Meet the Queen of Captagon

Asma Al-Assad, the Syrian president’s wife, is accused of playing a major role in the crimes of her husband and his regime during Syria’s 12-year war; she’s played no small role in the country’s $57B Captagon drug trade. Image via AFP

Asma al-Assad, the wife of Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad grew up in London attending a private school. She went to Queen’s College and studied with people like Ringo Starr’s daughter. Asma was described by a source we spoke with as pretty normal. So how does a girl from London with a career in investment banking at JP Morgan go to running a drug ring?

After years of the world forgetting how Asma and her husband Bashar killed 230,000 Syrians, and refugee’ed almost 7 million people, the two are are back in the game, making media appearances and attending conferences in China and the UAE.

The Financial Times wrote a scathing report about her in April accusing Asma of running the Captagon drug ring. Arab journalists also now wonder how the al-Assads are appearing publicly: Can a Genocide Expert Condemn Murder?

Back in 2011, Asma was dressed to kill in a Vogue article debacle entitled “A Rose in the Desert” which served as a litmus test for cynicism when considered against the backdrop of mass-murder, torture and imprisonment of tens of thousands of Syrians that had occurred since the story was first published.

Some 6.7 million Syrian refugees have since moved to Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan and probably will never go back. Canada accepted 40,000 of them. While Vogue took down the article after the Arab Spring riots took over, we found a copy of it. Vogue article – get the PDF

The Vogue article that disappeared online

In March, 2011, the 3,200-word story on Asma al-Assad praised the “wildly democratic” family-centric couple who vacation in Europe, nurture Christianity, (ignore their country’s “missing” Jews) and leave their security guards at home when cruising around Damascus with Brad and Angelina. The article’s author Joan Buck declared that “Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East” and described the couple’s aim was to give Syria a “brand essence.”

With catastrophic mistiming, the story was published online right before Syria’s Arab Spring erupted. It was later revealed to be the result of a coordinated public relations effort managed by Brown Lloyd James, the same firm that handled media spin for Libya’s Qaddafi regime.

Asma said in the Vogue article about her business acumen:

“What I’ve been able to take away from banking was the transferable skills—the analytical thinking, understanding the business side of running a company—to run an NGO or to try and oversee a project.”

She runs her office like a business, chairs meeting after meeting, starts work many days at six, never breaks for lunch, and runs home to her children at four.

The family’s grip over a country in bloodied ruin

Asma is now appearing with Bashar in various countries around the world, including the United Arab Emirates. According to the Financial Times, “the first lady now has a leading role in a regime that is plundering the wealth of its people.”

She also made a recent appearance in China. This FT article exposes Syria’s $57B Captagon drug ring, naming Asma as playing a major role in its operation. A USA Today article suggests Captagon was found on Hamas-linked Palestinian terrorists that attacked Israel on October 7. Palestinian-Hamas terrorists crossed over and raped women, killed babies in front of their children, and blew up families hiding in their bomb shelters. Were they high on Captagon while doing it?

Captagon is called many names, writes USA Today: The jihadi drug, Captain Courage, the Poor Man’s Cocaine. But were Hamas terrorists high on the synthetic stimulant Captagon when they attacked Israel on Oct. 7, brutally killing more than 1,200 people and kidnapping at least 240 more? The Israeli government won’t say but they did find bags of pills on the bodies of terrorists.

According to the Middle East Eye:

Washington’s regional allies, particularly Jordan, have lobbied Washington to take a more active role in stopping the drug’s proliferation. The 2022 defence spending bill included the Captagon Act, requiring the US government to devise a strategy to disrupt and dismantle Syria’s narcotics networks.

“Syria has become a global leader in the production of highly addictive Captagon, much of which is trafficked through Lebanon,” said Andrea Gacki, the senior Treasury official handling sanctions.

“With our allies, we will hold accountable those who support Bashar al-Assad’s regime with illicit drug revenue and other financial means that enable the regime’s continued repression of the Syrian people,” she added.

Prof. Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University, who specializes in the contemporary history of Syria and Lebanon says that after the economy of the Syrian regime collapsed, the entire country became a Captagon production laboratory. He told Globes: “The product is transported by drones and UAVs across borders. Saudi Arabia is flooded with it, Jordan is flooded with it.”

