Lebanon's army says it has dismantled a major Captagon factory after finding a 300-metre tunnel used to deliver and store materials for the lab.
The military said the site in Yammouneh, about 25km from the city of Baalbek, was “one of the largest labs” raided to date. It said it seized about 10 tonnes of equipment and machinery and destroyed a “large quantity of Captagon pills, crystal meth and various narcotics”.
Work is now under way to find the people who operated the factory, the Lebanese Armed Forces added. They published footage of the raid, a bulldozer filling in the tunnel and the burning of some of the material captured.
In May, the Lebanese army seized a large quantity of Captagon pills and dismantled a laboratory used to produce the drugs in a raid near the border with Syria. Also that month, the Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam pledged to continue the fight against Captagon smuggling in an interview with The National. The illegal export of the drug has strained relations with Gulf states in recent years.
“We are looking to facilitate exports to Gulf countries, and we must do our part to ensure that red lines are not crossed, particularly those that have concerned Gulf states in the past, like the trafficking of Captagon through Lebanon,” Mr Salam said at the time.
“These drugs were produced in Syria, passed through Lebanon, took on a Lebanese cover, and were exported from here. Today, with the tightening of our border with the Syrian regime, smuggling and drug exports are more controlled. But that doesn’t mean the problem is over.”
The often porous Syria-Lebanon border has long led to rampant smuggling of people, weapons and drugs. Captagon was state-produced on a mass scale in Syria during the last years of the Bashar Al Assad regime, providing a vital income source to help prop up the cash-strapped government during the prolonged civil war.
The drug was often smuggled into Lebanon through border areas where Hezbollah – the Lebanese armed group and political party that supported the Assad regime – held sway. Mr Al Assad was overthrown in a rebel offensive in December. Syria's new rulers have sought to eliminate production networks and publicly destroyed seizures of large amounts of the drug.
Lebanon often seizes of vast amounts of Captagon and other drugs. In 2023, an estimated 10 million Captagon pills meant to be smuggled to Senegal and then on to Saudi Arabia were intercepted. In April 2021, Saudi Arabia suspended fruit and vegetable imports from Lebanon after it said shipments were being used as cover for drug smuggling.
