Shafaq News- Baghdad

A cross-border security operation in Syria led to the dismantling of an international drug trafficking network, Iraqi authorities said on Thursday, alongside fresh drug seizures and arrests in western Al-Anbar province.

Iraq’s General Directorate of Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Affairs said the operation was carried out as part of security cooperation with Syria, in coordination with the Anti-Narcotics Administration. Iraqi officers operated inside Syrian territory, where two international drug traffickers were arrested and around 300,000 pills, equivalent to about 50 kilograms, were seized.

Separately, Al-Anbar Police Command said its forces arrested a suspect accused of trafficking and promoting narcotics in Ramadi. A joint team from the province’s Criminal Investigations Department and the Ramadi crime unit carried out an ambush that resulted in the arrest of the suspect and the seizure of 1,979 captagon pills.

Iraq shares a 600-kilometer border with Syria, where, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), over 80% of the world’s Captagon supply is produced. UNODC figures show Iraq seized more than 24 million Captagon tablets in 2023 alone, an increase of 3,300% since 2019. The pills, which contain amphetamine-based stimulants, are often trafficked from southern Syria through western Iraqi provinces such as Al-Anbar and Nineveh, before being smuggled toward Gulf markets.