LONDON: Authorities in Syria have thwarted an attempt to smuggle a large shipment of drugs out of the country.
The Syrian Narcotics Directorate said on Wednesday it seized approximately 400,000 captagon pills, weighing about 65 kilograms, during an operation in Homs province, which was carried out in coordination with Iraq’s General Directorate for Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Control.
The drugs would have been smuggled to other countries, the Syrian Arab News Agency reported. Two suspects were arrested on suspicion of managing a drug-trafficking network operating across borders.
The latest success follows a security operation on Feb. 5 targeting an international drug-trafficking network, in which Syrian authorities, in coordination with Iraqi counterparts, seized 300,000 captagon pills and arrested two wanted suspects.
Since the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024, antinarcotics authorities there and in Iraq have increasingly been conducting joint operations to crack down on cross-border criminal networks.
Under the former president, Bashar Assad, Syria became a hub for the production and distribution of illegal drugs such as captagon, while the government largely ignored the concerns of neighboring countries about the negative effects this was having on the region.
