The Road From Damascus

Meet the New Bad Guys, Same as the Old Bad Guys ... Or Not?

A lot of interesting things have happened in Syria.

• Damascus, the capital, says it’s the oldest continually inhabited city in the world; that won’t last forever, since Isaiah 17 in the Bible foretells a complete destruction of Damascus one day

• Damascus was very active in early Christianity; the Bible says that the word “Christian” to describe a Christ follower came from the Syrian church. Luke, the guy who wrote the Gospel according to Luke, was Syrian

• Modern Syria is a large country with lots of ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities: it is the home of the Kurds, the Druze, Christians, and Sunni Muslims (the majority at about 70%)

• It has borders with Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey and it has a chunk of Mediterranean coast line (more on this later)

The al-Assad dynasty has been running things in Syria for 50 years and there has been a sort of haphazard civil war going on for about 15 years to get them out of power. The current guy in power is named Bashar Al-Assad and even in a land of propaganda and rigged polls, his approval rating is only about 15%.

Assad is an unusual guy. He was trained as an ophthalmologist but came to political power and became one of the most notorious dicators in history. He made international headlines for unleashing chemical weapons on his own population (even small children). He was so well known within Syria for locking people up in dungeons and torture chambers that one of the first events in his ouster has been the releasing of tens of thousands of prisoners by the rebels. It has been estimated that Assad implemented the death penalty on 13,000 of his own people from 2011 to 2016.

How did this much-hated dictator stay in power? Well, for a long time Assad had help. Although he was not part of the terrorist group Hezbollah, he gave them plenty of leeway as they based many of their operations out of Syria. Syria’s geographical position makes it a good base of operations against Israel. In return for his favor, Hezbollah helped defend Assad. (Now things get complicated, as they always do in the Middle East. Syria is majority Sunni Muslim nation, and Hezbollah is Shi’ite Muslim. So the stronghold and support that Assad got from Hezbollah came with the price of causing a degree of religious tension within the country.)

Same thing with Russia and Iraq. Both of those nations forged ties with Syria and were willing to back Assad to get what they wanted. Russia got access to Syria’s Mediterranean port. That may not sound like a big deal, but it’s the only warm-water port that Russia can use in warfare. So Russia, no friend of Israel anyway, was willing to back Assad. Iraq saw in Syria a useful friend. And it’s no secret that Russia and Iran are becoming uneasy allies, and part of that friendship plays out in Syria. If Iran needs to get weapons or other nefarious things into Israel, it would help if they play nice with Iraq and Syria.

The official explanation of Assad’s fall from power is that Assad was losing foreign support and he had no support in his own country. After a decade-and-a-half of civil war and an unhappy population, Syria collapsed because Hezbollah, Russia, Iraq, and Iran all backed away.

• After the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu decimated Hezbolllah

• Russia is mired in the Ukraine conflict

• Iraq is entering an uneasy period of political instability but some degree of economic stability

• The United States under Biden is making nice-nice with Iraq which should make all of us nervous

• Lebanon is being bombed by Israel due to its support of Hezbollah

Meanwhile, Iran was trying to leverage Syria into creating some kind of “axis of resistance” or proxy state in the Middle East to bring Arab powers to bear against Israel. Unfortunately for Iran’s goal of unifying the Middle East, the many nations and peoples of Middle East have never really gotten along with each other.

Let’s Talk About Drugs

Syria is the world’s leading manufacturer of an illicit drug that no one in the United States has ever heard of. It’s called “Captagon” and it’s worth a billion dollars or more a year, and that’s likely an underestimation. It’s by far Syria’s biggest industry and major export. Captagon is an addictive amphetamine drug that was once legal (it was pioneered for use in the armed services to keep soldiers and pilots awake and energized for prolonged periods of time). Captagon was pulled from the market as it was highly addictive and made some users extremely aggressive and violent. Enterprising chemists learned to “cook up” this old formula and bring it out to a new market. It’s cheap and easy to make.

Most of the world’s Captagon is made is Syria, which exports a lot of it to wealthier neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and Europe. The drug got popular in Syria as well, since it dulled hunger and the country was fighting a seemingly endless civil war which caused a lot of food insecurity. Soldiers regularly took Captagon, sometimes dispensed to them as “chemical courage.” Widespread unemployment and absurdly low pay for many jobs have compelled many Syrians to enter the drug business as a way to support their families. Even career military men in Syria sometimes sidelined in Captagon sales to supplement their income. The nation experienced a financial mini-boom with the Captagon industry, so a lot of law enforcement and politicians looked the other way.

The real name of Captagon is fenethylline hydrochloride. Long-term use can cause cardiovascular problems, malnutrition, disordered sleep, and depression. Called “poor man’s cocaine,” it is not popular in the United States, I guess since we have actual cocaine and a variety of other far worse drugs.

