Al-Monitor-18 Dec 2023 - <big>Jordan’s official Petra news agency reported on the drug war plaguing both countries.</big> In addition to the Captagon,
...12,858 palm-sized sheets of hashish … rocket launchers, rifles and mines…
... The trade of Captagon, an amphetamine-like drug [known by the Arabic drug market street name as Abu al-Hilalain, "the father of the two crescent moons" for the CC stamped into each pill], has developed into a multibillion dollar industry in war-torn Syria. The drug is additionally traded and used in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and other parts of the region….
...[The drug trade] has been a point of contention between Jordan and Syria ... including during Syria’s May readmission into the Arab League. Days before … Jordan hosted Arab diplomats, including Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal al-Mekdad, to discuss drug smuggling, border security and other issues…The Syrian government has been widely accused of facilitating the Captagon trade.
Cooperation between Amman and Damascus on the drug trade could still be beneficial from an intelligence perspective, however, according to Karaam Shaar, a senior fellow at the [D.C.-based] New Lines Institute. “Working with the Assad regime on sharing intelligence can be actually useful, even when you know that they’re not being transparent, even when you know that the regime is sponsoring the industry...”
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Captagon (wikipedia)
Fenethylline (BAN, USAN) is a codrug of amphetamine and theophylline and a prodrug to both. It [has various others spellings and names]. The drug was marketed for use as a psychostimulant under the brand names Captagon, Biocapton, and Fitton.[2][3] It is now illegal in most countries and is produced primarily for illicit use. Syria is considered to be the world's largest producer of the drug, accounting for about 80% of the global supply.[4][5]
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Reuters - May 1, 2023 <big>Syria agrees to curb drug trade at Arab ministers meeting in Amman, Jordan</big>
...The foreign ministers of Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan met ... to discuss [normalising] ties with Syria as part of a political settlement of its [12-year civil] war [ - the first such talks] since Syria’s suspension from the League] in 2011 after a crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad.
A final statement issued after the meeting said the officials had [also] discussed pathways for the voluntary return home of millions of displaced Syrians….
...Syria is accused by Arab governments and the West of producing the highly-addictive and lucrative amphetamine captagon and organizing its smuggling into the Gulf…. Top Syrian officials and relatives of Assad have been put on sanctions lists in recent months in the United States, United Kingdom and European Union over the trade….
...Jordan has called on Syria to engage with Arab states jointly on a step-by-step roadmap to end the conflict, tackling the issues of refugees, detainees, drug smuggling and Iran-backed militias in Syria - all of which affect its neighbours….
...Regional superpower Saudi Arabia long resisted normalising relations with Assad but said after its rapprochement with Iran - Syria's key regional ally - a new approach was needed with Damascus.
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Al-Monitor- Dec 18: <big> Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt's fifth president to emerge from within the ranks of the military since 1952, secures third [and constitutionally “final” six-year presidential term]...</big>
...with 89.6 percent of the December 10-12 vote in the Arab world's most populous country, a widely expected outcome, given the situation of other “candidates”. Along with a currency plunge, and about 2/3 of the population at or below the poverty line, annual inflation is running at 36.4 percent, sending up prices of some food staples by the week ... in the country of nearly 106 million.
The former army chief known for a fondness for infrastructure mega-projects,
was first voted in ... after leading the overthrow of elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. [Sisi] later extended the [term] from four to six years and amended the constitution to raise the limit on consecutive terms from two to three...
His administration has overseen the imprisonment of tens of thousands of political opponents as the space for dissent has been progressively curtailed.
The all-but-decimated opposition had built some momentum this year ahead of the election, before media and public attention were diverted by the Gaza war.
For a brief while, some expected the election to include two main opposition figures who -- despite having no real hope of winning -- were intended to highlight dissident voices.
Today, one is in prison and the other is awaiting trial….
Sisi’s election follows his calling <big>hunger a price worth paying for Egypt’s presumed advance and an implication of threatening the people with drug addiction</big>
..."Don't you Egyptians dare say you would rather eat than build and progress … If the price of the nation’s progress and prosperity is to go hungry and thirsty, then let us not eat or drink..,"
...In a widely condemned speech aired from his new administrative capital on Saturday, Sisi also called his opponents "liars, saboteurs and wicked", as critics questioned the billions spent on infrastructure projects that he has undertaken as many Egyptians struggle to make ends meet…
..."I was chatting to officials from the Supreme Judicial Council this morning and told them: can you imagine that <big>I could destroy Egypt with 2 billion pounds … I told them I could give them <big>Tramadol</big> and 20 pounds to 100,000 people who are going through difficult times</big> … I can give them 1,000 pounds, for ten weeks… <big>I could destroy a country with more than 105 million people, with a billion pounds … basically 30 million dollars,</big> which some people spend on one party..."