In 2015, even a Saudi Prince, Abdul-Mohsen bin Walid ibn Abd-Elaziz, was caught trying to smuggle large quantities of the substance into Saudi Arabia through Lebanon.

Meet the King and Queen of Captagon

Captagon dispensers? Bashar Assad and Asma Assad in China last month via SCMP

The most telling is what is in the Financial Times, and later the BBC. Scroll down for the video.

Asma’s presence underscored something little understood outside Syria: how a woman initially sidelined as an obstinate young newly-wed with lofty western ideals has since risen to become one of the most powerful people in the country, at the apex of the country’s ruthless ruling family.

In public, she styles herself as the Mother of the Nation, radiating maternal care as she tends to Syria’s military families, cancer-stricken children and survivors of the February 6 earthquake. She sports delicate ribbons in her hair, her petite frame draped in dresses sewn by the widows of men martyred in her husband’s war.

But privately, Asma has manoeuvred herself into a position of remarkable power, according to interviews with 18 people familiar with the regime’s operations, including heads of business, aid workers and former government officials. She now controls some of the key levers in Syria’s battered economy, both as policymaker and profiteer, helping consolidate the family’s grip over a country in bloodied ruin.

Experts say the couple is using new illicit revenue streams for the regime to help keep it afloat: weapons, oil smuggling, alcohol (which is prohibited by Islam) and sales of the illegal amphetamine Captagon.

When I visited Syria in 1999 the people were living very poorly, kids were playing in piles of rubble and locals were plundering archeological sites. I felt that I had entered a time machine going back to the 50s. Most people got around by mini-bus and I felt safe not because there was no crime but because Basher’s father’s face was plastered everywhere. The people were living in fear of Basher’s father and in fear of each other. If you did not express your featly to the regime you could disappear. The regime hated Jews so much that even saying the word Israel was punishable. Locals said to never say the word Israel. This made me want to visit Israel even more.

Israel: codeword Disneyland

The hotels did keep guidebooks on Israel, however, covered over with the code name Disneyland. Most tourists in Syria then were headed for Jordan, Israel, then Sinai. I met a number of loving, decent Syrians when I was there. They all were afraid to mention Bashar’s father name. They were prisoners to the regime and begged that I would send them art books or any notes from the outside world as no-one in Syria was allowed to use the internet then.

We had spies following us around when we were there. We did feel very safe in Syria and slept overnight by ourselves in a Crusader Castle. We were the only guests.

People in Syria are less afraid today and social media has opened up space for critique: According to the Middle East Institute, there is a notable trend that has emerged among Alawites in Syria’s regime-held areas, including those from powerful families. They are no longer allowing themselves to be silenced. 

“Writers, journalists, and rank-and-file Alawites have taken to social media platforms to express their deep frustration with the regime’s economic policies and the centralized nature of the dictatorship under President Bashar al-Assad, as well as his wife Asma al-Assad’s outsized influence and corruption linked to her secretive “economic council.””

Some activists in Syria claim the Assads have gone so far as to start forest fires.

BBC offers a must-see investigative piece on Captagon in Syria and Lebanon. Warning: the video is age-restricted.

“Living conditions are hard and the people are manipulated,” says the Jordan army who attempts to hunt down infiltrators to their border carrying Captagon. He told BBC reporters that al-Assad’s regime uses children to smuggle drugs across the border.

“In April we reported the death of a child from the Ramthan tribe. Instead of carrying his school bag he was carrying a backpack of drugs. He met his death on the Syrian-Jordanian border.”

A BBC screenshot on Captagon

The average salary for a Syrian is $15 US a month. If they smuggle Captagon they can earn $15,000 – enough for a house and to get married.

In Jordan in 2022, a border officer was killed by drug traffickers from Syria and King Abdullah of Jordan said that border police could shoot and kill anyone that attempts to cross the border. Days later 27 Syrians were shot and killed.

Syrians interviewed said that most smuggling is done by civilians living in regime-controlled areas in Syria and they have connections to the regime. The regime also enlists women and children. The drugs are then exported to Gulf States, Turkey, Europe and Africa.

Hezbollah controls the Bekaa valley: BBC

The BBC documentary also links Captagon production and smuggling to the Hezbollah. They report that the Lebanese government has lost control of the Bekaa Valley where the production and smuggling of Captagon takes place. This is the area firing rockets into Israel currently.

Captagon: Inside Syria’s drug trafficking empire

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