The Underworld Podcast - Syria's Narco State, Jihadi Supersoldiers and Hezbollah Traffickers: The Story of Captagon

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

Multiple billion dollar shipments of the drug known as Captagon have been seized in the last few years as the cheap amphetamine floods the Middle East. Alleged to have helped fund the Syrian Civil war, the tiny pills have been showing up in numerous massive shipments confiscated in Mediterranean port cities, often sent by shadowy, high level networks. The pills are all almost exclusively made in Syria, and they're very likely the Assad regime's most valuable export. But what, exactly, is Captagon, who is doing it, and where did it come from? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get new episodes of Trust Me every Wednesday on Podcast One and anywhere you get your podcasts. There was no fear after I took it, the fighter says. I felt like I owned the world. Hi, like I have power no one else has, says another. All of them say something similar. If there were 10 people in front of you, you could catch them and kill them all. It gives you great courage and power. It gives you huge amounts of energy.

You can't sleep or even close your eyes. Forget about it. And whatever you take to stop it, nothing can stop it. All of these quotes are from soldiers interviewed for a BBC documentary made in 2015 on Capagon, the supposed wonder drug sweeping across the Middle East over the last decade. You may have seen a bunch of headlines over the last few years that have a similar tone, something about how this tiny pill fuels the Syrian Civil War, or Hezbollah traffickers make millions off it.

or how the drug props up the government of Syria, effectively making it a narco state, or gives ISIS fighters superhuman powers and make them into super soldiers. In an article out last month, the economist said it can have a similar effect to Viagra and conquer sleep. With one pill, says a raver, we can dance all weekends. It's a little different from the jihadi super soldier claims, but you get it. The CBC and Canada had a headline that read, Meet Capagon, the nightmare drug fueling Syria's civil war. There have also been dozens of stories about tens of millions of pills with hundreds of millions of dollars being seized in Beirut, Saudi Arabia, or in European port cities, even a couple billion dollar bus.

But what exactly is CaptaGon? How do they get so popular so quickly? And who is controlling the billion dollar trade that has popped up around these pills? And if they're really that much of a wonder drug, why can't you pay a guy $50 at a bar in Berlin for a few pills, even if you really, really want to make your co-hoho? take it so we can give a true answer to the question of what exactly it does to you. This is the Underworld podcast. I am Danny Gold. I'm here, as always, with my co-host, Sean Williams.

We are two reporters that have covered crime and conflict and other interesting things around the world and dozens of countries. And this is the podcast where we tell stories about organized crime and things along those lines. So welcome back. We also always have the Patreon going, patreon. So that's the Underworld podcast, which has... bonus episodes, interviews with criminals, reporters, analysts, things along those lines.

And yeah, Sean, any thoughts on Capagon? Well, I mean, first of all, like the title of the show absolutely rocks, man. Like, if people aren't going to get into jihadi drugs, then I don't know. I think we're lost. But I don't know. I've never really heard about it that much. It's not something that I knew a great deal about. And it's fascinating.

So yeah, I'm looking forward to this one. Yeah. We're going to work through Caphtagon, you know, the Capitan market, the role the Syrian war plays in it. What exactly it is. But first, you know, drugs and war stuff, it's not really anything new, right? I think we talked about it in the Burma episode. And I think you went into it too with the whole methamphetamine, Hitler Nazi thing, yeah? Yeah.

Yeah, pervitin pills and Hitler like getting eight balls injected into his backside. It's all pretty wild stuff. You know, I personally think stuff like this sometimes gets exaggerated because it sounds cool and makes for sexy sound bites. And I think that's definitely the case with some of the stuff you're going to hear about Capitagon. But it's definitely not all, right? People have always taken drugs during war to enhance their capabilities, whether it's like caffeine pills or pre-workout stuff. Like, you know, I know some soldiers who were in Iraq and Afghanistan and used that sort of stuff back in the day. You know, it's just like it's a pretty common thing.

I think that sometimes the superhuman super predator stuff, gets exaggerated, especially if it's something that's just like an upper. Obviously, it's going to make some people feel great. And if you stay up on it for four or five days, it's going to make you go insane. And yeah, Capdagon has really become like the talk of the town in a large part because there's all these articles coming out about its role in the Syrian Civil War and the role it's played in it. And it's just kind of, you know, I'm pretty interested in it right now, especially with

these articles you're seeing coming out, talking about how Syria is a narco state and whatnot and how it's used massively during the war, which again, I don't really know whether we can say that that's 100% true. Like I did a bunch of reporting in Syria during the war and witnessed a few weird drug phenomenons, nothing to do with Capagon. Like in 2013, I basically lived with a Syrian rebel group for a week in an area that wasn't super active. And a few of them smoked weed.

