Paul Kan is a Professor of National Security at the United States Army’s War College, and one of the leading experts on the relationship between the drug trade and jihad.  His latest documents the ways in which ISIS is being fueled by the consumption of drugs:

ISIL and other jihadist groups have not been deterred by Islam’s theological proscription against drug use and intoxication. They are able to rationalize their use of drugs as doing what is necessary to defeat their enemies. In fact, members of jihadist groups from West Africa to the Hindu Kush consume a wide range of narcotics as a way to enable their violent operations….

The drug of choice for ISIL members is an amphetamine known as Captagon…. A Lebanese Captagon manufacturer who supplies drugs for various groups fighting in Syria says that those who consume the drug “have a thirst for fighting and killing and will shoot at whatever they see. They lose any feeling or empathy for the people in front of them and can kill them without caring at all. They forget about their mother, father, and their families.” …

In 2014, ISIL captured a pharmaceutical plant in Aleppo that produced Captagon. The drug is cheap and easy to make. Many of its precursor chemicals come into Syria across the Lebanese and Turkish borders.

In using the drug trade to fund its operations, ISIS is following a route well-paved by jihadist organizations before it.  The control of the opium production in Afghanistan funded mujaheddin operations against the Soviets before it became a major source of revenue for the Taliban against the United States.  Iran has leveraged control over the opium pipeline between Afghanistan and the Levant to create a fundraising stream for its Revolutionary Guards Corps, which profits wildly as the major distributor of narcotics in the region.  In addition to funding its own operations, the IRGC is also able to support Iranian proxy forces such as Hezbollah through its opium operations.  Hezbollah refines the opium into heroin, which has given the terrorist organization both a major fundraising stream as well as a entry point into coordination with Latin American drug cartels.

ISIS, however, is using its own product to stimulate jihadist violence.  Unlike narcotics, which tend to relax the mind and body, ISIS has settled upon an amphetamine as its chief product both for sale and consumption.  As Dr. Kan’s article describes, this drug urges the mind and body to greater efforts while eliminating the capacity for remorse or sympathy.

As with other aspects of ISIS’s ideology, the drug it is selling widely enable lone-wolf attacks far removed from its direct lines of communication.  These amphetamines are fed into a network of Muslim communities infiltrated by ISIS for recruitment and propaganda purposes as well.  The union of drugs and a theology proselytizing violence represents a threat that security organizations in the West must take seriously.