The Drugs of War
Captagon, the new drug you've never heard of
The unspeakable terror visited on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, raises ancient questions about man’s inhumanity to man and political conflicts that go back to Biblical times. How could seemingly normal people invade the homes of civilian families and torture children by gouging out their eyes while making bound parents observe … and then grab a snack from the parents’ dining table before leaving the home? How could the twisted and nearly naked body of a young civilian woman be driven around the streets to cheers? How could a young woman be raped to the point that her jeans were soaked through and through with blood as she is escorted to a car by the perpetrators, and everyone around acts as if nothing unusual had happened? How can grown men take babies and old ladies as hostages?
Maybe some of the answer is drugs. We don’t often think about the Middle East when we think about drug problems. But we should.
Iran has the highest numbers of seizures of illegal opioids and heroin in the world.
Saudi Arabia has the highest number of seizures of illicit amphetamines in the world.
Egypt is the largest consumer of heroin in North Africa.
When it comes to deaths from opioid overdose, the United Arab Emirates ranks third in the world.
But the drug that may be fueling the terrorists is an old drug most Americans have never heard of. Fenethylline, once legally marketed under the trade name Captagon, has found a frightening new military application. The drug was developed in the late 1950s and was approved in the United States in 1961 for treating depression, hyperactivity, and narcolepsy. Its powerful psychoactive effects got the drug banned in the United States by 1981. Notably, Captagon has been associated with hallucinations, delusions, euphoria, extreme strength, imperviousness to pain, and laser-like focus. It is also highly addictive. The most alarming effect of Captagon is that it can defeat the mind’s normal impulse control and judgment, impairing a person’s ability to make sane decisions.
Nobody in this generation “invented” Captagon—it’s an old drug repurposed illicitly for a new time. The precursors and manufacturing facilities needed to make original Captagon are not always available, so what we have now in the Middle East is an improvised version of Captagon made in clandestine labs, albeit most of the pills are still stamped with the old-school Captagon logo. (This technique of making fake pills with a particular brand stamp is easy—you can buy pill presses online.) These next-gen Captagon tablets often contain a variety of other ingredients, including amphetamines, which is particularly dangerous since the main metabolite of fenethylline is amphetamine.
Captagon has long been one of the most popular drugs in the Middle East. And it is big business. In 2020, a single shipment of Captagon arriving at an Italian port was seized and estimated at $1 billion. Like any widely used illicit drug, Captagon is transforming economies in the Middle East. And it is widely used. University students take it for focus and recreation. Young men, in particular, take it for recreation or experimentation. Some impoverished people with few options wind up getting addicted as they take jobs at street-level dealing or smuggling. The drug is also sometimes taken by the wealthy and glitterati in the Middle East as a party favor. And it is taken by the military and also by terrorist factions. This has led to calls that the Hamas attackers on October 7 were a “zombie army.”
Amphetamines in war is nothing new. Hitler’s army practically ran on amphetamines (as did Hitler). The United States gave speed to the troops as well. Up until 2017, amphetamines could be legally dispensed to members of the U.S. Air Force for critical, long-endurance missions.
In the recent Hamas attack on Israel this October, Captagon was recovered on the bodies of some dead terrorists. This came as no surprise to Israel, who knew that Hamas terrorists often were given Captagon to make them feel stronger, more powerful, and euphoric in addition to giving them endurance and bad judgment. The thinking behind this is that under the influence of Captagon, a terrorist could torture, kill, and destroy in a detached and more effective manner. This was evident in some of the atrocities committed by the Captagon army. Anecdotal reports state that warriors under the influence of Captagon feel no pain and have no particular qualms about risking their lives or even dying.
If we had a better mainstream news media, this would be old news. Captagon had been tentatively linked to the Syrian conflict, to the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, and is now part of the current conflict in Israel. The Jerusalem Post reported specifically that Hamas terrorists in the October attacks were given Captagon to help them better carry out their missions.
Technically, Captagon is illegal all over the world, but it is widely available. The Guardian newspaper in Great Britain has described Syria—one of the world’s leading purveyors of Captagon—as devolving into a “near narco-state.”
Illicit drugs affect the economy because they not only pour drugs one way into a population, they siphon off money the other way. The flow of money can be as destabilizing as the substances. Drugs are big business and just as the fentanyl crisis in the United States is feeding pallets of cash to Chinese suppliers and Mexican cartels, the Syrian production of Captagon is making Syria a very wealthy nation. However, Syria’s new-found riches are a double-edged sword because Syria has become a one-product economy and that one product is both illegal and easy to copycat. A BBC documentary reported that if Syria were forced to cease its drug business for just 20 days, the nation’s economy would collapse. Hezbollah in Lebanon has gotten involved in the operation as well and is netting some big profits. It is always hard to realistically appraise the value of an illegal drug to an economy, but Captagon is a multi-billion dollar industry.
Captagon has to expand how we think about a “drug crisis.” True, Captaon is a dangerous drug, but it is not dangerous the same way that fentanyl is dangerous. Fentanyl kills the person using the drug. Captagon has the opposite effect, driving wakefulness, energy, focus, but at the same time causing hallucinations, delusions, and taking away impulse control. A person on Captagon can be easily persuaded to go on a violent rampage and unthinkingly commit atrocities. Fentanyl kills the user, Captagon can make the user a killer.