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Nov 13, 2023 Washington Post Opinion <big> Captagon is funding Iranian militias and fueling Hamas</big>
After the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel, several Hamas militants were reportedly found to be high on the illegal drug Captagon, which surely fueled their murderous rampage. But the drug’s threat is greater than the boost it gives terrorists. The Captagon trade has become a key tool of influence for the Syrian regime and a massive source of income for the Iranian-backed militias now attacking U.S. troops.
Captagon, the highly addictive methlike drug, typically comes in small white pills exported by the millions across the Middle East and beyond. Its manufacturing is directly linked to the Syrian armed forces and the family of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In addition to being a dictator, war criminal and mass murderer, Assad can now add the title of drug kingpin to his résumé. Exporting these drugs worldwide earns him several billion dollars a year. To get Captagon, named after a former brand of fenethylline, into Europe, the Syrian regime built a distribution network that includes cooperation with Lebanese Hezbollah and the Italian mafia.
What’s worse, the Captagon scourge has Arab gulf states so rattled, they are speedily normalizing relations with Assad in hopes he will cut off export to their countries. So far, Assad has used that leverage while only expanding these exports. And the middlemen who transfer the drugs to gulf states are the same Iranian-backed militias that have attacked U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria dozens of times since the Israel-Gaza war began….
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2022 al-monitor.com <big>Jordanian official says Captagon seizures on track to double this year</big> <i>Trade in this amphetamine drug is increasing in Jordan under effects of more advanced smuggling, Syrian military involvement, Jordan’s weak economy, according to a New Lines Institute conference in Washington DC on May 25. with Raad Elfawair of the Jordanian embassy and Dora Catutti from the French embassy —specializing in Middle East issues — speaking on a panel hosted by the institute’s Caroline Rose ...</i>
The drug gained notoriety in the mid-2010s for its use and trade by Islamic State fighters, Elfawair said. In 2021, Jordanian authorities seized 16 million Captagon pills [and so far another] 20 million … “We are witnessing recently groups becoming well organized, supported by indisciplined members of the Syrian army...”
There are around 13 smuggling attempts per day [especially taking advantage of bad weather in desert and mountainous areas, beyond official Jordan-Syria border crossings]. A smuggling group typically consists of around 200 individuals … split into three [parts with one distracting] the Jordanian military with gunfire, another will conduct surveillance, and the third [takes the drugs into] Jordan.
Catutti [said] Captagon’s prevalence was [gradually recognized following] the reopening of the Syria-Jordan border in 2018...
...Jordan's relationship with the Syrian government has improved in recent months, following years of a lull over the Syrian civil war [but] In January, Jordanian border guards were involved in a deadly shootout in the snow at the Syrian border.
... Elfawair said. “With 30% unemployed Jordanians, [a] welcoming environment is created for these drugs.”
[N]umerous countries in the region [are involved]. Saudi authorities regularly thwart smuggling attempts, but drug use is prevalent throughout the kingdom — particularly among youth.
An April report from the New Lines Institute co-authored by Rose implicated elements of the Syrian government and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah in the Captagon trade.
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2022 AFP via Barron's <big>What is Captagon?</big>
...Captagon is the old trademark of a once legal amphetamine stimulant…. first marketed by German chemical company Chemiewerk Homburg in 1961 … as a treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ... narcolepsy and, to a lesser extent, depression… It is closely related to methamphetamine ... another more potent synthetic stimulant, traces of which are sometimes found in captagon….
By 1986 captagon was banned in most countries but ... had become popular enough in the Arabian peninsula [for illegal production] mostly in the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Today, [it] is mostly manufactured in Syria and Lebanon,…
[But little Captagon now contains fenethylline and its make-up] can vary wildly. Most contain amphetamine [with adulterants such as] paracetamol, caffeine, quinine and various anaesthetic substances,
Amphetamine increases certain types of brain activity [including] feelings of greater attention and confidence, while also decreasing appetite and sleepiness. [It’s] usually swallowed but can be crushed and snorted. [Its] versatility has made it popular with everyone from students [studying] all night before exams to taxi drivers working two jobs, to high-powered professionals hoping to stay focused over long hours.
In its main market, Saudi Arabia, the rich use it to party all night, while many women take it to lose weight. Captagon is less taboo than cocaine or even alcohol in Gulf countries.
