Iraq and Syria seize one million captagon pills in joint operation

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s General Directorate for Narcotics Affairs announced Wednesday the seizure of one million captagon pills in a joint operation with Syrian authorities, with several suspects arrested and a trafficking network dismantled.

The directorate said the operation was based on “precise intelligence efforts and joint coordination and cooperation with security agencies in the Syrian Arab Republic,” and was carried out under the direct supervision of the Interior Minister. It said units “were able to seize one million narcotic pills of the type captagon” and arrest a number of suspects who had been planning to distribute the drugs inside Iraq.

The seizure is the latest in a series of coordinated Iraq-Syria narcotics operations. In March, Iraqi authorities dismantled a network inside Syria and seized more than 200,000 captagon pills. In January, a joint operation yielded around 2.5 million pills and arrests in both countries. In July 2025, more than 1.35 million pills were seized in a cross-border raid, and in December 2025, internationally wanted suspects were arrested alongside around 200,000 pills in a joint border operation.

Iraq has faced growing narcotics challenges, evolving from a transit corridor into both a consumer market and redistribution hub, with traffickers increasingly using sophisticated cross-border networks and, in some cases, aerial methods such as GPS-equipped balloons to move drugs across the Anbar border.