Recently, the Assad family (not Bashar but his family) was implicated in the production and distribution of this illegal drug by a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) investigation which described the Syrian economy as a “narco-state.” The BBC also found that the Captagon business was conducted in part by Hezbollah. Doesn’t that sound familiar—the leaders’ family is involved in something sketchy, but not the leader himself?

The BBC also followed the case of a Lebanese man named Hassan Daqqou, also known as “the King of Captagon.” His trial was mainly conducted in secret, but documents from the case, screenshots, and cell phone data found that Daqquo frequently called “the golden number” and he talked with somebody named “the Boss.” (Sound familiar? A secret number with a guy who answers to a code name?) Well, this Boss is not Bashar al-Assad but it turns out to be a very high-ranking military officer who reports to Bashar al-Assad.

You don’t need to be an investigator to guess that Assad may have been making a lot of money in selling illegal drugs.

Bad Guys

Bashar Al-Assad is a bad guy. Everybody with the possible exception of Vladimir Putin knows that and even Putin may know it.

The current “leader” of the resistance movement that overthrew Assad is named Abu Mohammad al-Jolani although sometimes his last name is spelled Julani. He comes from the northwestern portion of Syria. What little we know about him include former memberships in Al-Qaeda and Isis and a desire to implement Sharia across Syria. Just 32 years old, Jolani has written out a long list of grievances, including stuff that happened before he was born.

In 1967, after the Six Day War with Israel, Jolani’s family was displaced from where they resided in the Golan Heights. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani was born in 1982.

Abu Mohammad al-Jolani was actually born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when his parents had moved there temporarily to find work. Jolani’s father was an engineer and his mother a school teacher. His family was not rich but they were educated and affluent.

They did not return to Syria until 1989, when Jolani was seven years old. Jolani claims he was radicalized by the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers, considering them a major victory for Islam. Keep the timeline straight: Jolani was not even 20 when the attack on the World Trade Center occurred. Yet it propelled him into a world of politics, Syrian nationalism, and military strategy. Over his short but intense career, he has worked for terrorist groups and served in the military, which are sometimes similar endeavors in that part of the world. He has published a few essays on military strategy.

Jolani is not interested in “global jihad.” He says he has no plans to rule the world. But he does have plans for Syria.

Exile

The Kremlin has reported that Russia has granted Bashar al-Assad and his family asylum. Rumors state that Assad may have up to $1.5B in looted wealth, whereabouts unknown (to us).

Reuters News Service said that while Putin stated asylum was granted on “humanitarian grounds,” Russia is very much interested in access to Mediterranean waters via Syria. If Russia loses this, it jeopardizes its role as a potential power player in the Middle East. So it is unclear what Russia is doing helping Assad. Are they hoping that he will get back in power? Are they going to trade him for access to the Mediterranean at some point?

Is the “revolution” in Syria real? Will the results hold up? Or is this like the revolution in Haiti where a bunch of thugs took over the government but never actually tried to govern? (By the way, American Airlines has suspended all flights to Haiti indefinitely; that’s how dangerous the place is.)

And what does all of this mean? First, it means that the Middle East is in turmoil. That’s not even really news… It’s like saying the sun is hot. What seems to me a little unsettling is that Assad’s overthrow seems to have caught most of the Western media by surprise.

And in a bigger surprise, The Rolling Stone—of all media outlets—scooped everyone by publishing a piece on Jolani as a challenger to the Assad regime dated December 3, 2024. That’s long before Reuters or the BBC or any of the other major outlets seemed to think anything was going on in Syria.

The Rolling Stone has an interesting slant on Syrian events. It claims that Jolani is a brilliant military strategist who waited until Syria was weakened—crippled by internal corruption, lost in narco-state politics, decimated after years of civil war (and over 618,000 people dead), and being battered in confrontations with Israel to launch the assault that would overthrow Assad. To some extent, Assad was on his last legs to begin with. And Jolani knew that no matter what Russia wanted to do, it lacked the military resources to fight another war in Syria to protect Assad.

On the plus side, in 2021, Jolani said in an interview that he had broken ties to Isis and Al-Qaeda. He also went on the record as saying he had no fight with the United States and he does not support the idea of global jihad; his battle was against Assad. He says that he wants to run Syria, not the world.

Newsweek says that there are thousands of Russian troops who are “trapped” in Syria. It is unclear what will happen to them, particularly since Russia is so openly supporting Assad by granting him asylum.

• According to Donald Trump, the big loser in this sudden coup was Vladimir Putin since it appears that he has “lost Syria”

• Or did Russia know what was going on and just allowed it to happen?

• Will Israel strike Syrian weapons sites?

• Does this change the blossoming friendship between Russia and Iran?

• Will Syria’s stash of weapons and military equipment (mainly belonging to Russia) fall into the wrong hands?

• Can this new guy Jolani really run Syria?

• And what’s going to happen to the Captagon business?