Barrack calls Sweida the world’s captagon shop, five weeks after offering it dignity

Tom Barrack, US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, made the remarks in an interview with the commentator Mario Nawfal published on X on Friday 23 October, Enab Baladi reported. “Sweida to Daraa is the captagon manufacturing operation of the world. It lives off of the manufacturing and selling of illicit drugs,” Barrack said, indicating that armed Druze factions in the province fund their weapons through the trade. He added: “It’s not Israel that worries me. It’s a particular Druze sheik who utilizes the perception of Israeli backing of some alignment with America to persecute other Druze.” Asked whether that sheikh had Washington’s backing, Barrack said “it’s absolutely wrong.” He named no one, but Middle East Eye reported the comments landed against Hikmat al-Hijri, the Sweida spiritual leader who opposes Damascus’s authority, has called for Israeli support and advocated independence. Barrack produced no network, no figures and no published evidence.

Al-Hijri’s media office responded late Friday that the remarks amounted to “systematic and unacceptable targeting,” rejecting the claim that the leader exploits perceived Israeli or American backing and saying the leadership had never sought support from Washington or elsewhere. The Bashan administration expressed “profound anger and unequivocal condemnation of the misleading falsehoods.” The Israeli Druze diplomat and historian Dr Reda Mansour, writing on X, called the attribution of the global captagon trade to the Druze region “highly irresponsible” and untruthful, warning that criminalising an entire minority puts the community in southern Syria at direct risk of sectarian violence. On 5 September Barrack had described the US roadmap as offering Suwayda “a path toward the governorate’s dignified reintegration into Syria, with members of the Druze community enjoying the same full rights and responsibilities as any citizen.”

The ground beneath the remarks has been moving. SANA reported that armed groups closed the main Sweida–Damascus highway in both directions at the Um al-Zaytoun checkpoint on Saturday 24 October; Druze authorities rejected the account. On 18 October the governor, Mustafa al-Bakour, told SANA residents faced deteriorating security and accused armed groups of kidnappings, threats and obstruction. The EU Agency for Asylum’s July 2026 country report, a non-partisan baseline, records dozens of Druze militias in the governorate grouped into four main coalitions — the most prominent the Men of Dignity and the Sweida Military Council — with some factions favouring coordination with Damascus and others resisting it, and notes that most of Sweida remained under local Druze control at the time of writing.

Assessment: An envoy who sells reintegration cannot also brand the territory a narco-state and expect the sale to close; the two Barracks are addressing different audiences, and the Suwayda one now has a quotable reason to refuse. Distrust the captagon claim as stated: the trade is real and documented elsewhere, but Barrack offered a geography, not a case. Note also the delivery mechanism — the same influencer interview format that produced his August collision with Israel Katz. Washington’s Syria policy is being made in podcasts, which gives the envoy deniability and gives everyone he names a grievance with no venue to answer it.