Feared brother

A member of the security forces of Syria’s new authorities looks at an entrance to a tunnel of ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s feared younger brother Maher’s private offices on the outskirts of Damascus on Jan. 21, 2025. Many bases of Syria’s notorious Fourth Division, a military unit led by Maher al-Assad – the feared younger brother of al-Assad – now lie looted. But papers left strewn behind reveal how the man they called ‘The Master’ and his cronies wallowed in immense wealth while some of their foot soldiers struggled to feed their families and even begged on the streets. Western governments long accused Maher and his entourage of turning Syria into a narco-state, flooding the Middle East with Captagon, an illegal stimulant used both as a party drug in the Gulf and to push migrant workers through punishingly long days in the grueling heat.