Rojava security forces seize record amount of drugs

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdish security forces (Asayish) on Tuesday seized a record amount of narcotics, after a raid at a warehouse in Qamishli, northeast Syria (Rojava), led to the discovery of more than two million captagon pills.

A shipment containing huge quantities of captagon pills, with a total weight of 438 kilograms, was transported from rebel-held areas of Syria and carefully concealed at a warehouse in Qamishli, where it was subsequently seized by security forces, Hawar News Agency (ANHA) reported.

Asayish officials revealed that the narcotics were "professionally concealed in construction materials such as granite, basalt, and ceramics."

The captagon pills were to be transported to Iraq, a security official told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

Earlier in March, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) seized large supplies of illicit drugs and dismantled a smuggling network in Raqqa, arresting two dealers and confiscating half a ton of hashish.

Syria has effectively been turned into a narco-state, concluded an investigation by the New York Times in 2021 revealing that more than 250 million captagon pills were seized around the world that year. Officials have scrutinized the Syrian government, claiming their major involvement in the drug trade.

“The idea of going to the Syrian government to ask about cooperation is just absurd,” Joel Rayburn, the US special envoy for Syria during the Trump administration, told the investigative team at the time. “It is literally the Syrian government that is exporting the drugs. They are the drug cartel.”

Drug trafficking has become a major issue across Syria as the population struggles to deal with the collapsing economy and US sanctions. Hashish and captagon pills are the narcotics being trafficked the most across Syria, and into Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, AFP reports.