What once belonged primarily to organized crime has gradually entered the sphere of national security — and even hybrid warfare. It has become a new invisible weapon. To narcotics, it is what the new generation of cheap, effective lethal drones has become to modern warfare.

Syria Has Become the Global Center of Captagon Production

The Syrian civil war profoundly transformed the country’s economic structures. After more than a decade of destruction, sanctions, and institutional collapse, parallel economies replaced the functions of a ruined state.

Captagon emerged as one of the most profitable resources within this fragmented environment. Several Western and regional estimates have even suggested that nearly 80% of global production became concentrated in Syria.

This phenomenon is not merely the product of disorder. It reflects a logic of political and financial survival. When the legal economy disappears, narcotrafficking becomes:

• a source of foreign currency,
• a financing mechanism,
• a tool of territorial influence,
• and at times a means of maintaining loyalty among local armed networks and terrorist groups.

For years, international investigations accused structures linked to the former Syrian regime — particularly circles close to Maher al-Assad — of protecting or facilitating certain trafficking channels. Other analyses highlighted the role of pro-Iranian militias and armed groups operating in southern Syria.

Captagon is therefore no longer simply an illegal commodity.
It has become a component of a parallel politico-military system.

Southern Syria: An Explosive Gray Zone

The provinces of Daraa and especially Sweida have gradually become major hubs for regional trafficking.

This region contains vast desert areas that are difficult to monitor and concentrate several favorable conditions:

• fragmented authority,
• local militias,
• communal rivalries,
• and immediate proximity to the Jordanian and Israeli borders.

Within this environment emerged:

• clandestine laboratories,
• logistical depots,
• smuggling networks,
• and armed groups tasked with protecting trafficking routes.

The fall of the Assad regime did not eliminate the phenomenon.
It merely displaced it.

The new Syrian authorities attempted to project an image of aggressive dismantling policies through public destruction of drug stockpiles and highly publicized operations. Yet according to several experts, production rapidly reconstituted itself around less-controlled border regions, especially in Sweida.

The former centralized control was replaced by a security vacuum.

Jordan: From Criminal Problem to Strategic Threat

Today, Jordan is the country most directly affected by this transformation.

For years, Amman viewed the trafficking primarily as a conventional smuggling issue. That approach changed radically beginning in 2022–2023. Jordanian authorities now officially describe it as a national security threat.

The Syrian-Jordanian border has become one of the most sensitive spaces in the Middle East.

Trafficking networks now use:

• fast vehicles,
• heavily armed groups,
• drones,
• sophisticated communications systems,
• helium balloons carrying narcotics,
• and paid tribal relay systems.

The vast ungoverned desert regions facilitate infiltration.

Clashes increasingly resemble military engagements. The Jordanian army regularly reports firefights, armed infiltrations, and the destruction of smuggling convoys.

In response, the kingdom progressively militarized its northern border by deploying:

• electronic surveillance systems,
• rapid-reaction special forces,
• and reconnaissance drones.

Escalation of the Situation

Amman crossed a major and unprecedented threshold:
direct airstrikes inside Syrian territory.

One cannot help but draw parallels with certain Israeli strikes.

Since 2023, the Jordanian Air Force has periodically targeted:

• laboratories,
• warehouses,
• logistical networks,
• and alleged narcotrafficking figures.

These operations reflect a fundamental doctrinal shift:
Jordan no longer treats Captagon as a simple policing issue, but as a form of hybrid warfare originating from a neighboring territory that has become unstable.

Militias and the Iranian Shadow

Behind the trafficking lies another dimension:
regional influence networks.

Several Jordanian and Western security analyses point to connections between certain smuggling networks and:

• pro-Iranian militias,
• armed groups operating in southern Syria,
• and even elements linked to Hezbollah.

For all these actors, Captagon represents a vital financial resource.

Within this logic, Captagon becomes an indirect instrument of power projection.

Narcotrafficking finances armed groups, consolidates local networks, corrupts administrative structures, and weakens neighboring states without direct military confrontation. This closely resembles the methods practiced by the Iranian state through its regional proxies.

This is precisely what worries Amman:
the emergence north of the kingdom of a hybrid zone where traffickers, militias, Iranian influence, and state collapse increasingly merge together.

For Israel, Above All, a Security Reading

Israel is less affected than Jordan or Saudi Arabia from a public health perspective.
For Israel, the issue is primarily strategic.

Israeli authorities closely monitor developments in southern Syria and the proliferation of smuggling networks near the Golan Heights.

Israeli services have already intercepted:

• Captagon shipments,
• delivery drones,
• smugglers,
• and weapons transiting from Syria or via Jordan.

WHAT RISK FOR ISRAEL?

The primary danger lies in the growing fusion between:

• organized crime,
• increased border infiltrations,
• expanding Iranian-linked activities,
• and hostile armed groups.

Southern Syria increasingly appears as a vast gray zone where the boundaries between:

• asymmetric warfare,
• criminal economy,
• and regional confrontation
  are becoming progressively blurred.

This also explains the continuation of discreet but very real security cooperation between Israel and Jordan. Despite recurring political tensions, both countries share the same objective:
preventing southern Syria from permanently becoming an uncontrolled sanctuary.

A New Geography of Chaos

Narcotrafficking Knows No Borders — Drugs Have Become a Weapon

Captagon ultimately reveals a deeper transformation within the contemporary Middle East.

In states weakened by:

• war,
• economic collapse,
• sanctions,
• or communal fragmentation,
  criminal economies no longer remain peripheral.
  They increasingly become parallel structures of power.

The revenues involved are so immense that they finance:

• militias,
• armed networks,
• local protection systems,
• corruption mechanisms,
• and even indirect regional strategies.

Drugs therefore cease to be merely illicit products.
They have become:

• a strategic resource,
• an economic weapon,
• an instrument of influence,
• and a vector of shadow warfare.

Perhaps the most disturbing reality lies there:
Middle Eastern borders are no longer defended solely against regular armies.
They are now defended against hybrid networks combining traffickers, drones, militias, smuggling systems, and geopolitical influence operations.

In this new configuration, Captagon is no longer a marginal symptom of regional chaos.
It has become one of its invisible driving forces