Tensions increased in southern Syria as Israeli warplanes bombed the Ministry of Defence in Damascus, areas around the presidential palace, and villages in As-Suwayda on 16 July 2025, killing at least two hundred and fifty Syrians in these air strikes. The transitional authorities in Syria, led by the former al-Qaeda chief Ahmed al-Sharaa, condemned the attacks, which Israel justified as necessary to halt fighting between Syrian forces, the hastily organised Quwwat al-Badu (or Bedouin Forces), and the Druze Harakat Rijal al-Karama (Men of Dignity).
In December 2024, the Men of Dignity, the Sheikh al-Karama Forces and the Liwa al-Jabal (Mountain Brigade) joined forces in the As-Suwayda area to create the Ghurfat ‘Amaliyyat al-Janub (Southern Operations) group to defend the region from the incursions of the Israelis and the new Syrian government. However, the group split earlier this year,which faded its ability to hold off the incursion of the Israelis beyond their earlier occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights, occupied since 1967. Since then, Israel has expanded its control of the Golan Heights toward the As-Suwayda area and has been blamed by local forces for interference in local disputes to justify further military encroachment. .
Since 2012, the central authority of the Syrian state has been weakened, stretching from the edge of the Golan Heights, through the city of Daraa, and to the villages of As-Suwayda, forming a belt along the Southern edge of Syria and along the Jordanian border. Syrian military forces remained in this zone, but their legitimacy was at a historical low, causing several military forces to emerge in this vacuum. In 2013, the Druze community in the area, led by Sheikh Wahid al-Bal’ous, formed the Harakat Rijal al-Karama (Men of Dignity), while an alliance of various fighters led by Murhij Hussein al-Jarmani (aka Abu Ghaith) formed the Liwa al-Jabal (Mountain Brigade) the following year. These groups were set up to defend the Druze community from attacks by the al-Qaeda group Jabhat al-Nusra (Victory Front) that had begun to move South from the Qalamoun Mountains and seemed to be getting assistance from Israeli intelligence and military forces. The decline in the role of the Syrian military in this area led to the increased political and security role of both the Men of Dignity and the Mountain Brigade, who fought off the al-Qaeda forces, the later ISIS attacks, and attacks by the Israelis.
The Fentanyl Network in Southern Syria
In 2012, when I first encountered the Syrian military along the road by the Qalamoun mountains, it was already clear that their morale oscillated between extreme confidence and exhaustion due to the pyrrhic nature of the war. Without US or Israeli air support, the various rebel armies – the most enthusiastic being the al-Qaeda forces – would not have been able to prevail; this assured the Syrian Arab Army that they could hold them off. However, each time the Syrian army advanced, it would have to do so by enormous shelling and violence that hit civilian targets, reduced its sense of moral superiority, and destroyed the basis for the Syrian economy. A collapsed economy and a slowly withering state apparatus deteriorated the morale of the Syrian army. By 2013, all sides in the conflict kept up their fighting spirits not by politics or ideology but by the influx of vast amounts of amphetamine, known in Syria by their brand names, Captagon and Tramadol, or otherwise, as the fighters called it, the ‘white pills of death".
Near the Jordanian border in the As-Suwayda area, I was where the large-scale production of these pills began. Ex-military men who ran these farms had gone into business with international drug syndicates. A decade ago, there were rumours circulated about Brigadier General Wafiq Nasser playing a role in establishing the drug production and distribution network through a series of small villages in the As-Suwayda region. Nasser worked with Abu Yassin Ahmad Jaafar and Jamil al-Balaas to build the farm system from the villages of Busra al-Sham to al-Qurayya – roughly twenty kilometres from Jordan. These men, alongside Marei al-Ramthan and Raji Falhout used the collapsed Syrian state system to their advantage, built ties with Jordanian and Lebanese officials through bribery, and began to dominate the trade in amphetamine drug production and sales throughout the region (including into Israel, largely for recreational use).
