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Syria
has become a major amphetamines exporter and consumer as the trauma of
the country's brutal civil war fuels demand and the breakdown in order
creates opportunity for producers.
Syria's civil war being fought with fighters high on drugs
As thousands are slaughtered investigation by the Reuters reveals manufacture, use and export of amphetamines is soaring
Opposition fighters fire a homemade rocket launcher Photo: AFP/Getty Images
6:39PM GMT 12 Jan 2014
Syria has seen a huge rise in the use and manufacture of amphetamines as
fighters on either side of its civil war use the drugs for staying power in
battle.
The conflict has turned it into a major consumer and exporter of the drugs,
which are said to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in profits each
year.
The main stimulant in question is Captagon, the former brand name of a drug
first used as an antidepressant in the West in the 1960s, but now banned in
most countries because of its addictive properties.
According an investigation by the Reuters news agency, Syrian
government forces and rebel groups both accuse each other of using
Captagon to fight prolonged battles without sleep. The pills, which many
ordinary Syrians are also increasingly turning to, sell for between £3 and
£15.
Captagon is often made by amateur chemists in makeshift lab.
Production is both cheap and simple, requiring "only basic knowledge of
chemistry and a few scales", according to Ramzi Haddad, a Lebanese
psychiatrist.
"It gives you a kind of euphoria," he said. "You're talkative, you don't sleep, you don't eat, you're energetic."
A drug control officer in the central city of Homs said he had observed the effects of Captagon on protesters and fighters held for questioning.
"We would beat them, and they wouldn't feel the pain," he said. "Many of them would laugh while we were dealing them heavy blows."
Khabib Ammar, a Damascus-based media activist, said Syrian fighters involved with the drugs trade were buying weapons with the money they made.
The reports came as the US secretary of state, John Kerry, continued to put pressure on Syria's warring sides to attend a major international peace conference in Geneva that is due to start on January 22.
Diplomats fear the talks may end up going nowhere, due to the insistence of the rebel factions that President Bashar al-Assad cannot be allowed to stay in power. Yesterday, at a meeting of the US-led "Friends of Syria" grouping in Paris, Ahmad Jarba, the leader of Syria's opposition National Coalition, reiterated that President Assad and his family could have no rule in the country's future.
Meanwhile, feuding has continued between secular and jihadist factions in the Syrian rebel movement, with human rights groups reporting more than 700 people to have been killed in the past week alone. The brutality of al-Qaeda groups in the jihadist factions has led to a major falling out with the secularists, who accuse them of being more interested in imposing Taliban-style rule on rebel-held turf than making further military gains against President Assad.
Among those killed were dozens of casualties in 16 suicide attacks staged by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is battling rebels mainly in northern Syria, said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
"From January 3 to 11, the fighting killed 697 people, among them 351 rebel fighters, 246 members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and 100 civilians," the observatory said.
In Aleppo and Idlib provinces, where most car bomb attacks have taken place, the jihadists were reportedly on the back foot yesterday. Hundreds of ISIL fighters were holding out in base in Saraqeb, a town in Idlib, a day after rebels took most of it.
President Assad's army is trying to take advantage of the infighting to push for more control of Aleppo province.
Yesterday, Baroness Amos, the United Nations aid chief with responsibility for Syria, said that 2.5 million Syrians were now in areas that were hard for aid workers to reach because of fighting. "There are people in communities that we have not been able to get to at all," she said.
Speaking during a visit to Syria ahead of a donor conference in Kuwait on Wednesday meeting, she said the United Nations was looking for a total of £4 billion. Last year's appeal raised only £1 billion.
end quote from:
Syria's civil war being fought with fighters high on drugs
Most wars have been fought with fighters high on something whether it was marijuana, Heroin, speed, alcohol etc. simply because actual war is insane. The most notable war for soldiers being high was the Viet Nam War because so many draftees could not cope with the actual real life insanity of that particular war.
"It gives you a kind of euphoria," he said. "You're talkative, you don't sleep, you don't eat, you're energetic."
A drug control officer in the central city of Homs said he had observed the effects of Captagon on protesters and fighters held for questioning.
"We would beat them, and they wouldn't feel the pain," he said. "Many of them would laugh while we were dealing them heavy blows."
Khabib Ammar, a Damascus-based media activist, said Syrian fighters involved with the drugs trade were buying weapons with the money they made.
The reports came as the US secretary of state, John Kerry, continued to put pressure on Syria's warring sides to attend a major international peace conference in Geneva that is due to start on January 22.
Diplomats fear the talks may end up going nowhere, due to the insistence of the rebel factions that President Bashar al-Assad cannot be allowed to stay in power. Yesterday, at a meeting of the US-led "Friends of Syria" grouping in Paris, Ahmad Jarba, the leader of Syria's opposition National Coalition, reiterated that President Assad and his family could have no rule in the country's future.
Meanwhile, feuding has continued between secular and jihadist factions in the Syrian rebel movement, with human rights groups reporting more than 700 people to have been killed in the past week alone. The brutality of al-Qaeda groups in the jihadist factions has led to a major falling out with the secularists, who accuse them of being more interested in imposing Taliban-style rule on rebel-held turf than making further military gains against President Assad.
Among those killed were dozens of casualties in 16 suicide attacks staged by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is battling rebels mainly in northern Syria, said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
"From January 3 to 11, the fighting killed 697 people, among them 351 rebel fighters, 246 members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and 100 civilians," the observatory said.
In Aleppo and Idlib provinces, where most car bomb attacks have taken place, the jihadists were reportedly on the back foot yesterday. Hundreds of ISIL fighters were holding out in base in Saraqeb, a town in Idlib, a day after rebels took most of it.
President Assad's army is trying to take advantage of the infighting to push for more control of Aleppo province.
Yesterday, Baroness Amos, the United Nations aid chief with responsibility for Syria, said that 2.5 million Syrians were now in areas that were hard for aid workers to reach because of fighting. "There are people in communities that we have not been able to get to at all," she said.
Speaking during a visit to Syria ahead of a donor conference in Kuwait on Wednesday meeting, she said the United Nations was looking for a total of £4 billion. Last year's appeal raised only £1 billion.
end quote from:
Syria's civil war being fought with fighters high on drugs
Most wars have been fought with fighters high on something whether it was marijuana, Heroin, speed, alcohol etc. simply because actual war is insane. The most notable war for soldiers being high was the Viet Nam War because so many draftees could not cope with the actual real life insanity of that particular war.
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