The General Directorate for Drug Control under the Ministry of Interior carried out the seizure of 700000 Captagon pills in the livestock pens of Kabd on September 20 following intelligence developed in coordination with Iraqi anti-narcotics officials from Anbar province who dispatched personnel to support the operation. According to the ministry one of the arrested men holds Iraqi nationality while the second is a Bedoun residing illegally in Kuwait and both were taken into custody at the site where the consignment was located. The ministry stated that the bilateral information exchange allowed officers to intercept the material before it could move into local distribution networks.
The Ministry of Interior reported that when officers confronted the suspects with the seized pills both admitted the narcotics belonged to them and had been prepared for trafficking inside the country. The two individuals and the full quantity of Captagon have been referred to the Public Prosecution along with all related evidence for legal proceedings. Directorate investigators continue to examine whether the case connects to any additional parties based on the initial statements.
Ministry of Interior figures released in June 2026 placed the number of drug smuggling cases in the first half of the year at 15 compared with 102 recorded during the same period in 2025. Brigadier General Mohammad Qabazard director general of the General Department for Drug Control attributed the reduction to implementation of the updated anti-narcotics law and an increase in proactive operations when he addressed the Kuwait News Agency. The same statistics showed trafficking cases falling from 354 to 184 over the comparable timeframe.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has identified Syria as the source of approximately 80 percent of Captagon seizures across the region between January 2019 and November 2025. Syrian authorities reported confiscating nearly 700 million Captagon pills together with production materials and other narcotics between December 2024 and June 2026 according to their official tallies. Kuwait has joined several joint interdictions with Iraq and neighboring states during this period including one that recovered 314000 Captagon pills in February 2026.
That February action which the Ministry of Interior valued at nearly one million dinars also centered on a Bedoun suspect and a converted livestock facility in the Kabd district according to the ministry’s earlier account. The Captagon in that instance was likewise intended for domestic distribution the ministry said at the time. Such repeated use of rural sites for concealment has led the General Directorate for Drug Control to heighten monitoring of similar locations.
The September 20 operation reflects sustained intelligence collaboration between Kuwaiti and Iraqi agencies the Ministry of Interior noted in its announcement. Data supplied by the Iraqi side proved central to identifying the precise location and timing of the delivery. The directorate confirmed that all evidence handling and detainee processing followed standard anti-narcotics procedures.
