ISIS is using drugs to ‘desperately’ stay in fight for Raqqa
Islamic State (IS) fighters are taking drugs to stay in the fight against the US-backed forces in Syria, a US military spokesperson said on Wednesday.
Militants who have been captured in Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital in the country, show signs of using amphetamines to continue their “brutal fight,” US Army Colonel Ryan Dillon revealed.
Col. Dillon, spokesman for the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, said the militants had noticeable “pocked needle marks” on their arms.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), have reasoned IS fighters are using drugs to boost their “murderous fervor.”
SDF members questioned militants taken into custody, most of whom are malnourished and withered, with track marks on their arms.
“Those are the signs we assessed to be amphetamine,” the Colonel said in a phone briefing with the Pentagon from Baghdad.
The spokesman added it was the first time the US-led coalition had heard of reports of IS fighters in Raqqa “using some sort of drugs to keep them alert and keep them going.”
According to Dillon, the use of drugs was one of the “signs of their desperation” in the fight for Raqqa.
“Desperate and fanatical terrorists are clinging to territory [in Syria] with no chance of escape,” he explained.
The use of amphetamines by IS is nothing new. A stimulant commonly known as ‘Captagon’ was nicknamed the “jihadist drug” after a former militant in 2014 told CNN the pill would “make you go to battle not caring if you live or die.”
The drug has also been said to be a fund-raising tool and stimulant for Islamist militants, and a new report by the Scripps Research Institute in the United States claims the substance is even “more dangerous than previously thought.”
The Kurdish-led SDF have claimed control of nearly 55 percent of Raqqa as their battle to defeat the militant group continues.
Dillon warned the fight for the group’s last major stronghold in Syria would not get “quicker and easier.”
IS fighters have been countering the advance of US-backed troops with snipers from rooftops and using improvised explosive devices on the ground.
The use of the drug would only add to the jihadists’ disregard for life and contribute to their use of suicide bombers.
Source: Kurdistan 24
