38 Middle East and Africa The EconomistJuly 22nd 2017
2 The truce has held so farbut, like past deals,
may quickly fall apart without a way to en-
force it. Rushed out to give the two presi-
dents something to announce at their first
meeting, the ceasefire appears premature.
The geography and make-up of the re-
gion covered bythe ceasefire may, how-
ever, help itlast. The area—Deraa, the prov-
ince of Quneitra and parts of Suwaida
province—is smaller than regionscovered
in the past. There are also fewer extremists
to spoil the truce, and fewer rebel factions
to pressure into abiding by it. The rebels in
the south are also less fierce: Jordan keeps a
grip on those fighting the Syrian army and
Iranian-backed militiasseeking to push
into areas near its borders.
The ceasefire is a result of Russian plans
to wind down the war. Since January Mos-
cow has led talks with Turkey and Iran,
which back opposing sides in the conflict,
to establish four “de-escalation zones”
where rebels and the regime will stop kill-
ing each other. The aim is to have each one
policed by different foreign powers. Amer-ica’s rush to cut a deal with Russia in the
south, the first of the zones to be demarcat-
ed, is partly a test of Moscow’s sincerity.
Mr Assad is sitting pretty in Damascus.
If the ceasefire holds, itwill partly be be-
cause the Syrian president and his Iranian
backers see a chance to solidify their gains,
drive rebels from other parts of the country
and race American-backed forces for con-
trol of the oil-rich lands still occupied by Is-
lamic State in the east. America’s secretary
of state, Rex Tillerson, says America “sees
no long-term role forthe Assad family”.
But removing the dictator, who has repeat-
edly vowed to reclaim every inch of terri-
tory lost during the war, will be impossible
without the consent of Iran and Russia.
If anything has remained constant in
America’s approach to the Syrian conflict
over the past year, it isits faith in Russia to
bring the fighting to a close and keep Iran in
check. Mr Tillerson believes the warring
parties are “tired” and “weary” of the con-
flict. The coming weeks will establish how
fanciful this reading is. 7T
HE traditional way is not always the
most successful. Saudi Arabian border
guards this month arrested a Sudanese
man accused of smugglingmore than half
a million drug tablets into the kingdom
from Jordan on the back of a camel. Just as
tastesin food and drink vary from region to
region, so do preferences for drugs. The
one the Sudanese man was allegedly traf-
ficking, known as Captagon, isthe Arabian
peninsula’s most popular illegal drug. True
Captagon (generic name: fenethylline) was
produced as a treatment for attention defi-
cit hyperactivity disorder. America
banned it in 1981 after its addictive and oth-
er pernicious characteristics became clear.
Mostother countries have followed suit.
The pills flooding into Saudi Arabia and
other Gulf states sometimes have a feneth-
ylline base. But many are simply ‘uppers’,
or amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS).
And some of what is sold under the poetic
street name of Abu Hilalain (Father of the
Two Crescent Moons: an allusion to the en-
twining Cs on each pill) contains little but
concentrated caffeine.
The market is huge. According to the
UN’s latest World DrugsReport, in 2015 the
Saudi authorities seized more than 11
tonnes ofATS, excluding Ecstasy. That was
lower than the figure for 2014, but still al-
most a third as much as in America, with apopulation ten times greater. Elsewhere in
the region, demand appears to be soaring.
In March the director-general of the UAE’s
Anti-Narcotics Department, Colonel
Saeed al-Suwaidi, said seizures of Capta-
gon, real and fake, and crystal meth, had al-
most quadrupled last year.
Identifying the origin of synthetic drugs
is difficult: unlike plant-based ones, they
seldom have unique properties. And pseu-
do-Captagon often travels to the Gulf by
tortuous routes: French customsofficials
who this year seized 750,000 pills smug-
gled from Lebanon found they were to
have been shipped to Saudi Arabia via theCzech Republic and Turkey. Fake Captagon
is known to be produced in south-eastern
Europe. War-torn Syria has also become a
source. Rival combatants have profited
from “taxing” manufacturers and traffick-
ers. But an investigation by the Institute for
Middle East Studies atGeorge Washington
University concluded in 2015 that the only
faction systematically involved in produc-
ing the drug was Hezbollah, an Iranian-
backed Lebanese militia. Rogue members
of the Assad regime and the Free Syrian
Army were also manufacturing it, but nei-
ther of the most extreme jihadist factions,
Islamic State (IS) or Jabhat al-Nusrah (now
Jabhat Fatah al-Sham), was found to be
profiting from Captagon. Indeed, IS has ex-
ecuted alleged drug traffickers and de-
stroyed narcotics-manufacturing plants.
Still, one of the reputed effects of genu-
ine Captagon is to reduce compassion and
there has been recurrent speculation that
IS feeds it to its militants. A captured teen-
age IS fighter told CNN in 2014 he had been
given pills “that would make you go to bat-
tle not caring if you live or die”. Captagon
came under particular suspicion after the
Paris attacks of 2015. Several eyewitnesses
commented on the emotionless stares and
zombie-like movements of the killers. But
toxicological examinations reportedly
found no evidence they had taken drugs
beforehand. A study last year concluded
that the only drug that could be firmly
linked to IS was Tramadol, an opoid.
The Koran deplores “intoxicants”. So
why are so manyinhabitantsof some of
the Middle East’s mostGod-fearing states
getting high on Captagon? Users include
party-goers, slimmers who take the drug as
an appetite suppressant, and others such
as students and lorry drivers who want to
stay awake for long periods. Justin Thom-
as, a Briton who lectures on psychology at
Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, says many
users believe (or pretend to themselves)
that it is a medication, a myth reinforced by
some producers, who market the drug in
blister packs. “This pseudo-medical ve-
neer protects the user from feeling they are
involved in an activity that isharam (for-
bidden by the Koran),” he says. 7Drugs in the Middle EastCaptured by Captagon
ROME
A new drug of choice, forbidden or notNot the real thing