And it was just like terrible, awful weed. I'm talking like eighth grade picking out seeds and stems type of stuff. The kids these days even know like what. seeds and stems are in weed? Nah, weed's legal and therefore boring. I mean, this is kind of reminding me of that great onion vice take-up about the lack of drugs in Palestine. Have you seen that?

I have, yeah. That's actually really funny. You brought that up because I got another story about that. I rolled like a single piece, single line in the piece I did for Esquire on those guys smoking weed. And it kind of just shows you how twisted the narrative can get with this stuff. Like an activist who liked a different faction pulled this line out of like a 5,000 word story and tried to frame it like the guys I was with were

doped up drug addicts, which they definitely worry. But it's kind of like, you know, it just kind of shows you how people have agendas with some of this stuff. And that's why I've been, I think, a little skeptical with some of the initial reporting on Capiton before I really dove into it. Oh, and one of the weirdest stories ever that I still can't really make heads or tales of in Syria. So like if you're one of those people who don't like when we tell these stories, like

fast forward a few minutes, because this is a long one. but it's payoffs pretty good, right? At the end of 2014, I went on an assignment to try sneak into this city called Kobani, which is in northeastern Syria on the border with Turkey. It was under siege from ISIS at the time, you know, on three sides. The other side was the Turkish border, which the Turkey was doing its best to keep closed, hence the sneaking in. And it's since become like this pretty legendary place where the Kurds were able to sort of

beat back ISIS in the first like turning of the tides with the help of U.S. airstrikes. but it wasn't a super well-known place before. Going in, you had to use smugglers, and it was pretty crazy process. I won't go into the intricate details, but it took a while, and when we finally got to the border fence, we were the group of maybe 20 or 30 other people, right?

Some young PKK members, which was a faction that's fighting in Syria, a couple other foreign journals, and it's like 3 a.m., you know, pitch blackout and some rural apple orchard. And the Turkish border guards, unfortunately, they spot us, and we're about 30 yards shy of the border fence,

which was just like a bunch of barbed wire, but they start shooting. I think they were shooting overhead. I really, obviously, you know, was chaos and I couldn't tell. Everyone's running this way and that way. Everyone gets lost. It's just, it's chaos, right? And I ran one way.

And then I double back and saw a couple people making it through the fence, and I just run behind them and dive through it and end up on the other side. You had to crawl out of a trench, and then it was like a weird junkyard, but there was cover. So I stand up, and there's a group of like five or ten people, maybe like 20% of the people who were originally with who made it. And I look around, and I was with a crew of like three other people,

but I'm the only person there to have made it through on the other side. And that was it, right? Like my other guys, they weren't going to be able to make it through then or for a couple of days. And I was by myself. We had already been delayed a week. And I'm here to shoot this documentary and no one else made it and I don't have a camera. So I'm by myself. Yeah, I'm by myself.

but I noticed this Swedish journalist who I met a couple days earlier at like a safe house of sorts. This guy, Joaqu Mennon, who's just like total badass, knows his way around a conflict or two. And I just kind of started tagging along with him. We just reported it out together.

Anyway, I was only there for a few days. It's nuts. You've never been in a mostly deserted and destroyed city under siege from ISIS. I don't recommend it. But without a camera, there wasn't much point to me staying a long time. So I just kind of left after I got enough for an article,

snuck back over the border, which was its own story. And a few days later, I'm back in New York, and Joaquin hits me up. I think it was like, WhatsApp or something. And he's like, dude, I found something crazy in Kobani. Do you think your editor would be interested? And he sends me a photo. And I'm just kind of confused by what I'm seeing, right?

