Syria: Billions off Meth and Ghost Thugs - Al Profit Fall of Assad

Turns out Bashar Al-Assad was running a giant Narco-state. Production of Capta-gon which are "stimulant" pills and are known as the "poor-man's cokaine" in the Middle East, brought in BILLIONS in revenue per year. As for Ghost the Thugs... the guy in the thumbnail (photo from 2012) was a "SHABIHA"Shabiha (Levantine Arabic: شَبِّيحَة Šabbīḥa, pronounced [ʃabˈbiːħa]; also romanized Shabeeha or Shabbiha; lit. 'ghosts') is a colloquial and generally derogatory term for various loosely-organised Syrian militias loyal to the Assad family prior to the collapse of the Assad regime, used particularly during the initial phase of the Syrian civil war. As the war has evolved, many groups which had previously been considered shabiha were amalgamated into the National Defense Force and other paramilitary groups.[10]The mercenaries consisted of mostly Alawite men paid by the regime to eliminate figures of its domestic opposition and alleged fifth-columnists. The Shabiha were established in the 1980s to smuggle weapons to the Syrian soldiers stationed in Lebanon during the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.[11] While most Shabiha were members of the Alawi minority, the main common denominator of the groups was loyalty to the Assad family rather than religion, and in areas such as Aleppo they were primarily Sunni.[12]The word became common in the 1990s, when it was being used to refer to "thugs" who work with the government and often drove Mercedes-Benz S-Class and gave their guards the same car; that specific car model was nicknamed Shabah (Ghost) in many Arabic countries which led to its drivers being called Shabeeh [13] The Syrian opposition stated that the shabiha are a tool of the government for cracking down on dissent.[14] The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has stated that some of the shabiha are mercenaries.[14] Strongly loyal to the Assad dynasty and containing anti-Sunni factions, shabiha militias are discreetly financed by powerful Syrian businessmen, and have often been responsible for the more brutal actions against the opposition, including possible massacres. Psychological warfare against Syria's Sunni population is also known to have been employed by Alawi Shabiha, which includes demonizing Sunni religious beliefs and usage of deriding slogans such as "There is no God but Bashar".[