So, the Death-Cultists Are Junkies and Drug-Dealers, Too

Jihadis are popping an amphetamine named "Captogon," popular in the Middle East but relatively unknown elsewhere.

As Syria sinks ever deeper into civil war, evidence is starting to emerge that a brutal and bloody conflict that has left more than 100,000 people dead and displaced as many as two million is now also being fuelled by both the export and consumption of rapidly increasing quantities of illegal drugs.

Separate investigations by the news agency Reuters and Time magazine have found that the growing trade in Syrian-made Captagon – an amphetamine widely consumed in the Middle East but almost unknown elsewhere – generated revenues of millions of dollars inside the country last year, some of which was almost certainly used to fund weapons, while combatants on both sides are reportedly turning to the stimulant to help them keep fighting.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Syria has long been a transit point for drugs coming from Europe, Turkey and Lebanon and destined for the wealthy Gulf states....

Neither investigation found conclusive evidence that the warring sides were using profits from the drug directly to buy weapons, but both quoted experts and officials as saying this was highly likely....

The drug is cheap and simple to produce, using ingredients that are easy and often legal to obtain, yet sells for up to $20 a tablet. A Lebanese psychiatrist, Ramzi Haddad, said that Captagon had "the typical effects of a stimulant", producing "a kind of euphoria. You're talkative, you don't sleep, you don't eat, you're energetic."

The jihadis are said to make "extensive use" of the drug.

That article is from January, but I bring that up because of this French article suggesting that the Paris attackers might have been on Captogon, and that toxicology tests on the bodies of the dead attackers are being conducted.

Several pieces of information suggest that the attackers of Paris took a drug before committing their barbarities. Toxicological analyses are being conducted.

How can one slaughter dozens of people without blinking and without showing the least reluctance? While the inquiry into the attacks on Paris continues this Tuesday, the cruel resolve of the terrorists is being looked into. The rooms of the hotel rented under the name of Salah Abdeslam, the man currently on the run, were raided at Alfortville (in the Val-de-Marne department). According to La Point, the police seized syringes in a "stash." They're in the process of analysis.

It is not ruled out, added the daily paper, that they [the syringes] had been used in creating the explosive belts. But the suggestion that the terrorists could have taken illicit substances, for filling them with courage, before their bloodthirsty rampage, has been advanced. "We had believed them the Living Dead, like they were on drugs," recounted a witness who had met with Le Figaro....

In fact, many fighters in Syria take Captagon, nicknamed "the jihadi drug." Taken orally [by pill] or via a syringe, Captagon is principally used, like all amphetamines, as a "stimulant and appetite suppressant," said Doctor Marc Valleur, a psychiatrist in Paris in an interview for the site Keys to the Middle East. This magic potion is well appreciated by the groups such as ISIS, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and the Al-Nora Front. The young man who had committed the attack at Sousse (Tunisia) had for example taken some.

The drug is normally forbidden by the religion of the jihadists. But they take it for boosting their performance and making their fear disappear in combat. Besides euphroia, the product lets one go without sleep or hunger. The effects of the drugs can last up to 48 hours. The accounts of those who have witnessed the the drug's effect first-hand are edifying. "Someone hits them and they don't feel pain. Most of them laugh even while they're being hit by heavy blows," a Syrian officer relayed to Reuters.

I'm not mentioning this because I particularly disapprove of taking a stimulant -- I'm rather more perturbed by all the murder -- but because:

1. It further shows how degenerate in their habits these alleged "Holy" Warriors are.

2. It suggests their "courage" is pretty much to be found for a couple of dollars per pill.

3. It's a useful investigative fact. One could trace some jihadis by tracing the trade in Captogon.

4. It might be useful to disrupt this trade, to drain them of money and make them jittery for lack of their fix.

5. It's an interesting historical recurrence, putting one in mind of the Assassins and their heavenly drug of choice (hash, or hashasim, from which the word "assassin" is posited to derive).

posted by Ace at 02:00 PM

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