Captagon's shifting formula would make it difficult to differentiate from other drugs if it wasn't for the two Cs pressed into every pill.
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August 2022 BJPsych Int (PubMed, US National Library of Medicine) <big>Tramadol, captagon and khat use in the Eastern Mediterranean Region: opening Pandora's box</big> by Hossein Mohaddes Ardabili,1 Abolfazl Akbari,2 Parnian Rafei,3 JL Butner,4 Riaz Khan,5 Yasser Khazaal,6 Abdulmalik Zuhair Arab,7 Mohammed Rafiq Qazizada,8 Basma Al-Ansari,9 and Alexander Mario Baldacchino10...
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Reuters 2019 <big>Opioid use booming as TRAMADOL crisis emerges in Africa - U.N. drug report</big>
..."The limited data available indicate that the tramadol being used for non-medical purposes in Africa is being illicitly manufactured in South Asia and trafficked to the region, as well as to parts of the Middle East," [the UNODC 2019 World Drug Report] said….
..."Some consume tramadol for its calming, analgesic and anti-fatigue effects in order to improve intellectual, physical and working performances, and to lessen the need for sleep and decrease appetite..."
"In farming communities, there are reports of tramadol being used by humans and fed to cattle to enable them to work under extreme conditions. Others use tramadol as a recreational drug on account of its stimulant and euphoric effects, or to improve sexual stamina..."
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TRAMADOL (wikipedia)
...<big>Illicit use of the drug is thought to be a major factor in the success of the Boko Haram terrorist organization</big>… When used at higher doses, the drug "can produce similar effects to heroin."[129] One former member said, "whenever we took tramadol, nothing mattered to us anymore except what we were sent to do because it made us very high and very bold, it was impossible to go on a mission without taking it."[129] Tramadol is also used as a coping mechanism in the Gaza Strip.[132] It is also abused in the United Kingdom, inspiring the title of the TV show Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights (2010)...[133][134]
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2019 CNS/AP <big>Tramadol, Billed as ‘Safer’ Opioid, Wreaks Worldwide Havoc</big>
Reports rolled in with escalating urgency — pills seized by the truckload, pills swallowed by schoolchildren, pills in the pockets of dead terrorists….
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2019 Arab News <big>Mideast faces opioid crisis as [tramadol] rages through developing world…</big>
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2019 haaretz. <big>Gaza youth attempting to breach the border fence may be using drugs.</big>
...In four different incidents over the past few weeks, IDF soldiers killed armed Palestinians who tried to cross the border fence with the Gaza Strip and enter Israel. In some of these cases, IDF commanders in the field noticed something new: The Palestinians who approached the border looked “hyped up,” as if they were under the influence of strong drugs. Some of the young people who confront the soldiers along the border fence in the large Friday protests, and are taking unreasonable risks, have also demonstrated similar behavior.
Addiction to drugs, and in particular painkillers, has been described as a real plague in the Gaza Strip … While Hamas is excusing the numerous attempts to cross the border into Israel and attack as acts of “angry young people,” it is possible that the drugs are playing a role here, too….
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2018 TheDailyBeast <big>The Italian Mob Is Peddling Pills to ISIS</big>
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2018 ABC Australia <big>Tramadol abuse addiction sweeping Egypt as part of the world's growing opioid crisis</big>
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2017 BBC <big>'Jihad pills' found by Dutch and Italian police</big>
Dutch police are searching for two suspects after a drugs laboratory was found with a large stash of pills favoured by jihadists.
Police ... revealed the discovery last month of fake "Captagon" pills and say they do not know if they were destined for the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Italy's financial police revealed this week they had uncovered 37.5m pills of another drug, tramadol, also used by Islamist fighters [in a cargo headed for Libya].
Italian police said the consignment had come from India and would have been used for two purposes: to help finance Islamist terrorism and for use by jihadist fighters as a stimulant and to heighten resistance to physical stress.
Abuse of tramadol was described by a report this year as "rampant" in the ranks of Boko Haram fighters in Nigeria and to have played a role in "enabling <big>atrocities on both sides of the conflict".</big>
[Captagon] is widely seen as fueling the conflict in Syria, [having] generated millions of dollars in revenue and has been used by combatants...<big>[It] lowers inhibitions to violence and prolongs a fighter's ability to remain alert for combat</big>….