I'm like, yeah, that's something all right. But what exactly is in that bag? He had like a big clear plastic bag, maybe like a big Ziploc full of white powder, probably a couple thousands of dollars worth of what he said was cocaine that they found in the home of an ISIS commander. I mean, can you imagine a better vice story? Yeah, yeah. Oh my God. That's a great story. The video is still up. I mean, you can Google it. Like, it's a real thing that happened. And initially, I was definitely skeptical and a bit unbelieving, right? But apparently the YPG fighters, they didn't know what it was. They just assumed it

was drugs and Joachim being just a total lunatic dips his finger in and gave it like a taste test like a detective in an 80s crime show and he says something in the article like I'm afraid I must admit I'm familiar with the taste of cocaine which I thought was kind of cute but yeah I mean there you have it right that is very Swedish but yeah that's that's insane so yeah I mean there were definitely fighters they're using uppers to uh to give themselves a boost and I wonder if maybe those fighters were told this was Capagon I mean I don't know but it's uh it's interesting the about. Anyway, the origin story of Captagon, right? It's not that exciting. It's actually the brand name of this drug, phenothelian, which is invented in 1961 in West Germany. And it was originally

used as a treatment for things like depression, narcolepsy and treating ADHD, though obviously back then it wasn't called ADHD. I mean, seriously, what is the deal with this country and drugs? It seems like the entire place has been higher for like over 150 years now. But Germany? Yeah, Germany. God. I mean, that was research. It wasn't like the Berlin nightclubs, you know, but I get the point you're trying to make. By the early 1980s, this drug, it's just seen as being too addictive,

and there's just better drugs out there that did the same thing. So it ends up being banned in most countries. Technically, this is like the last time official Capdagon was ever really produced, but the name stuck around, sort of like how you might, you know, if you see like a cola somewhere, you might call it a Coke. Just a super identifiable brand name. The slang word for it in the Middle East, is actually Abu Hilalian,

which means father of the two crescents in Arabic, because there's a double C logo that's stamped on all the pills. Even, like I said, if it's not Capiton or not made with any ingredients that are like Capiton, which again, we'll get into in a little bit.

Over the next few decades, it starts popping up a bit as something being manufactured in Southeast Europe, Bulgaria specifically, before it's trafficked into the Middle East. It's also said to have popped up in Turkey, possibly manufactured there as well,

and shipped through Lebanon. And it starts getting really popular in the Gulf, mostly Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the number one market for Captagon. And as I learned while researching this, it accounts for a mind-boggling one-third of all global anphetamine seizures. Whoa, that sounds like a lot.

Yeah, I mean, the number, it seems funny to me, but it's from reputable sources. Yeah. And I kind of, I don't know, I kind of figure it doesn't include meth or even Yalba or something like that, But yeah, 11 tons of Capitan were seized in Saudi Arabia in 2011. And that's really before the Capdagon market just went bonkers, like to the moon, as we're about to find out.

Also, really interesting side note, one of the things I found fascinating about this with Saudi Arabia and which might explain why they have such a high level of seizures isn't like the penalty for drug trafficking being death or anything like that. There's other countries that have that. The thing I found fascinating is that the government to encourage informants. gives half the cash value of the seizure to the informant. And the other half cash value is divided up among the officers who make the bust. Right? That is, and some of these busts are for like tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. Like, are you kidding me?

I mean, I would definitely frame, just frame you, Sean, for something like this. You can retire off one bus that you inform. It's pretty crazy. I mean, I wonder if that would work in other, you know, we don't really support the drug war. here at underworldpodcast.com. But, like, that would probably up the level of Caesar's across the world pretty highly. I mean, it's pretty nuts. Trying to find the right informant for that kind of deal.

I don't know how they do it there, but I mean, I remember when I lived in the UAE like over a decade ago now, and they had this massive meth and crack problem. It was like all over the Gulf, young men, almost as if living in a repressive feel isn't good for the soul or something. But I mean, just like that whole society just didn't chime with young people at all. Like kids were there, they drive around and they date by chucking bits of, like, paper with their BBM number into girls' cars. And there's also this great story about a guy trying to get his wife's Bailey Button pregnant.

But I guess we can save that one for another show. What are you on? Anyway, so why is, why is Captain Gun so popular in Saudi Arabia, right? There's no 100% clear answer, but people who study these sort of things, an analyst that pointed to a few reasons. For starters, alcohol is banned. There's also not that much to do because it's such a conservative society. And there's less of a stigma on taking this than other drugs because it's got the veneer being medicine, right?

It's like a prescription pill. It's kind of a similar thing you saw with Oxy when it first started getting prescribed, I mean, you know, 15, 20 years ago, right? The average user in Saudi Arabia is a male generally in his 20s, but it said that students take it to study. And women and probably men take it too for weight loss. You know, it's hard to get them in those last love handles. Sometimes you got to get a little chemical boost.

