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Deep in an industrial wasteland on the eastern bank of the Nile stand three unremarkable, half-finished buildings surrounded by a minefield. For months, nearby residents were warned by paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters to stay away from this walled compound. A glance inside reveals why: machines and chemical products that the Sudanese authorities say were used to produce around 1,000 captagon pills an hour. Fashionable with fighters and partygoers in the Middle East during the past decade, the cheaply produced and addictive amphetamine, which heightens concentration, increases physical stamina and induces euphoria, has been the scourge of Arab governments. The RSF, according to security sources, either gives it away to its fighters to increase alertness and suppress hunger or sells it to civilians for profit. Until December, Syria was the primary production and export hub for captagon. But the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government, which was heavily involved in the industry, exposed and shut down a raft of captagon laboratories and the routes used by its smugglers. Although captagon production may have been badly affected by the end of the Syrian civil war, 2,000km to the southeast, another conflict has been providing fresh opportunities. Earlier this year, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which has been at war with the RSF since April 2023, forced the paramilitaries from Khartoum and the capital’s surrounding eponymous state.