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2017 CNN <big>Opioid tramadol destabilizes, fuels terror in parts of Africa, UN warns</big>
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2017 TheGuardian <big>Italian police intercept €50m Tramadol haul potentially bound for Isis</big>
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Nov. 11, 2017 haaretz <big>Gaza Kids Live in Hell: A Psychologist Tells of Rampant Sexual Abuse, Drugs and Despair</big> Mohammed Mansour, who treats Gaza's victims of sexual assault, describes the dystopian nightmare that Palestinians are living. Mansour, 49, an expert in trauma treatment, lives in Galilee town of Mash’had; psychologist, volunteer in Gaza with Physicians for Human Rights, making frequent visits to provide psychological assistance.
..The most widespread addiction today among men and male youths in Gaza is tramadol. It’s actually a prescription drug for muscle pain. It’s an opiate?
Yes. One of the side effects of tramadol – it’s considered a supposedly positive effect – is that it extends the duration of an erection and heightens sexual desire both in men and in women. The tramadol that gets to Gaza is manufactured in China, and passes through Egypt. In in Egypt it undergoes some sort of manipulation. I don’t know exactly what they do there, what they add, but the tramadol in the Gaza Strip is not the same tramadol that people take in Israel. There’s something else. It’s extremely addictive and it affects behavior.
They probably add an amphetamine.
Yes, one of the amphetamines. Something with an effect that resembles that of cocaine. One reason I know this is because I took tramadol for a few months and didn’t experience those side effects. And when I stopped taking it I didn’t feel a need to take it again.
But you claim that the Gaza version is addictive.
Very. They can’t get along without it. And it’s very popular. In 2014, a package of tramadol cost 20 shekels [about $5]. Today it’s 20 shekels for one tablet.
The hospitals in Gaza don’t have basic medicines. How is tramadol available? And how can people pay for it?
...There are dealers in Gaza … I don’t know how it enters and how they manage to get the money, but the numbers speak for themselves: According to a study conducted there, 41 percent of the addicts in Gaza are hooked on tramadol.
And that, correspondingly, increases the proportion of sexual assaults.
Certainly. Unmarried youths who can’t find any other release for heightened desire, assault children and other youths….
Who tells you about these assaults? The victims or the assailants?
The assailants. They don’t call it assault at all. They tell me what they do to other children. The first thing I do is explain to them that they [themselves] have undergone abuse, and that what they are doing to other children is abuse… For children who endure sexual abuse, there is an element in the abuse that is pleasurable. Children who endure protracted sexual abuse, without anyone working with them on their trauma, deny and repress the pain involved, and focus on the pleasurable part. A child like that is prone to even greater harm, and prone to harm other children.
The victim becomes the assailant.
A child who is abused sexually is under the total domination of the abuser, whose main occupation is how to dominate. Abusing other children is the ultimate way to restore control to himself.
the thought that they perhaps find consolation in assaulting others is simply unendurable.
Yes. Some of them find consolation, pleasure, release in it. They don’t experience it as an assault...
We are talking about abuse by male adolescents against other male adolescents, or by boys against boys?
Yes.
Are they homosexuals?
No.
Then, why?
Because it’s easier socially. If a boy assaults a girl, and she tells someone, he will be killed. They will settle accounts with him within the neighborhood. [Among adults, male members of families, even fathers, assault female members and children. They don’t speak of that, but we discover it in victims. Even] married men are constantly looking for sex and sexual ties, they talk about it all the time. In front of their children, too. They talk about how many times they have sex, with how many women, about their relations with women.
Extramarital relations? Cheating? In Gaza?
Yes, sure, all the time.
You are describing a society that’s conservative on the surface, and in total chaos below.
“Chaos” – that’s the word.
A life of despair
There are no social conventions, and on top of that there is tremendous despair. Everyone I meet there is in despair. I get into a taxi and the driver talks to me about his feeling of despair, about how he’s using tramadol. I enter a restaurant where I always dine, the waiters sit with me at the table and tell me about their despair. I visit a psychiatric hospital, and the psychiatrists and psychologists immediately come and want to talk to me about their personal problems, before we begin talking about professional matters. Everyone is in despair.
No wonder sex becomes an obsession. It’s perhaps the only vitality they can feel.
I think they engage in sex [and violence] not for enjoyment but for release….
What kind of person does a society like this produce?
One who is unhealthy, mentally…. Everyone there is mentally unhealthy. ... the result can be serious psychic disorders. People with disorders who aren’t treated – and they are not treated – are capable of everything.
It’s a society in which everything is permitted?
Everything is permitted and everything is forbidden. I can do whatever I want, as long as people don’t know what I’m doing….