Did you ever have stack or any of that stuff in the UK? It was popular back when I was in college, I think, 20 years ago. And it was like an over-the-counter fat burner that had a fedron in it. And people used to take it to party, like to stay up all night. I think it was banned after like two years because people started having heart attacks and things like that. This kind of reminds me that. Yeah, we never had that. We're all like poppers and ketamine and methadrone and other like soup, really rank party drugs.

Just make your heartbeat a million miles an hour and feel like you wanted to commit suicide. But, nah, it's probably the same stuff. It did that too. And I think you could buy it in like 7-Eleven back at the time. Christ. Dangerous. Yeah. So so far we've got jihadi super soldiers and Saudi kids studying.

But what is the deal? What does it actually do to the user? And I've got to give a lot of credit to Sarah Miller. at live science. I think this is an article from a couple years ago. She saw too many, you know, ISIS super soldier headlines,

ISIS becoming invincible through drugs. And she interviewed scientists who were like, actually, this is a pretty mild, like, drug when it comes to amphetamines of speed. Milder than Adderall. The scientists, I think, one of them called it inferior

amphetamine, which makes sense. You know, I've always said with drugs, like if it was really that good, you could get it in the U.S. There'd be a market here for it, or definitely, like, in Berlin. And the scientists, told her that you could take a low dose of it for a while and be fine. And another told her,

quote, trust me, if this drug produces a super soldier, U.S. soldiers would be using it. And again, the U.S. has definitely given stimulus to soldiers. And I know folks in the military who have down their share of stuff to stay awake, but, you know, what's funny is one of the scientists is like, well, these fighters might find Capagon to be amazing because they probably never had drugs before. But someone familiar with drugs would find it to be really weak, which is basically, you know, he's saying these guys get hyped up because they're, you know, dorks who don't party. But like if Sean took seven of them, he probably wouldn't even notice. Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean, I love to focus on Birkine all the time, man. Like, when you come out here and I'm hoping that's going to be soon, I'm going to drag you to some really cool spots. I'm like way ahead of the curve here. Not just some sad, 35-year-old nerd. Not at all. Not at all.

I'm super cool. Here's where things get interesting and a bit murky. Caphtagon, or the stuff we're calling Capdagon, may not actually be even close to true Capitagon. A Jordanian study done in 2004 looked at over 100 seized Capiton pills and found no phenothelian the main ingredient in any of them. Police have said that the Black Mark Capiton is just as often counterfeit as it is real. It's just always made to resemble the original Capagon pills.

And according to the Center for Operational Research and Analysis, which did a big paper calling Syria a narco state that we'll get into quote, Caphtagon is best understood not as a specific drug, but as a generic class of synthetic stimulants. Only rarely did the pill sold as Captagon contain phenothelian, the active compound found in trademarked Capiton. Instead, the pills produced in Syria today are usually made from a cocktail of more common substances, including caffeine, and phenomene and theophelion. formulas are adapted based on available resources including diverted pharmaceuticals and pre-synthesized compounds that are transported overland and encapsulated in Syria.

Basically, the manufacturers, they're throwing anything they can in there that's going to give you a little buzz and some energy. It's got, you know, very bathsalt vibes, caffeine, probably shitty speed, amphetamine, ephedrine, you know, all that, all that good stuff. Mmm, yummy. I mean, it does sound a bit like the Yabapil's in Southeast Asia as well, right? they just chuck any old crap in there. They might have a tiny bit of amphetamine.

And I'm not like intimately familiar with speed or meth. And the headlines probably are still a giant exaggeration, but some of the more, you know, I'm a golden guy who can conquer the whole world reactions. I'm assuming that's a little bit more methy than just like simple Capitagon that might make more sense. Just the theory. But Patrick Radin Keefe,

who we've had on the show, had an interesting write-up years ago where he talks about how the whole superhuman not-feeling bullets quotes might come from the dealers themselves who are just like pitching the stuff to ignorant fighters and trying to hype their products. Or maybe they're just taking 20 pills at a time, who knows?

I mean, the only way I can really think of solving this again is for someone to mail us a bunch of different Cap-Tagon pills to Berlin and we'll have Sean taste test every single one of them and then give us a rundown. No, what we're going to do is we're going to have a Capiton off here, right here, the two of us. By the way, I went on some telegram group where all Berlin's dealers go before this show.

