Teen Who Sparked Revolt against Assad in Daraa Celebrates His Downfall

Muawiyah could not have foreseen the butterfly effect his simple act of teenage frustration would unleash. (The Independent)
Muawiyah could not have foreseen the butterfly effect his simple act of teenage frustration would unleash. (The Independent)
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Teen Who Sparked Revolt against Assad in Daraa Celebrates His Downfall

Muawiyah could not have foreseen the butterfly effect his simple act of teenage frustration would unleash. (The Independent)
Muawiyah could not have foreseen the butterfly effect his simple act of teenage frustration would unleash. (The Independent)

Angry with life under Bashar al-Assad, 16-year-old Muawiyah Syasneh and his friends spray-painted four words onto a wall in their school playground.

Four words of defiance that saw the teenagers jailed and tortured for weeks, triggering Syria’s first protests in early 2011. Four words that ignited a revolution that spiraled into one of the bloodiest civil wars of modern times. Four words that simply read: “It’s your turn, Doctor.”

It was a reference to Assad, who was an ophthalmologist in London before he returned to Syria to continue his family’s brutal regime.

“We spent 45 days under torture in prison for these words,” Muawiyah told The Independent as he stood in front of the same wall, in the city of Daraa. “It was indescribable. We were children – hung, beaten, electrocuted.”

Over his shoulder is a rifle. He ended up fighting with the Free Syrian Army and, years later, joined the Free Syrian Army that not only expelled regime forces from Daraa last week but were the first to seize the capital, Damascus.

“In 2011, after the revolution started, the entire region demanded its children back,” he said. “We are proud of what we did because adults couldn’t do it.”

Now 30 and a father himself, there was no way that the young Muawiyah could have foreseen the butterfly effect his simple act of teenage frustration would unleash.

He could never have imagined that, more than a decade later, and after fleeing the regime’s intense bombardment of Daraa and becoming a refugee, he would return and follow the Southern Operations Room rebels into Damascus to herald Assad’s downfall.

“The battle in Daraa happened so suddenly. We were surprised – in moments, we conquered the city and then Damascus, which was the first time I had ever been in the capital,” he said, showing a photo of himself in disbelief, wielding his rifle in the capital’s Martyrs’ Square.

“When we wrote those words all those years ago, we didn’t think it would lead to this. Honestly, we didn’t think it would cause all of Syria and Daraa to rise up. But we demanded our freedom, and now we remain on our homeland’s soil,” he added.

“The war was tough. Many were wounded. Many people died. We lost so many loved ones, and yet we thank God. The blood of the martyrs was not wasted. Justice prevailed, and the revolution was victorious.”

The flint strike that sparked it all took place in this small southern city that few had heard of before 2011. Located just a few miles from Syria’s border with Jordan, Daraa had a pre-war population of just 117,000 people. Before the uprising, life was hard.

Muawiyah blamed the arrival in the early 2000s of the region’s new security chief, Atef Najib. He was notorious for his oppressive laws, and for personally overseeing the imprisonment of Muawiyah and his friends.

By early 2011, the streets were strangled by police checkpoints. “You couldn’t enter or leave,” Muawiyah recalled. “We were watching protests in Egypt and Tunisia, where regimes were falling apart. So we wrote ‘It’s your turn, Doctor,’ and burned the police checkpoint.”

At least 15 boys from different families were rounded up – and badly tortured. One of them reportedly died from his wounds.

Muawiyah recalled how the authorities told their parents: “Forget about your children. Make new children. And if you’ve forgotten how to do that, bring your wives.”

By March, thousands – then, tens of thousands – began to gather regularly around the city’s neutral al-Omari Mosque, demanding the return of the children. It ignited protests by frustrated citizens across the country.

“We were surprised by what happened. Everyone demanded the return of the children – families inside Daraa, but [also] across Syria.”

