Pubdate: Fri, 20 Nov 2015
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.utsandiego.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/386
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Author: Peter Holley, The Washington Post.

PILL ALLOWS FIGHTERS TO KILL WITH RECKLESS ABANDON

As The Washington Post's Liz Sly recently noted, the war in Syria has 
become a tangled web of conflict dominated by "al-Qaeda veterans, 
hardened Iraqi insurgents, Arab jihadist ideologues and Western volunteers."

On the surface, those competing actors are fueled by an overlapping 
mixture of ideologies and political agendas.

Just below it, experts suspect, they're powered by something else: Captagon.

A tiny, highly addictive pill produced in Syria and now widely 
available across the Middle East, its illegal sale funnels hundreds 
of millions of dollars back into the war-torn country's black-market 
economy each year, likely giving militias access to new arms, 
fighters and the ability to keep the conflict boiling, according to 
the Guardian newspaper.

"Syria is a tremendous problem in that it's a collapsed security 
sector, because of its porous borders, because of the presence of so 
many criminal elements and organized networks," the U.N. Office on 
Drugs and Crime regional representative, Masood Karimipour, told 
Voice of America. "There's a great deal of trafficking being done of 
all sorts of illicit goods - guns, drugs, money, people. But what is 
being manufactured there and who is doing the manufacturing, that's 
not something we have visibility into from a distance."

A powerful amphetamine tablet based on the original synthetic drug 
known as "fenethylline," Captagon quickly produces a euphoric 
intensity in users, allowing Syria's fighters to stay up for days, 
killing with a numb, reckless abandon.

"You can't sleep or even close your eyes, forget about it," said a 
Lebanese user, one of three who appeared on camera without their 
names for a BBC Arabic documentary that aired in September. "And 
whatever you take to stop it, nothing can stop it."

"There was no fear anymore after I took Captagon," another user added.

Captagon has been around in the West since the 1960s, when it was 
given to people suffering from hyperactivity, narcolepsy and 
depression, according to a Reuters report published in 2014. By the 
1980s, according to Reuters, the drug's addictive power led most 
countries to ban its use.

The United State classified fenethylline ("commonly known by the 
trademark name Captagon") as a Schedule I drug under the federal 
Controlled Substances Act in 1981, according to the National Criminal 
Justice Reference Service

Still, the drug didn't exactly disappear. VOA notes that while 
Westerners have speculated that the drug is being used by Islamic 
State fighters, the biggest consumer has for years been Saudi Arabia. 
In 2010, a third of the world's supply - about seven tons - ended up 
in Saudi Arabia, according to Reuters. VOA estimated that as many as 
40,000 to 50,000 Saudis go through drug treatment each year.

"My theory is that Captagon still retains the veneer of medical 
respectability," Justin Thomas, an assistant professor of psychology 
and psychotherapy at the UAE's Zayed University and author of 
"Psychological Well-Being in the Gulf States," told VOA in 2010. "It 
may not be viewed as a drug or narcotic because it is not associated 
with smoking or injecting."

Five years later, production of Captagon has taken root in Syria - 
long a heavily trafficked thoroughfare for drugs journeying from 
Europe to the Gulf States - and it has begun to blossom.

"The breakdown of state infrastructure, weakening of borders and 
proliferation of armed groups during the nearly three-year battle for 
control of Syria, has transformed the country from a stopover into a 
major production site," Reuters reported.

"Production in Lebanon's Bekaa valley - a traditional center for the 
drug - fell 90 percent last year from 2011, with the decline largely 
attributed to production inside Syria," the Guardian noted.

Cheap and easy to produce using legal materials, the drug can be 
purchased for less than $20 a tablet and is popular among those 
Syrian fighters who don't follow strict interpretations of Islamic 
law, according to the Guardian.

Doctors report that the drug has dangerous side effects, including 
psychosis and brain damage, according to the BBC.

Ramzi Haddad, a Lebanese psychiatrist, told Reuters that the drug 
produces the typical effects of a stimulant.

"You're talkative, you don't sleep, you don't eat, you're energetic," he said.

Holley writes for The Washington Post.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom