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Syria: Taking Back Golan Heights is an Inalienable Right

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad during his meeting with UN officials (SANA)
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad during his meeting with UN officials (SANA)
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Syria: Taking Back Golan Heights is an Inalienable Right

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad during his meeting with UN officials (SANA)
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad during his meeting with UN officials (SANA)

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad reiterated his country’s firm right to recover the occupied Golan Heights, noting that the presence of the peacekeeping forces is not a substitute for ending the occupation.

Mikdad stressed the importance of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) operating in the Golan Heights under the mandate stipulated per the relevant Security Council resolution, according to State-owned Syrian News Agency (SANA).

Mikdad met with the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix and UN Assistant Secretary-General for the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific, Mohamed Khaled el-Khiari.

During the meeting, the minister reiterated the Syrian government's support to UNDOF to fully implement the mandate entrusted to it, specifically monitoring the disengagement and detection of Israeli violations of the Separation of Forces Agreement represented by its reaccuring attacks on Syrian sovereignty.

He also condemned recent statements by the US administration, which ignored the United Nations resolutions recognizing the Golan Heights as an occupied Syrian Arab land.

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Arab World

100 Million Captagon Pills Destroyed in Damascus

Members of the security forces with Syria's new government inspect a warehouse that used to hide pills of Captagon, a brand name of the psychostimulant drug Fenethylline, inside children's toys, hookahs, house doors and plastic insulation, during a raid in Latakia on January 19, 2025. (Photo by AAREF WATAD / AFP)
Members of the security forces with Syria's new government inspect a warehouse that used to hide pills of Captagon, a brand name of the psychostimulant drug Fenethylline, inside children's toys, hookahs, house doors and plastic insulation, during a raid in Latakia on January 19, 2025. (Photo by AAREF WATAD / AFP)
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100 Million Captagon Pills Destroyed in Damascus

Members of the security forces with Syria's new government inspect a warehouse that used to hide pills of Captagon, a brand name of the psychostimulant drug Fenethylline, inside children's toys, hookahs, house doors and plastic insulation, during a raid in Latakia on January 19, 2025. (Photo by AAREF WATAD / AFP)
Members of the security forces with Syria's new government inspect a warehouse that used to hide pills of Captagon, a brand name of the psychostimulant drug Fenethylline, inside children's toys, hookahs, house doors and plastic insulation, during a raid in Latakia on January 19, 2025. (Photo by AAREF WATAD / AFP)

Syrian security forces destroyed seized drugs Sunday including around 100 million pills of the amphetamine-like stimulant captagon -- whose production and trafficking flourished under ousted president Bashar al-Assad, an official told AFP.

“We destroyed large quantities of narcotic pills,” said official Badr Youssef, including “about 100 million captagon pills and 10 to 15 tons of hashish” as well as raw materials used to produce captagon.

He spoke from the Damascus headquarters of the defunct Fourth Division where the drugs were seized. The Fourth Division was controlled by Assad's brother, Maher.

Earlier, the official SANA news agency said: “the anti-narcotics department of the (interior) ministry is destroying narcotic substances seized at the headquarters of the Fourth Division.”

An AFP photographer saw security personnel in a Fourth Division warehouse load dozens of bags filled with pills and other drugs into trucks, before taking them to a field to be burned.

Over the past decade, the regime of Assad, ousted last month by opposition factions, has been accused of being the principal purveyor of Captagon, which flooded markets across the Middle East.

Revenues from Captagon sales sustained the old regime for much of the 13-year conflict. A 2022 AFP investigation found that Syria under Assad had become a narco state, with the $10-billion captagon industry dwarfing all other exports.

On Saturday, SANA reported that authorities had seized “a huge warehouse belonging to the former regime” in the coastal city of Latakia.

It said the factory “specialized in packing captagon pills into children's toys and furniture.”

On Sunday, an AFP photographer visited the warehouse near the port and saw security personnel dismantling children's bicycles that contained the small white pills.

Captagon pills had also been hidden inside objects such as doors, shisha water pipes and car parts, he reported.

Abu Rayyan, a security official in Latakia, said that “about 50 to 60 million captagon pills” had been seized that “belonged to the Fourth Division.”

“This is the largest such warehouse in the area,” he said.

Abu Rayyan said the drugs had been packed for export from Latakia “to neighboring countries,” and that they would be destroyed.