strikes on mountainous areas in eastern Lebanon on Thursday, with the Israeli military saying it struck Hezbollah targets.
“Israeli warplanes launched a series of violent strikes on the eastern mountain range” in the Bekaa region near the border with Syria, Lebanon’s official National News Agency said.
It also said two Israel strikes targeted the Hermel range in the country’s northeast.
The Israeli military meanwhile said it had targeted Hezbollah sites in east and north Lebanon, including a “a military camp and a site for the production of precision missiles” in the Bekaa.
The military said in a statement that it “struck several terrorist targets” in the Bekaa, including “a camp used for training Hezbollah militants.”
It added that it “struck military infrastructure at a site for the production of precision missiles.”
It also targeted “a Hezbollah military site in the Sharbin area in northern Lebanon.”
Israel has repeatedly bombed Lebanon despite a November ceasefire that brought to an end more than a year of hostilities with the militant group Hezbollah that culminated in two months of open war.
As part of that deal, Israeli forces were to withdraw from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah was to dismantle its forces in the region.
Under US pressure and fearing an escalation of Israeli strikes, the Lebanese government has moved to begin disarming Hezbollah, a plan which the militant movement and its allies oppose.


Syrian forces agree truce with French-led jihadist group

Syrian forces agree truce with French-led jihadist group
Updated 23 October 2025

Syrian forces agree truce with French-led jihadist group

Syrian forces agree truce with French-led jihadist group
  • Syrian authorities have agreed a ceasefire with a group of jihadists led by Frenchman Oumar Diaby in northwest Syria, sources from both sides told AFP on Thursday

IDLIB: Syrian authorities have agreed a ceasefire with a group of jihadists led by Frenchman Oumar Diaby in northwest Syria, sources from both sides told AFP on Thursday.
Government forces surrounded the camp of Firqatul Ghuraba (“the Foreigners’ Brigade“) on Wednesday, leading to the first clashes with jihadists under Syria’s new leadership since the ousting in December of longtime ruler Bashar Assad.
Diaby, also known as Omar Omsen, was accused of kidnapping a girl and had sought to prevent troops entering the camp in the Harem region near the Turkish border, which is home to a few dozen fighters.
“An agreement was reached providing for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of heavy weapons (by the army),” and allowing the Syrian government to enter the camp, a local security official who requested anonymity told AFP.
The written agreement, seen by AFP, also stipulates that a criminal investigation will be opened into the allegations of kidnapping against Diaby.
The ceasefire was being respected on Thursday, according to the local security official and a source among the French jihadists contacted by AFP.
Since taking power, Syria’s new leaders have sought to break from their own radical Islamist past and present a moderate image more tolerable to ordinary Syrians and foreign powers.
Dealing with the thousands of heavily armed foreign fighters who flocked to the country during the country’s civil war is one of many security challenges facing Interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who once led Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria.
In September 2016, the United States designated Diaby, suspected of helping French-speaking fighters travel to Syria, as an “international terrorist.”
The Franco-Senegalese criminal-turned-preacher, 50, is also wanted on a French arrest warrant.


Turkiye says it will help boost Lebanese army’s capacity under mandate

Turkiye says it will help boost Lebanese army’s capacity under mandate
Updated 23 October 2025

Turkiye says it will help boost Lebanese army’s capacity under mandate

Turkiye says it will help boost Lebanese army’s capacity under mandate
  • Turkiye’s parliament passed a bill on Tuesday to renew the military’s deployment mandates in Syria and Iraq by three more years, and its deployment mandate under the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) by two years

ANKARA: Turkish peacekeeping forces will continue to help boost the Lebanese army’s capability under a renewed deployment mandate in Lebanon, Turkiye’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday.
Turkiye’s parliament passed a bill on Tuesday to renew the military’s deployment mandates in Syria and Iraq by three more years, and its deployment mandate under the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) by two years.
“Efforts will continue to improve security conditions in the region, ensure stability and assist in the capacity building of the Lebanese armed forces, with the aim of establishing and maintaining peace in Lebanon,” the ministry said in a statement.
NATO member Turkiye, which took part in mediation that led to the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal in Gaza, condemned Israeli offensives in the Palestinian enclave and regional countries including Lebanon, saying that “genocidal” and “expansionist” Israeli policies remained the biggest threat to regional peace.
Separately, the Defense Ministry said in its weekly briefing that the renewed Iraq and Syria mandates aimed to preserve Turkiye’s national security against attempts to harm the territorial integrity of its two neighbors.
Turkiye has been frustrated by what it calls the stalling of the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in terms of implementing a landmark integration agreement that it signed with Syria’s government in March.
Ankara views the SDF as a terrorist organization linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has been in a disarmament process that Turkiye says must apply to the SDF as well. It has warned of military action against the SDF and said Damascus should address its concerns.
In the mandate passed on Tuesday, parliament said the move was necessary because “terrorist organizations continued their presence in the region” and the SDF was “rejecting taking steps toward integrating into Syria’s central administration over its separatist and discriminatory agenda.”


Israel’s top court postpones petition demanding media access to Gaza

Israel’s top court postpones petition demanding media access to Gaza
Updated 23 October 2025

Israel’s top court postpones petition demanding media access to Gaza

Israel’s top court postpones petition demanding media access to Gaza
  • Israel’s Supreme Court on Thursday pushed back the hearing of a petition demanding independent access for journalists to Gaza

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Supreme Court on Thursday pushed back the hearing of a petition filed by an organization representing international media outlets in Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanding independent access for journalists to Gaza.
Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israeli authorities have prevented foreign journalists from entering the devastated territory, taking only a handful of reporters inside on tightly controlled visits alongside its troops.
On Thursday, Israel’s top court began the hearing of a petition filed by the Foreign Press Association (FPA) seeking access to Gaza.
The State Attorney acknowledged “the situation has changed” and requested a further 30 days to examine the circumstances. No date has been set for the next hearing.
Ahead of the hearing, FPA chairperson Tania Kraemer said: “We’ve been waiting really long for this day.”
“We are saying that we hope to get into Gaza, that they open Gaza after this long blockade, and we are hoping to get in there to work alongside our Palestinian colleagues,” she added.
The FPA, which represents hundreds of foreign journalists, began petitioning for independent access to Gaza soon after the war broke out in October 2023 following Hamas’s attack on Israel.
But these demands have been repeatedly ignored by Israeli authorities.
An AFP journalist sits on the FPA’s board of directors.
’No excuse’
“We have a right to inform the public, the people of the world, the Israeli public, the Palestinian population,” Nicolas Rouget, an FPA board member, said outside the courtroom ahead of the hearing.
“We feel we must stand by them, by our Palestinian colleagues in Gaza, who have been the only ones able to inform the public about this conflict over the last two years,” he added.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has joined the petition filed by the FPA.
While Israel has prevented foreign reporters from entering Gaza, its forces have killed more than 210 Palestinian journalists in the territory, Antoine Bernard, RSF’s director for advocacy and assistance, said on Tuesday.
“The result is an unprecedented violation of press freedom and the public’s right to reliable, independent, and pluralistic media reporting,” Bernard said.
“The Supreme Court has the opportunity to finally uphold basic democratic principles in the face of widespread propaganda, disinformation, and censorship, and to end two years of meticulous and unrestrained destruction of journalism in and about Gaza.
“No excuse, no restriction can justify not opening Gaza to international, Israeli and Palestinian media,” he said.
On October 10, Israel declared a ceasefire and started pulling back troops from some areas of the territory, as part of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war.