DAMASCUS, Syria — A luxury villa dominates a hilltop overlooking the countryside just 15 miles outside the capital, Damascus. The driveway has a streak of white powder leading to the entrance. The ground is sticky, and the air is filled with a strong smell of tar.
A battered pickup truck with an anti-aircraft gun is parked at the top of the driveway. The large garden is unkempt and the swimming pool is dirty and abandoned. All this hints at a more sinister story inside; this was a factory for a highly addictive drug called Captagon.
For the past several years, the regime of Syria's ousted president, Bashar al-Assad, produced and trafficked in Captagon, sending it to countries throughout the region, where it was popular among young people. The Assad government earned billions of dollars in a desperate attempt to prop up an economy that collapsed during the country's long civil war.
With Assad now gone, evidence of the extensive drug operations is now coming to light.
From a legal pharmaceutical to an illicit party drug
Captagon was created as a legal pharmaceutical drug in Germany in the early 1960s to treat conditions like attention deficit disorder. It gives users a rush of energy and can make them very productive in the short term.
However, Captagon is also very addictive and can cause hallucinations and heart problems. Captagon was banned around the world, including in the U.S. But it gained a second life as an illicit party drug popular in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Abu Bakr al-Tartousi, 29, led the group of rebel fighters who discovered this factory in the remote area of Masakin al-Deemaas shortly after his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, helped topple the Assad regime.
Tartousi is dressed in fatigues and a backward-facing baseball cap, and he fidgets with an assault rifle across his body.
He steps into the middle of what would have been the living room of this house, with marble floors and two massive, low-hanging crystal chandeliers.
Stacked against one wall are brown drums of a liquid chemical with labels that say "Manufactured in India." Against another wall is a ceiling-high pile of sacks filled with white powder.
"These are the ingredients to make legitimate medicine," Tartousi said. "But they used it to make Captagon here."
The lab was set up in the large, dusty kitchen cluttered with heavy duty machinery and garbage. The kitchen looks like one found in a restaurant, with large metal sinks and a space where an industrial-size stove would be.
He said the rebels called the Ministry of Health as soon as they discovered the factory, and they were instructed to burn as many of the drugs as they could. A charred pile sits in the middle of the driveway.
"The officials came to take samples first, to figure out which materials we should destroy and what to keep," Tartousi said.
In one room, small, round casings litter the floor. Tartousi's shoes crunch over them as he walks. He picks up a pile of the pellets and begins to smash one. After a few tries, the pellet breaks open, and in his palm a small, pinkish tablet spills out.
"This is it," Tartousi said, turning it over in his hand. "This is Captagon."
Syria was the hub of the Captagon trade
"Around 2018, 2019, when the regime started to recognize that this was a lucrative illicit trade, we saw this large-scale investment into industrial scale production, production facilities, warehouses, trafficking networks," said Caroline Rose at the New Lines Institute, a think tank based in Washington with an emphasis on international affairs, including the Middle East. She's studied this drug trade for years.
Rose said a key figure was Assad's brother, Maher al-Assad. He's best known as the regime's brutal enforcer. But he also ran the Captagon business by working closely with Syria's military and security services.
This villa outside Damascus isn't the only factory found in Syria. There were several, including a large production facility that was recently raided in Douma, also near the capital.
"It was a factory for potato chips called Captain Corn," said Rose. "After its factory owner left Syria in 2018, Maher personally authorized that factory to be used for Captagon production. It was Maher that really operated and coordinated and created this very smooth structure."
The Syrians distributed the drug throughout the region, with leading markets in the wealthy Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. From Syria's perspective these were ideal markets. Rich countries with lots of young people. Alcohol is banned and penalties for hard drugs are harsh. Captagon carried less of a social stigma and was relatively inexpensive and widely available.
As the use of Captagon increased, Syria's neighbors sought to stop it. However, most had isolated Bashar al-Assad due to the way he was prosecuting the war in Syria and therefore didn't have a lot of influence over him.
In the past couple of years, several Arab states have moved to reestablish some links with him. This is partly because it was looking like Assad had survived the civil war. The fighting had tapered off, the regime still held the major cities, and it seemed there was no real alternative.
Also, some of the Arab states believed that if they reengaged with Assad, they could work together to crack down on the drug trafficking.
In effect, Syria had created a problem it could use as leverage to end its isolation.
David McCloskey, a former CIA official who worked on Syria, described the Syrian regime's strategy this way: "Let's earn money by selling something that's lucrative to our regime. And then let's create a problem for the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Gulf states, so that they have to come to us if they want this turned off. It seems like some of the logic in reengaging him was reducing this drug trade."
The fighters who have taken over in Damascus say they now want to stop this drug trade at the source.
"We'll now depend on companies and institutions, construction and businessmen," said fighter Abu Mohamed al-Suri, 31, who guarded the gate of the villa.
But this will depend on how much control a new Syrian government is able to establish, said Caroline Rose. She thinks the bigger operations run by the Assad regime are likely to get shut down. However, smaller, underground labs could survive or crop up elsewhere.
Of course, this is just one of the many problems Syria faces as it tries to rebuild.
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