Tensions grew between the self-defence units (mainly the Druze’s Men of Dignity) and the drug gangs, as the former tried to stop the latter from selling amphetamines to people in the area itself. In 2015, a car bomb in As-Suwayda killed Wahid al-Bal’ous, the leader of the Men of Dignity. Rumours circulated that he was killed by the Syrian government, and then by al-Qaeda (after the arrest of a man named Wafi Abu Trabi). But under the surface, it was clear that al-Bal’ous was a victim of the drug war. Three years after this assassination, the Men of Dignity captured Abu Yassin Ahmad Jaafar, who told them – on camera – that he was involved in the assassination of al-Bal’ous and that he was one of the main drug kingpins of the area. He was later killed by Men of Dignity.
In Jaafar’s video confession, he mentioned that Marei al-Ramthan had organised a group of Bedouin youth to smuggle the drugs across the border into Jordan. Al-Ramthan, who was a herder before he got into the drug business in 2006, was able to absorb the much larger production that began after 2012, and he became the biggest transporter of drugs in the Levant. Jordan’s courts had condemned him to prison several times, but he was never arrested.
The Drug War
The slow collapse of the Syrian state led to the rise of local authorities as independent masters of the drug trade. In 2018, Major General Kifah al-Mulhim took over from Nasser. At first, Al-Mulhim’s appointment raised hopes that the drug networks would be put under pressure. A series of events then unfolded. In 2021, the state arrested Raji Falhout, but hours later released him. Then, in July 2022, the state officials alongside the Men of Dignity raided Falhout’s farm and found a Captagon laboratory. Later that year, in December, the government arrested al-Ramthan but then released him. That same year, the Syrian army, along with paramilitary Liwa al-Jabal (the Mountain Brigade), fought the Falhout armed groups near the Jordanian border and eliminated several of them. From January to March 2024, the Jordanian air force struck many of these Captagon farms in the countryside of As-Suwayda. These strikes killed civilians, which led the Men of Dignity movement to ask Jordan to stop them. The Syrian military was silent in public. Either al-Mulhim was part of the vast drug network that went from As-Suwayda to Damascus and elsewhere, or he did not have the authority to carry out a proper clean-up in the region. Toward the last days of the Assad government, al-Mulhim was recalled to Baghdad as the director of the Syrian National Security Bureau. The United States had placed personal sanctions on al-Mulhim because of his role in the Syrian state. After the fall of Assad, these personal sanctions were removed.
The fall of Assad’s government in December 2024 came because of several reasons; the Israeli war on Lebanon (which weakened Hezbollah), the air strikes on Syrian military positions, and a coordinated blitzkrieg of the former al-Qaeda forces from the northern city of Idlib to Damascus. Israel, taking advantage of the situation, pushed out of the illegally occupied Golan Heights into the region near As-Suwayda. The Israelis argued that this was a new security barrier not only for Israel, but for the Druze minority community. But this was merely an excuse. Taking advantage of the fights over the drug farms in July 2025, the Israelis struck several targets, including the government buildings in Damascus, but not the drug farms, once more saying that it did so to protect the Druze. But several Druze leaders, including Sheikh Sami Abi al-Muna, said that they did not need Israeli protection and that Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians invalidated their claim to humanitarianism. In actuality, the Israeli strikes sought to put pressure on the former al-Qaeda chief Ahmed al-Sharaa, now transitional president of Syria (who had US sanctions against himself, which were officially lifted on 30 June 2025). Al-Sharaa has not yet done what Israel expects Syria to do, which is to recognise Israel. He has expelled leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hamas, and he has arrested Islamic Jihad leaders, but that is not enough. Israel will continue to use any excuse to pummel Syria to get its way. It is neither drugs nor the Druze that worries Israel; it is that al-Sharaa has not surrendered Syria’s pro-Palestinian history at the feet of the Israeli regime.
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This article was produced by Globetrotter and No Cold War. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power
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