I'm a journalist, guys. It's all good. And I couldn't find any cat's gone on there. And I, like, asked a couple of people. But, yeah, by the way, to my guy on there asking for Mephedrona 840 this morning. My guy, you need some help, man. Maybe we should do it, like, a, like, the $15 Patreon tier, if you do that. We'll post a YouTube video of Sean doing, like, one of those reaction videos.

Like, people do it, like, new tropics or something. But just from him taking various different captagon pills. that we score. I mean, shoot, shoot for 20 at least. I'm probably going to fucking die. So all through the 90s in the mid-2000s, Bulgaria is the main manufacturing hub. Turkey a little bit, you know, but the authorities in both countries start cracking down. Bulgarian police shut down 18 large manufacturing facilities from 2003 through 2006. And Turkey confiscates 20 million pills in 2006. And something else happens in 2006 that also changes the future of the Capagon industry.

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There's long been stories about cocaine trafficking through the South America, West Africa, Beiru connection. There's also the Begah Valley where a ton of hash and opium has long been produced, though it's my understanding that the Valley families kind of operate independently and just get taxed. Anyway, according to the Washington Post, quote, After Hezbollah suffered heavy losses in its 2006 war with Israel, Iran supplied its militant allies with pharmaceutical equipment needed to manufacture a counterfeit Capitagon, current and former U.S. officials say. So the Iranians gave them the industrial equipment needed to make the pills, and they just got cracking,

right? It's kind of a win-win for them. They make a bunch of cash, and they kind of screw up the younger generation of Saudis. This has also been reported in a 2013 August report from the studies in conflict and terrorism that examines Hezbollah's role in the country. counterfeit pharmaceutical industry. And according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the first Capagon Lag reported in the Levant was in Lebanon in 2007. Yeah, like keeping your enemies docile with vast amounts of illegal drugs is like, it's become one of the big things of this show, right?

I think we did it in the last episode in North Korea as well. I don't think it gets talked about enough by the media either. I don't know if it's keeping them docile if, you know, they're hopped up on uppers. Keeping them useless. You know, it definitely, yeah, well, it definitely becomes like a drain on resources and a real plague in society. If you, you don't really have to look far to see how these, you know, look at the crack wars and all that. Yeah. How people react to this sort of thing being just transported into like a new, new area.

So, yeah, the action, the actions in the valley, the pills are pumped into Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf. but a few years later the Syrian revolution kicks off in 2011 and in no time the Assad regime's brutality turns it into a civil war and we all know that wartime is a great time to be smuggling trafficking anything especially black market goods whether it's weapons band items drugs plenty of desperate young men wide open borders power vacuum is destroyed economies

everyone looking to get some cash together I think in the first episode of this podcast we talked about the breakup of Yugoslavia and how it was a boon to thugs and criminals who could capitalize on that, and it's the same thing in Syria. Obviously, weapons, soldiers, oil, artifacts, women, and of course, drugs. Meanwhile, a bunch of labs get shut down in 2012

in Lebanon. There's a crackdown, and a lot of these operations get transferred over the border to Syria. And with the power vacuum and fog of war, there's also opportunities to start manufacturing and smuggling in the north of Syria along the Turkish border, which remember, Turkey was a popular manufacturing place for Captingon back in the day.

From 2012 on, Syria just becomes this hub. It becomes the capital of Capitagon. According to a 2016 report from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, quote, from 2013 and 2014, the Turkish Syrian border was the most favored departure point for Capitagon. This area, specifically the Hatay, Gaziantep, Rehanli, and Idris provinces is well suited for smuggling goods like drugs due to the presence of smuggling families, located on the border who facilitate the activity.

And I know smuggling families are like right off the bat can seem like a nefarious thing. And a lot of the times it is, but a lot of the times too, it's also just something as simple as cigarettes or food or anything like that. You know, there were smugglers operating across this border before the war started.

And then obviously as the war kicks off and you have a complete sort of shutdown between regime areas and these opposition areas, they're going to have to get stuff in there one way or another. Yeah, true. You know, I crossed that border a bunch of times back and forth during those years. And, you know, I stayed in some of the border towns. And it could be a pretty wild, sometimes lawless place with lots moving back and forth

and money being made in this entire illicit economy having to be conducted because everything else was cut off by the Syrian regime. Well, I mean, are these, the people making this stuff like, is it just a pill press? Or is it just like a giant factory? I mean, what's the kind of scale that we're talking about here? And is it just easy to press these things? I don't know. I think, I mean, there's a couple of, there's a, there's a documentary I saw that has, I think it's the BBC one where they go into one of the places where they're being made.

