Lawfare News

The Lawfare Podcast: Caroline Rose on Syria’s Role in the Captagon Trade

Jen Patja, Scott R. Anderson, Caroline Rose
Tuesday, December 14, 2021, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Syria’s decade-long civil war has left the state and economy shells of their former selves. But a new industry is stepping in to fill the void: the manufacture and export of illicit drugs, specifically Captagon, a type of amphetamine that has a growing global market. To better understand Syria’s emerging role in the global Captagon trade, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Caroline Rose of the New Lines Institute, who has been tracking this industry's development for several years and is preparing to release a major report on the topic. They discussed the origins of Captagon, how it came to Syria, and how it is being used by the Assad regime, its allies and their proxies across the region.



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Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.
Scott R. Anderson is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow in the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School. He previously served as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State and as the legal advisor for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.
Caroline Rose is the Director of the Strategic Blind Spots Portfolio at the New Lines Institute, where she leads and produces research on the intersection of defense, security, illicit trades, and geopolitical landscapes from Europe to the Middle East and North Africa.