Welcome back to Hezbollah’s Hostages, the weekly animated video series in which brave opponents of the terror group reveal how it tyrannizes Arab lands. Previously, an ex-Hezbollah fighter described his journey from combatant to resister, and a young woman told of her escape from sex slavery, revealing the militia’s massive human trafficking operations.
Today’s episode is told from the point of view of a drug mule, who reveals how the militia’s multibillion-dollar narcotics industry is built around a little pill called Captagon.
Sometimes called “the jihadist drug,” Captagon is an addictive psychostimulant that dulls pain, induces euphoria, and—as today’s subject explains—numbs the human conscience. It was widely used by ISIS fighters and found in the bodies of several perpetrators of Hamas’s October 7 massacre. But mainly it serves as a source of funding for jihadism.
According to the U.S. State Department, the Captagon trade spans 17 countries—from Italy to Malaysia. Hezbollah—along with the regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad—produces the vast majority of supply, and the terror group is responsible for smuggling and selling it across the globe. Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance”—including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis who act as proxies for Tehran—owes much of its war chest to these profits. This means that stemming the manufacture and supply of Captagon is nearly as consequential as sanctioning Iran itself.
The young man in today’s video was unwittingly drawn into the Captagon trade out of desperation to help feed his younger brothers. His harrowing account is one of both perpetrator and victim. Watch him tell his story—produced by our partners at the Center for Peace Communications.
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