It looks like a pretty small apartment. You know, they're just mixing precursors and then pressing the pills. And the Columbia report says that one kilo of pills, which is about 5,000 pills could fit in a shoebox. And you can get a couple of shoeboxes. I mean, that's a lot of pills. And the good pills, they go for like $20 to $25 in the Gulf. And that's a hefty profit, especially for a wartime economy where everything is a disaster. And it's only costing a few cents to manufacture a pill, right?

So this is a really big profit margin. So I don't think they've got to, like they need a gigantic space to be turning this stuff out, right? I'm sure that, you know, the bigger it is, the more money they're making. But you need all the precursor materials and all that. And the pills, once they get trafficked over the border into Turkey, they get repackaged and they likely get sent to Beirut. Eventually, though, the Turkish border gets a little stricter. It falls under more scrutiny. And you have groups like ISIS and Jabhatal Nusra operating, which makes it a bit tough

for aspiring drug manufacturers and traffickers to sort of operate in those areas. I mean, some was getting through because according to the UN, again, in 2014, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria accounted for more than 55% of amphetamine seized worldwide, which, again, like mind-boggling statistic. That makes no sense to me. Yeah, that's insane. Also, you've got to be pretty enterprising as a narco to be running pills past ISIS. Jesus Christ.

I mean, you know, there are definitely, there's definitely footage of them burning stuff here and there, but like burning pills they found or weed or cigarettes or alcohol. But like anything else, I'm sure if you pay a high enough tax, you know, it works out. During this time, like the early years of the Syrian Civil War, there's a few different groups through the manufacturing and the trafficking. You definitely have Hezbollah and their affiliates involved. The regime is involved. and there's also some anti-Assad groups too,

as well as just independent smugglers and your kind of money over everything types. Capagon, again, it's really good money. And the BBC had this dock out in 2015 that has some of the more outrageous quotes that I referenced in the open, but they also talk to a wealthy Syrian businessman who supports the opposition.

And he says he's funded Captagon factories for years and that he made about $6 million annually in profit, but that he did it for a good cause. He put that money back into supporting secular brigades and homes, groups that were anti-jihadi and anti-Assad, and he claims to have supported thousands of soldiers, as he was hoping to outspend, you know, some of the, some of the people that were supporting more radical groups. At the end of the film, though, he says that eventually they have to shut down the factories because of increased fighting in those areas and the tide

sort of turning, and that's, that's 2015. And this is sort of like the beginning of a turning point that really comes full circle in 2017, 2018, when the Assad regime, the Russians, the Iranians, and their mercenaries, they have a bunch of big military victories and reclaim a bunch of territory. And that's where there's a consolidation of the Capitan industry. And the regime and their allies really take a hold of it. As the Center for Operational Analysis and Research puts it, quote, a growing body of evidence implicates well-placed Syrian regime figures and their regional allies in the fluid regional narcotics trade that is centered in Syria. Whereas in earlier periods, narco-trafficking was attributed

to armed groups, some of which explicitly threatened the Syrian state. Since 2018, drug trafficking has surged, as its profits have become a critical financial lifeline for the Assad regime and its international allies. And this is when the Capitagon production levels just go like completely nuts. Every few months starting at the end of December 2018, there's a massive bust of Capiton pills. We are talking millions of pills and hundreds of millions of dollars. Most of these seizures have links to the Assad regime or Hezbollah. And let me run through a few of them because, I mean, the numbers are just like astronomical. December 2018, a boat leaves Latakia port, heavily Assad-controlled city on the coast,

and on the way to Libya gets intercepted by the Greek coast guard. A hundred million dollars worth of Captagon and Wheat are found. July 2019, Greece again seizes a shipment from Syria, allegedly worth more than half a billion dollars. February 2020, a Dubai port, they find 35 million pills that are hidden. April 30th, 2020. Saudis bused 19 million pills coming from Lebanon, package and shipments labeled Mate. July 2020, this is a big one. We're going to talk about this one a bit more. Police in the Italian port city of Salerno find 14 tons of Capagon worth over a billion euros. What? How did a billion euro bus cause such little waves? That's crazy.

