Across the border from the Empty Quarter is Yemen‘s northern governorate of Al Jawf. Food and water are scarce in this region with a population of 590,000 people, nearly all of whom are reliant on aid.
It is also one of Yemen’s largest transit hubs for a growing drug trade, local and security officials say.
Yemen, now in its 11th year of civil war, is divided into governorates that are controlled by different armed factions, from the Iran-backed Houthis in the north to the internationally recognised government in the south.
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The exact quantities of drugs, including Captagon pills, moving through the country, remain unknown. But with its strategic location on the Red Sea and Bab Al Mandeb strait, which links to the Indian Ocean, as well as deep security fractures, rampant lawlessness and grinding poverty, Yemen has become a major route for smuggling to lucrative markets in the Gulf and beyond.
Local officials, security figures and experts told The National that the narcotics trade in Yemen has “exploded”, especially for Captagon, an amphetamine over which Syria held a monopoly of about 80 per cent under Bashar Al Assad.
This can be measured through seizures in Yemen, which totalled 1.7 million pills in 2025, up from 358,000 pills the year before, according to data collated by the US-based New Lines Institute, which tracks narcotics in Yemen.
Fighting between groups that control different areas of the country, as well as divisions within the government, have increased the lawlessness that enables traffickers.
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