Syrien

Serious Black, Dienstag, 07. Dezember 2021, 11:03 (vor 1081 Tagen)

Die NYT beschäftigt sich mit dem neuesten Narco-Staat:

As the war dragged on, the country’s economy fell apart and a growing number of Mr. al-Assad’s associates were targeted with international sanctions. Some of them invested in captagon, and a state-linked cartel developed, bringing together military officers, militia leaders, traders whose businesses had boomed during the war and relatives of Mr. al-Assad.

Captagon labs are scattered across government-held parts of Syria, according to Syrians in areas where the drugs are produced — in territory controlled by Hezbollah near the Lebanese border; outside the capital, Damascus; and around the port city of Latakia.

Many of the factories are small, in metal hangars or empty villas, where workers combine the chemicals with mixers and press them into pills with simple machines, according to two Syrians who have visited them. Soldiers guard some facilities. Others bear signs declaring them closed military zones.

The finished pills are hidden in false bottoms in shipping containers; packages of milk, tea and soap; and shipments of grapes, oranges or pomegranates. Then they are smuggled overland to Jordan and Lebanon, where some leave via Beirut’s air and seaports. The largest portion leave Syria from the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

The security bureau of the Fourth Division, headed by Maj. Gen. Ghassan Bilal, provides much of the network’s nervous system. According to regional security officials and a former Syrian military officer, the bureau’s troops protect many of the factories and ease the movement of drugs to Syria’s borders and the port.

“The division’s presence in the region is dangerous,” said Col. Hassan Alqudah, the head of the narcotics department for Jordan’s Public Security Directorate. “Captagon factories are present in the Fourth Division’s areas of control and under their protection.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/world/middleeast/syria-drugs-captagon-assad.html