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A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it.***In the twelve years since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, the regime of Bashar al Assad has overseen the development of a multi-billion dollar drug empire built on one powerful substance: captagon. Captagon is the moniker for fenethylline hydrochloride, developed in the 1960s as a treatment for attention deficit disorder, narcolepsy, and depression. In Syria, the Assad government has used the chaos of conflict to transform regime-held territories into narcotic powerhouses, with specialized machinery and laboratories pumping out the drug for export to the Middle East and beyond.This operation, according to various investigations, has been directly facilitated by the regime and Assad’s army and security apparatus. Now that Syria has been reinstated in the Arab League, however, this could all come to an end — Arab states are intent on stopping the flow of captagon throughout the region. We asked three experts to tell us more about what’s going on.Read more below. Lina Khatib Director, Middle East Institute School of Oriental and African StudiesCountering the captagon trade — a lucrative funding source for the Assad regime — is not the main driver behind Syria’s return to the Arab League. Only after Syria’s return did the Arab League create a committee to cooperate on fighting captagon, with Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq as members. While Jordan is worried about being a transit country for captagon, politically powerful Iraqi and Lebanese militias are involved in its trade. At best, Assad might partially redirect the flow of captagon away from Jordan and the Gulf, but it is unlikely that the