I mean, there were a few, there were a few things written about it. January this year, the Egyptians find eight tons. In March, Dubai, they find three million pills. Also in March, Malaysians working with Saudis find 95 million pills, which is a street value that's also over a billion. And in April, the Saudis, they find over five million pills hidden in pomegranates from Lebanon. Then right away, they banned the importation of Lebanese agricultural products because they've been finding them hidden in, you know, pomegranates, grapes, apples, and potatoes.

that have all come from Lebanon. So they finally just had enough. I wonder why I hated Bomi Grinette seeds. And this is just a handful of them, right? This is the seizures too, not the ones that are getting through, right? They're pumping out these pills. And a lot of this is directly traceable to Syria and the Syrian state. And that's why you're starting to see headlines calling Syria a narco state.

If you add up the total amount seized by European and Middle East authorities in 2020 of Syrian originated pills, you're talking a street value in the neighborhood of over $3 billion. And in a recent economist article, they compare that to Syria's largest legal export, which is olive oil that totals about $122 million a year. And again, this is just the C's ones. And to be clear, you know, the shipments in Europe are generally thought to be just trend shipment points that they're all headed back to the Gulf or Libya or Lebanon.

But there's no real market in Europe for the pills. But yeah, the organized crime and corruption reporting project runs the numbers. And they say the one billion euro bus in Salerno was actually worth more than the entire country's formal exports in 2019, which was 700 million. They also say, quote, by analyzing five drug shipments that left Syrian ports between June 2019 to August 2020,

seized in Greece, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Romania, the Middle East and North Africa Maritime Development Program, a London-based research institute, estimated that drug smuggling from Syrian ports may be bringing in some $16 billion a year. And that's like, you know, that's where you get narco states. And to be clear, too, these shipments that are that, you know, you have the list of ports like Romania, Greece and all that.

Those are all headed back to the Middle East. I mean, it's just like a trans shipment point. They don't really end up in Europe. Europe's got much better drugs than Catholicana. There really is, it's just not a market for it, you know? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I'm not going to lie, right? The whole narco state thing struck me as an exaggeration before I started really deep.

looking into this and doing this research. But with those numbers, it kind of holds true. You do have to be careful with some of the stuff too because, you know, it lends itself to people trying to push a narrative. But you can't really argue with what we're seeing right here. You do see it, though, with ISIS sometimes. Like a couple of stories here and there have pushed ISIS originally as these major manufacturers of the drugs.

But in actuality, they didn't really do much with Capagon when it came to the trafficking or anything like that because, you know, they were making a ton of money in other ways. They had taxes, oil and gas sales, extortion, racketeering, foreign donations, looting, and things like that. So they didn't really need the money that came from Capiton. It wasn't like a moral thing, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, well, no. Nah, this isn't exactly God's work, right?

There were headlines, too, about ISIS inspired, the Bata Clan terrorist being doped up on Capitagon, but that also proved untrue. And the Italian police even first pointed to ISIS with that billion dollar shipment that got caught in Salerno. But after a few days, they changed it and they were like, it's actually coming clearly from the Syrian regime and the Hezbollah types. And it's kind of like maybe it was just like with journalism a few years ago where you just throw ISIS in the headline because it's going to draw clicks. But they use the drug, right? Obviously, that's the case. But far as going as manufacturers and traffickers, there's really not a lot of evidence of that. There is a ton of evidence, though, that points to the Hezbollah Syria pipeline.

And the OCCRP did that big project on that shipment that the Greeks busted in late 2018. they got the details on the actual ship that got raided, like where it was registered and who owned it and whatnot. And they found a bunch of connections to the Assad family to a gang in Libya that was supposed to be receiving the pills and a bunch of shell companies that were registered in London. And the guy who the cargo ship was registered to, Tahrir Kiyali, has connections to an Assad cousin.

And again, it came from that port, which nothing is leaving there without high-level regime okays. And that's also where the Salerno shipment itself originated from, too. So they're all coming from those ports that are essentially controlled by the Assad regime. In the last few years, all these big shipments, most of them getting confiscated in Libya, Italy, Greece, Romania, they're all coming from that port as well, which as the OCCRP points out is under tight government control and dominated by the army's infamous fourth division, which was a unit directed by President Assad's brother, Mahair al-Assad. Additionally, Kiyali, the shipowner, he has ties to another Assad cousin whose company controls a marina and a tourism complex.

in the port where this guy runs a cafeteria. He had actually previously been busted by Italian police for running a luxury stolen car ring that stole cars in the Netherlands and shipped them to the UAE in Japan. And apparently, he was also involved with an international gang that smuggled stolen yachts, which is kind of tight.

