The use of narcotic stimulants by Boko Haram (BH) Islamist fighters in north-eastern Nigeria may have provided a means for ensuring the remorseless strength and energy of its attacks against civilian and military targets, but it may also provide some clues for targeting the organization and its logistical links. …
Consistent evidence of the widespread use of narcotic stimulants by Boko Haram fighters matches the use of such drugs through 2014-15 by Daesh [Islamic State of Iraq and Levant or ISIL]combatants in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and in the Daesh-linked Paris attacks of Nov. 13.
Seifeddine Rezgui was found to have been high on drugs when he carried out the Tunisia massacre this summer.
It is not yet clear whether the Boko Haram use of narcotics has been recommended, or suggested, as an operating doctrine, or whether this has arisen spontaneously. What is clear through investigations of the impact of these stimulants is that they not only promote energy levels and a sense of alertness, but also heighten aggression and savagery.
One significant line of enquiry would be to determine whether supplies of Captagon pills were reaching BH. In January 2014, it was reported that Syria was manufacturing and trafficking large amounts of amphetamines, primarily the drug called Captagon (although not necessarily the same drug, or same contents, as the original, legal pharmaceutical of the 1980s; only the name remains the same), generating hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
Captagon, once a brand name for Fenethylline, is a synthetic stimulant which is a popular recreational drug in the Middle East. As a result of the Syrian conflict, the drug began to be produced on a large scale by jihadi groups in Syria. In one incident, the Syrian Arab Army seized a tank truck containing a ton of pills.
Captagon has been smuggled to Lebanon which traffics it to the rest of the Gulf region. In 2014, Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) seized 55-million pills; in 2013 they seized 12.3-million; and before 2013 they seized less than half a million pills per year.
Large scale seizures of Captagon in Lebanon were unheard of until the collapse of Syria. Several reports in August 2014 claimed that Daesh (Islamic State) was receiving large revenues by making and trafficking methamphetamine at pharmaceutical manufacturing labs they seized in Aleppo. The Aleppo plants contained the chemicals and equipment necessary to make high-grade product.
A report in the UK newspaper, The Telegraph, on Jan. 12, 2014, quoted a Syrian drug control officer in the central city of Homs, who said that he had observed the effects of Captagon on protesters and fighters held for questioning. He noted: “We would beat them, and they wouldn’t feel the pain … Many of them would laugh while we were dealing them heavy blows.” Khabib Ammar, a Damascus-based media activist, told The Telegraph that Syrian fighters involved with the drugs trade were buying weapons with the money they made.
The linkage between terrorist groups and criminal groups — particularly narco-traffickers, weapons traffickers, and human traffickers — has been a regular feature of the terrorism phenomenon historically, crossing ideological lines. Significantly, “charitable” front organizations often serve as links between criminal enterprises and terrorist groups.
The role of the Turkish intelligence agency, National Intelligence Organization (NIO) (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı: MİT), bears investigation, given its growing function of supporting Daesh operations in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, and linked with Muslim Brotherhood operations in Sudan. Turkish Islamic charities such as the İHH (Foundation for Human Rights and freedoms and Humanitarian Relief: İnsani Yardım Vakfı) have been working in Africa since the mid-1990s, and İHH has now been identified as a major tool of MİT, as became apparent in the role of the “charity” in the attempted breaking of the Israeli maritime blockade of Gaza in May 2010.
İHH — a strongly Sunni/neo-Wahhabist organization, linked with the Muslim Brotherhood — in August 2015 acknowledged ongoing operations in Benghazi, Tripoli, Misrata, Derne, and Sebhe: all node points for interaction with people- and weapons-traffickers linking down through the Sahel to the Niger Basin region. İHH is even more heavily engaged in Sudan, and, as in Libya, is working on genuine charity work. However, its primary mission has been to undertake proselytization and linkages on behalf of MİT.
İHH also functions heavily in Nigeria, particularly in medical charitable work in northern Nigeria, but also in providing “relief” to “victims of Boko Haram”. Specifically, İHH has been operating openly in the Niger-Chad-Nigeria border regions, giving it clear opportunities to work directly with Boko Haram itself. Moreover, İHH’s medical work gives it the perfect cover to handle shipments of pharmaceuticals.
Narcotic stimulants have been used extensively to engender courage and stamina in many other conflict situations, including, reportedly, among the Maitatsine Islamist jihadists in Northern Nigeria the 1980s. The use during World War II by the Germany armies (Wehrmacht and SS) of Pervitin, a methamphetamine drug released in 1938 by the Berlin-based Temmler pharmaceutical company, particularly in the 1939-40 blitzkrieg operations against Poland and France, paved the way for widespread and routine use of such drugs throughout the war by Germany.

In 2014, the US State Dept. indicated that about half the 59 terrorist groups it listed were linked to narcotics trafficking. While it is known that Boko Haram facilitated much of its early operation through kidnapping and extortion and bank robberies — quite apart from attacks on military units to seize weapons — it is now clear that narco-trafficking is a significant aspect of the group’s operation. But it is the use of narcotic stimulants which also enhances the pace and scale of BH operations. A major question is whether this drift into narco-trafficking occurred naturally, or organically, or whether it is part of the pattern linking BH with Daesh (via Daesh’s major facilitating organization, MİT).

http://www.worldtribune.com/drug-crazed-terrorism-boko-haram-turkish-intelligence-tied-to-spreading-use-of-stimulant-drugs-to-fuel-islamist-attacks/

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