Ehab Qatayfan, 50, who was among the crowds of protesters at the time, says the children’s detention was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“We were in a miserable situation, as you saw with your own eyes – the jails, the prisons, the torture machines,” he recalled from outside that same mosque, 13 years on. “We were oppressed by every single branch of the regime.”

But the protests were met with violence by the authorities, and it snowballed from there. Fighting raged for a brutal seven years, during which time regime forces laid waste to Daraa. Among the dead was Muawiyah’s own father, who was killed by regime bombs in 2014 as he went to Friday prayers.

By 2018, armed factions had surrendered and, under the terms of a deal, were forced to evacuate to the northwestern province of Idlib. Among those who fled there was Muawiyah, who then escaped onwards to Türkiye, where he endured the hardships of life as a refugee.

Desperate and broke, he eventually returned to his hometown via smuggling routes, and earlier this month – as opposition forces from Idlib swept through Aleppo, Hama, and Homs – he joined the frustrated youth of Daraa, who turned once more on the Assad regime. To everyone’s surprise, the government soldiers they had feared for so many decades appeared to melt away.

Back in Daraa, years of battle scars have gouged out swathes of the city. Children now play football in the shadows of the towering skeletons of apartment blocks. Families have tried to rebuild makeshift houses in the shells of their former homes.

There, today’s teenagers have known nothing but war.

“My home is destroyed, my father forcibly disappeared, my brother killed. I don’t remember anything before except the fighting,” said says one 16-year-old boy, watching his friends play football next to the school where Muawiyah’s graffiti started it all. “My first memory is regime soldiers shooting people,” he added grimly.

But Muawiyah, whose son is now six, has hope – not for himself, but for the youth.

“We want Syria to be better than before. But frankly, I already lost my future. The future of the next generation is what matters,” he said, clutching his assault rifle.

“I pray for them – that they won’t face the torture we faced, that they won’t have weapons, that they won’t live in wars like we did, that they will have the safety and security we all deserve.”



What Has Assad’s Fall Revealed about the Captagon Drug Trade in Syria?

 A Syrian member of the opposition shows amphetamine pills known as Captagon hidden inside an electrical component at a warehouse where the drug was manufactured before the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government at a facility in Douma city, outskirts of Damascus, Syria, Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP)
A Syrian member of the opposition shows amphetamine pills known as Captagon hidden inside an electrical component at a warehouse where the drug was manufactured before the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government at a facility in Douma city, outskirts of Damascus, Syria, Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP)
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What Has Assad’s Fall Revealed about the Captagon Drug Trade in Syria?

 A Syrian member of the opposition shows amphetamine pills known as Captagon hidden inside an electrical component at a warehouse where the drug was manufactured before the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government at a facility in Douma city, outskirts of Damascus, Syria, Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP)
A Syrian member of the opposition shows amphetamine pills known as Captagon hidden inside an electrical component at a warehouse where the drug was manufactured before the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government at a facility in Douma city, outskirts of Damascus, Syria, Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP)

Since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, industrial-scale manufacturing facilities of Captagon have been uncovered around the country, which experts say helped flourish a $10 billion annual global trade in the highly addictive drug.

Among the locations used for manufacturing the drug were the Mazzeh air base in Damascus, a car-trading company in Latakia and a former potato chips factory on the outskirts of Damascus.

The factory that once produced the crunchy snack in the suburb of Douma under the name, Captain Corn, was seized by government forces in 2018.

"Assad’s collaborators controlled this place. After the regime fell... I came here and found it on fire," Firas al-Toot, the original owner of the factory, told The Associated Press. "They came at night and lit the drugs on fire but couldn’t burn everything."

"From here, Captagon pills emerged to kill our people," said Abu Zihab, an activist with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the main group now ruling the country, as his group gave access to journalists to the site.

Syria's nearly 14-year-old civil war fragmented the country, crumbled the economy and created fertile ground for the production of the drug. Militias, warlords and the Assad government transformed Captagon from a small-scale operation run by small criminal groups into a billion-dollar industrial revenue stream.