You know, that's awesome. Anyway, that shipment that was headed to the Libyan gang, they got caught for them were sentenced to be executed by firing squad, which sucks. Again, decriminalized. That's what we support here. another Assad cousin, Samar Kamala Assad, is said to be running a Capitan factory in a village called Al-Basa. And reports have pointed to at least 14 Cap-Aragon factories in Syria, all in regime-controlled areas.

We should probably be doing an episode on the Assad family. Sounds like stealing yachts. What? Yeah, well, that wasn't the family. That was the guy who did business with a cousin. The Washington Post, in a big Capagon article, says there's everything. linking Syrian business executives and high-ranking Assad family members, Hezbollah and organized crime families, even the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran. And they say referring to the regime in Hezbollah and quoting a Middle Eastern intelligence official who closely tracks Hezbollah's illicit enterprises, quote,

they have stepped up the whole business with Capagon. There is no doubt about that. The thing is to find any way to bring in money into the organization. And Captagon is additional income. Martin Trulov, who's, you know, one of the best reporters working in the Middle East, tells this story that in 2015, a powerful businessman in Latakia gets approached by a big military boss in the government.

The guy's already running a business importing medical supplies, and he gets asked to bring in phenothelian, right? The drug that makes Capiton. They want a ton of it, they tell him, and he tells the guy he's going to look into it, and then immediately he gets his family in himself, and they flee Syria, because he knows that if you get wrapped up in this,

you're essentially part of this crime family, and it's over. Like, you're in the cartel that involved, the high-ranking members of the government, and there's no leaving that. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion-dollar swings.

There's a money-side to every story. Get the money-side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. Ryan Reynolds here from MintMobil. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities.

So do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants switch you to MintMobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra.

Seeful terms at mintmobile.com. True love goes further into it in the article from a few months ago. He says, quote, six police and intelligence officials in the Middle East in Europe have told the Guardian that the busted shipments were shipped from Syria's Captagon Heartland, or across the frontier in Lebanon where a network of untouchables,

crime families, militia leaders, and political figures have formed cross-border cartels that make and distribute industrial stale quantities of drugs. So, you know, we have the route out of the ports, but then there's the route through southern Syria into Jordan or Lebanon, which is also pretty well trafficked.

There you have big-time smuggling families, Hezbollah, and the Valley families of Lebanon, which have been growing hashish and opium for generations in those areas. I really want to do a separate story on those families because they're, I mean, they're just fucking wild and they just do not care. You know, they're doing YouTube videos. They're straight up cartels that will take on the Lebanese army. But again, they're, they're kind of independent actors. I don't think they're actually super tiding with Hezbollah from what I understand, but they definitely have to give a cut. You know, they got to pay taxes

on what they're doing. The point is that, you know, these are lawless areas where a lot of officials are complicit and there's just this history of trafficking, military, violence, crime families, and all that, all that fun stuff. And you also now have addicts that are springing up in the south of Syria. You see this in a lot of situations with manufacturing and trafficking routes where even though the local place may not be the intended customers for the final destination, the drugs either leak outward or they're paid. The transporters are paid in, you know, they're paid their fee in pills or drugs because it's easier than giving them cash and they stand to make more if they sell those pills in those areas. It typically doesn't

end well for these poor areas where the drugs are being trafficked though especially when there's like zero drug treatment infrastructure and the place is already pretty fucked up oh and hey danny by the way if anyone wants to learn more about any of this stuff where can they find more information i wonder can they find it on the reading list that we're going to put on the patreon or will they find it on maybe the scripts that we put up there yeah you know we'll have all these uh all these articles and all this information put up it goes on the patreon reading list and in our sources list if you want look further into it. So that's what we have. We have this wartime economy in Syria turned into a narco state, European Coast Guards and customs, breaking up billion dollar shipments, regime

officials and Hezbollah, manufacturing and trafficking large amounts, and young men all over the Gulf and now Syria just getting addicted and it's not slowing down. But yeah, I'll leave with this, right? If any of our listeners want to send us some Capiton, it's not really available in New York or Berlin because we have good drugs here, but I will make sure that. Sean does a bunch and we will put a review up on the Patreon so we can finally put to rest whether this is a wonder drug or just something else that, you know, it's basically just a ton of caffeine. Yeah, I'm going to leave my telegram deeds on the show, the show the show's Twitter. So get in touch with me, make my life hell. As long as you do it for money, that's fine.

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