... There’s an Italian psychoanalyst, a friend of mine, Franco Dimasio, who maintains that life amid a struggle for survival causes us to lose our humanity.
What does he include under the term “humanity”?
The ability to see the other, his pain. It will be very difficult to restore the Gazans’ humanity, because they are occupied with their survival, they are concentrated on themselves. They don’t see the other. They themselves have lost control over their sense of feeling, their whole behavior has become a form of acting out.
In other words, they express their feelings and their threatening and repressed impulses through their behavior. That means aggressive behavior, for the most part.
...People are constantly [aggressive toward one another. Even] in my work with the psychologists and psychiatrists in the training courses I give. I’m stunned at how they behave toward one another. Let’s say, if someone interrupts someone, or is late, they immediately erupt into vulgar language. With the children it takes the form of fights. All the children in Gaza have wounds from the blows they give and receive.
One boy in Jabalya explained to me that he’s violent because he’s being hit all the time – by his brothers, by his friends, by the neighbors. “When they see me being weak, they hit me,” he said. “If they would see me being strong they wouldn’t hit me.” If I harm others, I am strong….
...How do you cope with the horrors you see? How do you go back to the routine in Israel after that?
...more accurately, I try to cope with a great deal of pain. My thoughts are constantly both here and there. I have two children. When [I”m] with them, I get flashbacks of Gaza children … And the bodies I saw, too. I’ve seen many bodies of children in wars. ...
So you’re in post-trauma, too.
Everyone who works with people like that is burdened with post-trauma. I invest a great deal of emotional effort ... in processing what I undergo. I work a lot on my land – I grow olives, I’m occupied with bees.
Do you still believe in human goodness?
I believe that even people who undergo severe traumas possess the inner strength to go on living, and to live a better life than the one they had. If I lose that hope, I would not be able to go on working. If I didn’t harbor the hope that the refugees in Greece can be rehabilitated, I wouldn’t work with them. If I didn’t harbor the hope that the situation in Gaza will get better, and that people have the strength to change it, I wouldn’t be able to go on. Every time I enter Gaza and experience that pain, I say to myself: I’m not going back again, and afterward, when I’m at the exit, at Erez checkpoint, I’m already planning when I’ll go back.
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<big>2010 PubMedCentral (US National Library of Medicine) <big>Drug addiction in Gaza and the illicit trafficking of tramadol</big></big>
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2003 — govinfo.gov/
[Senate Hearing 108-173]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-173 NARCO-TERRORISM: INTERNATIONAL DRUG TRAFFICKING AND TERRORISM--A DANGEROUS MIX
=============================================== HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 20, 2003...
The problems of terrorism, drugs and international organized crime pose new and significant challenges to our country. As everyone knows, these problems occur across our borders and are less and less subject to control by nation states. Terrorists around the world and in every region appear to be increasing their involvement in the trafficking of illegal drugs, primarily as a source of financing for their terrorist operations. Narco-terrorists participate directly or indirectly in the cultivation, manufacture, transportation and/or distribution of controlled substances. Several terrorist groups provide security for drug traffickers transporting their products through territories under the control of terrorist organizations or their supporters. No matter what form it takes or the level of involvement in drug trafficking, several significant terrorist groups are reported to be relying on drug money as one of several significant funding sources. In the mid-1990's, I became concerned about the nexus forming between international organized crime, political movements and terrorism arising out of certain ungovernable areas of the world. Senator Biden and others, of course, have equally participated in this concern. Terrorist organizations developed relationships with illicit narcotics traffickers. In areas such as Afghanistan, a fundamentalist regime became wholly dependant on opium production at the time it became the host of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. In other parts of the world, such as Colombia, the connection was made through international organized crime, activities which are inconsistent with the ideological basis for terrorist activities...
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wikipedia Narcoterrorism
...in its original context, is understood to refer to the attempts of narcotics traffickers to influence the policies of a government or a society through violence and intimidation, and to hinder the enforcement of anti-drug laws by the systematic threat or use of such violence. As with most definitions of terrorism, it typically only refers to non-state actors.
wikipedia Narco-capitalism/narco-state
...is a political and economic term applied to countries where all legitimate institutions become penetrated by the power and wealth of the illegal drug trade.[2] The term was first used to describe Bolivia following the 1980 coup of Luis García Meza which was seen to be primarily financed with the help of narcotics traffickers.[3] Other well-known examples are Honduras, Guinea-Bissau, Mexico, Myanmar and Syria, where drug cartels produce, ship and sell drugs such as captagon, cocaine, heroin and marijuana.
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