Bashar al-assad and captagon: how syria’s narco-state survives | thearticle

In 1961, the German big pharma firm Degussa AG, launched a new drug, fenethylline, on the market under the brand name Captagon. This was an amphetamine fusion, developed (so it was claimed)

to help patients with depression. Captagon gives an instant high, making the patient forget about pain, personal problems and poverty. For anyone who just wanted an incredible high, Captagon

was a favourite amongst connoisseurs of chemical aids to instant nirvama. It soon became clear that the drug was highly addictive. Other better designed drugs offering real medical help for

depression eventually replaced Captagon, though it was not withdrawn by Degussa until 1986, when the WHO placed it on the list of psychotropic substances and it became illegal in most

countries. Since then, however, the production and trade in this illicit drug has continued, especially in the Middle East. Now Captagon has become the weapon of choice of the Syrian

dictator Bashar al-Assad. His regime has been distributing it all over the Middle East and Western Asia, to the joy of millions who want momentarily to escape the oppressions, poverty, and

cruelties of Arab potentates. The latter turned a blind eye to the damaging effects of Captagon, because their nightmare is that their people will start demanding democracy and human rights.

Now, though, the health impact has become impossible to ignore. Some 80 per cent of the world’s supply of Captagon is produced in Syria under the control of Bashar’s family or close regime

associates, including the military. The US and Britain have issued international arrest warrants for Bashar’s cronies, but such gesture diplomacy has had and will have no impact. Just as the

global south will not follow the US and Europe against Putin, so the Arab world will not take lessons from London or Washington after the regime change disasters in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Efforts by the US to get majority Muslim countries to comply with the wishes of Washington are ignored, just as those of Moscow were in the 1980s. Since 2011 the wishes of London and Paris

to have obedient regimes in Tripoli and Damascus have turned into disaster. Instead, Nato and EU capitals lick the boots of anti-Jewish, anti-women, anti-democracy regimes, as long as they

sell oil. Now Bashar al-Assad has cynically used the global north’s indulgence of brain-altering drugs for pleasure to sell Captagon to the peoples of his neighbouring regimes. He does this

both to earn a great deal of money for Syrian generals and politicians, thereby ensuring their loyalty, and to show his fellow Arab leaders that shunning him, at the bidding of Washington,

London and Paris, just won’t work. Saudi Arabia broke diplomatic relations with Damascus in 2012. A decade later, as the Saudi rulers see the impact of Captagon on the young populations in

the region, they are opening the door to Bashar al Assad’s return to the Arab League. The Saudis are now giving Syria considerable financial aid to be spent on combating Captagon addiction.

At the beginning of May Jordan launched an air raid on south Syria, aimed at eliminating one of Bashar’s associates, who was flooding Jordan with Captagon. Hezbollah in Lebanon organises the

transit route for Syrian-produced Captagon to much of the Arab world and Turkey. Three years ago President Macron grandiosely promised to rebuild Lebanon, but France no more than the US or

Israel has the means to displace Hezbollah. Iran and Russia are Bashar al Assad’s main non-Arab supporters, along with Turkey. Under Erdogan or any other conceivable Turkish ruler, Ankara

will keep the Syrian dictator in power in exchange for support in eliminating as far as possible any Kurdish threat to the unity of the Turkish state. So Bashar al-Assad has scored a major

diplomatic coup by being accepted back into the Arab league. He is being offered large sums of oil money in exchange for turning off the Captagon tap. Cynical? Yes to the highest degree. But

the US and Europe are not going to send invading armies to replace the Baathist clique that rules in Damascus. Moscow tried regime change in Kabul after 1980. It failed. Bush and Blair

tried regime change in Iraq in 2003. It turned into a disaster. David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkoy backed regime change in Libya and Syria in 2011. Where are they now? David Cameron handed his

party over Boris Johnson, Suella Braverman and Jacob Rees Mogg when he gave in to Nigel Farage and Rupert Murdoch by holding the Brexit plebiscite in 2016. Sarkozy is facing unending trials

over corruption and was last week sentenced to wearing a tag and being under de facto house arrest. He is appealing the court hearing and, given the cynicism of French judges about

political corruption, he will probably escape any real sanction. Meanwhile, though, Vladimir Putin, assorted Arab despots and Islamist dictators in Iran are still in power. Bashar al-Assad’s

narco-state has survived revolution and civil war to be readmitted as a full member of the Arab political community. So far this century, Euro-Atlantic diplomacy in the Muslim world has

been a total failure. We can enjoy the Netflix series, “Diplomat”. The real diplomats, or rather the political chiefs who give them their orders, have badly let down the  democracies of the

north and the oppressed peoples of the south. _Denis MacShane served in the FCO under Tony Blair, 1997-2005._ A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to

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