Donkeys and drones: how Yemen is turning into a drug transit hub for the highest bidder

Across the border from the Empty Quarter is Yemen's northern governorate of Al Jawf. Food and water are scarce in this region with a population of 590,000 people, nearly all of whom are reliant on aid.

It is also one of Yemen's largest transit hubs for a growing drug trade, local and security officials say.

Yemen, now in its 11th year of civil war, is divided into governorates that are controlled by different armed factions, from the Iran-backed Houthis in the north to the internationally recognised government in the south.

The exact quantities of drugs, from Captagon pills to other narcotics, moving through the country, remain unknown. But with its strategic location on the Red Sea and Bab Al Mandeb strait, which links to the Indian Ocean, as well as deep security fractures, rampant lawlessness and grinding poverty, Yemen has become a major route for smuggling to lucrative markets in the Gulf and beyond.

Local officials, security figures and experts told The National that the narcotics trade in Yemen has "exploded", especially of Captagon, an amphetamine of which Syria held a monopoly of about 80 per cent under Bashar Al Assad.

This can be measured through seizures by various parties in Yemen, with 1,7 million pills in 2025, up from 358,000 pills the year before, according to data collated by the US-based New Lines Institute, which tracks narcotics in Yemen.

Fighting between different groups that control parts of the country, as well as divisions within the government, have furthered lawlessness that enables traffickers.

The Syria effect

"It is not a direct result of the fall of the Assad regime, but a spillover effect that was seen in 2024 when the regime was in power," Caroline Rose, an expert on military and national security at the New Lines centre, told The National.

Countries around the Middle East are eager to shut down trade of the highly addictive amphetamine, which was produced on a mass scale during Syria's civil war and often smuggled across Lebanon's border.

"They encouraged traffickers to diversify routes beyond Lebanon and Syria, and Yemen was one of them," Ms Rose said. British and American experts estimated the global illegal Captagon drug trade to have been worth about $57 billion as of 2023.

This week, Lebanon said it had seized 6.5 million Captagon pills – and 700kg of cannabis – that were being prepared for trafficking to Saudi Arabia. Riyadh suspended imports of Lebanese fruits and vegetables in April 2021, citing drug-smuggling concerns and accusing Beirut of failing to take action.

Originally made by a German company in the 1960s, Fenethylline, a stimulant that became known as Captagon, was first used to treat symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and narcolepsy.

Beyond frontlines

The fall of the Syria's Assad regime exacerbated the already surging trade in Yemen. On boats, big and small, the drugs come in, sometimes from remote areas of Oman across the border into Yemen's Al Mahra, according to security officials who work on tackling the trade.

A Saudi custom officer opens imported pomegranates, as customs foiled an attempt to smuggle over 5 million pills of an amphetamine drug known as Captagon, which they said came from Lebanon, at Jiddah Islamic Port, Saudi Arabia.