What will happen to al-Assad’s Captagon empire now?

The trade of the illegal drug has flourished over the past decade in Syria. Following its ousting of the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria last week, the opposition alliance led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham invited international reporters to witness vast stockpiles and clandestine factories of the illicit drug Captagon. “HTS and Julani thus far have sought to put distance between this new transitional government and the Captagon trade,” Caroline Rose, an expert on Syrian drug trafficking at the New Lines Institute, told Al Jazeera. “This is why we’ve seen several laboratory and warehouse raids on regime-aligned facilities as well as Julani referring to the regime’s illicit history of Captagon production. Captagon became Syria’s most valuable export, providing billions in profit for “regime-aligned networks and individuals … either within the leadership of the regime’s security apparatus, Syria’s commercial sector and business elite, and/or family members of Bashar al-Assad”, according to Rose.