Meth and hashish: Syria says it foiled two drug trafficking operations from Lebanon

The Syrian army's border guards foiled two drug smuggling operations on Tuesday, which included crystal meth (a form of methamphetamine) and hashish, coming from Lebanon.

One operation took place in the Talkalakh region in Homs province, and the other at Ras ea-Maara in the Qalamoun area, Syrian television channel al-Ikhbariya reported. One person involved in the trafficking was arrested and will be handed over, along with the seized substances, to the competent authorities, the channel added.

For its part, the official Syrian news agency SANA reported that a drug smuggling attempt from Lebanon to Syria was thwarted by Syrian border guards, without specifying the location of the operation. According to the agency, the shipment included Captagon, hashish, "crystal" and marijuana.

Syrian anti-narcotics services had already foiled a drug smuggling attempt from Lebanon in the Nabk region, not far from Damascus, on July 27, seizing 850,000 pills of narcotics. A few days earlier, Syria announced it had thwarted an attempt to bring a major drug shipment from Lebanon into the al-Nabk farms, following several surveillance and monitoring operations.

Since the fall of Bashar Assad's regime on Dec. 8, 2024, Damascus has regularly reported seizures of Captagon and smuggled weapons at the Lebanese border. Captagon had become one of Syria's main export products during the civil war that began in 2011, serving as a major source of funding for the former regime, which was accused of turning the country into a narco-state.

The new Syrian authorities accuse Hezbollah, a former ally of the Assad regime, of being involved in this cross-border trafficking. The United States also accuses the pro-Iranian party of participating in the Captagon trade.