The recent ousting of Assad has disrupted these networks and has given a closer look at its operations — revealing the workings of a war economy that sustained Assad’s power over Syria. Experts say the change in Syria might create an opportunity to dismantle the Captagon industry.

How did Syria build its Captagon empire?

Captagon was first developed in Germany in the 1960s as a prescription stimulant for conditions like narcolepsy. It was later outlawed due to heart issues and its addictive properties.

Its amphetamine-like effects made it popular in the Middle East among both elites and fighters, as it enhanced focus and reduced fatigue.

Assad's government recognized an opportunity in the cheaply manufactured drug amid Syria’s economic turmoil and the heavy sanctions imposed on it.

Captagon is produced through a simple chemical process that involves mixing amphetamine derivatives with excipients to form tablets, typically in makeshift labs.

The Captagon trade began industrializing around 2018-2019 as the Assad regime — and other armed groups in Syria -- invested in production facilities, warehouses and trafficking networks. This allowed Syria to emerge as the largest producer of Captagon globally, with some production also occurring in Lebanon.

Most seized consignments of Captagon originated from Syria, according to data by the New Lines Captagon Trade Project, an initiative of the New Lines Institute think tank.

Evidence of the Assad regime’s sponsorship of the Captagon industry is overwhelming, the report published in May said. The Security Office of the 4th Armored Division of the Syrian Arab Army, headed by Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher oversaw operations and created a coordinated production system, the report added.

Where and how was Captagon smuggled?

Captagon was smuggled across the border using various methods, hiding Captagon in trucks, cargo shipments and goods. Some shipments are concealed in food, electronics and construction materials to evade detection.

The primary smuggling routes were Syria’s porous borders with Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, from which the drug is distributed throughout the region. Some were also shipped from Latakia port.

In Lebanon, the Captagon trade has flourished, particularly near the Syrian border and in the Bekaa Valley. Lebanese authorities struggled to curb the flow of Captagon from Syria, which analysts say was facilitated by the Hezbollah group, a key Assad ally.

Following the discovery of crates of fruit meticulously packed with bundles of the drug hidden among pomegranates and oranges, Saudi Arabia and the UAE implemented bans on Lebanese agricultural products.

Captagon has also found its way into international markets, reaching as far as Southeast Asia and parts of Europe.

How much revenue did it produce for the Assad regime?

The annual global trade in Captagon has an estimated value of $10 billion, with the ousted Assad family's annual profit reaching around $2.4 billion, according to Caroline Rose, director of the New York-based New Lines Institute Captagon Trade Project.

"Seeing the uncovering of so many industrial-scale facilities affiliated with the regime was shocking but not surprising. There was extensive evidence linking key regime-aligned cronies and Assad family members to the trade," said Rose, whose organization tracks all publicly recorded Captagon seizures and lab raids. The discovery of the facilities, she said, confirmed "the concrete relationship between Captagon and the former regime."

The exact number of factories in Syria remains unclear, but experts and HTS members estimate that there are likely hundreds spread throughout the country.

The future of Captagon in post-Assad Syria

Assad has turned Syria into "the largest Captagon factory in the world," HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa stated in a victory speech at Damascus’s Umayyad Mosque on Dec. 8. "Today, Syria is being cleansed, thanks to the grace of Almighty God."

While Assad and his circle may have been the primary beneficiaries, there is also evidence that Syrian opposition groups were involved in drug smuggling, opposition groups, local militias and organized crime networks manufactured and smuggled the drug to finance their operations, analysts say.

"Likely, we will see a short-term supply reduction in the trade, with a decline in the size and frequency of seizures as industrial-scale production is largely halted. However, criminal actors are innovative, likely seeking out new locations to engage in production and smuggling, particularly as demand levels remain stable," Rose said.

They may also "seek out alternative illicit trades to engage in instead," she said.

In addition to dismantling the Captagon trade, the country's transitional government should "establish programs for economic development that will incentivize Syrians to participate in the country’s formal, licit economic sphere," Rose said.