ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A European Union drug policy expert warned on Saturday that organized crime networks are rapidly adapting to recent enforcement measures by geographically shifting illicit drug production and diversifying trafficking routes across the Middle East.
"What we're seeing is that organized crime groups are increasingly diversifying their trafficking routes and the methods they use," Alexander Söderholm, a policy adviser at the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA), told Rudaw on Saturday.
Söderholm said Syria and Lebanon have been the production centers for Captagon, with Europe mainly used as a transshipment point for drugs destined for the Arabian Peninsula rather than as an "end-consumer market itself."
He said the fall of the Assad regime posed a two-fold challenge to drug trafficking: disruptions to major production and storage sites, and increased enforcement activity by the new transitional government.
To counter that pressure, networks involved in producing and trafficking Captagon have diversified their production hubs beyond Syria and Lebanon, Söderholm explained. He pointed to a report published in April by the EU's Action against Organised Crime and Terrorism (EU-ACT) project, supported by the EUDA, which documented Captagon manufacturing and laboratory seizures across Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Kuwait and Sudan between 2020 and 2024.
Söderholm called the expansion of manufacturing and laboratory centers "a very worrying sign because some of these countries may lack the enforcement capacity or historical knowledge regarding Captagon production, making it more difficult for national authorities to address the issue."
Iraq has been an important route for heroin and methamphetamine from Afghanistan, and methamphetamine from Iran, primarily heading toward Türkiye rather than directly into the EU, he noted.
"It is currently difficult to confirm whether production inside Iraq is increasing, though health-related data points to a worrying increase in the domestic use of illicit drugs within Iraq, including Captagon, methamphetamine, and tramadol," Söderholm said.
Rising internal demand can draw in additional criminal groups and destabilize local communities, he warned, requiring a response that balances public health with law enforcement. He added that armed conflict diverts critical state resources from border security and anti-crime efforts, opening doors for traffickers even as operational and transportation costs rise.
This comes as Iraq and the Syrian interim government have both intensified their anti-narcotics campaigns.
Iraq's General Directorate for Narcotics Affairs reported in late August that it had secured 4,644 convictions in drug-related cases since the start of the year, including 69 death sentences and 267 life terms. Authorities dismantled 304 domestic and 54 international trafficking networks, conducted 21 operations abroad, established six contact points, and issued 43 international arrest warrants, the directorate said.
Syria's transitional government, meanwhile, declared a "comprehensive war" on drugs in late June, with Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas Khattab pledging to dismantle the Captagon-manufacturing infrastructure inherited from the Assad government.
Marking the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, Sharaa said the state's top priority was to "declare a comprehensive war on this scourge to dry up its sources, sever its smuggling routes, and address its impacts," while Khattab pledged to "confront this dangerous scourge by all legitimate means."
Clandestine factories continue to operate in Syria despite the new administration's push, Rudaw has previously reported. Syria served as the primary global manufacturer of Captagon under Bashar al-Assad, and the anti-narcotics campaign there is also altering wider regional consumption habits, according to the 2026 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) World Drug Report.
The agency said Captagon market disruptions following the December 2024 fall of the Assad administration have caused tablet prices to double in some areas, which would likely "cause a shift among users of captagon to methamphetamine."
