Captagon trade in Middle East topped $5bn in 2021
Thursday, April 21, 2022

Produced mainly in Syria and consumed almost exclusively in the Middle East, the drug poses an increasing health and security risk to the region, according to New Lines…
Produced mainly in Syria and consumed almost exclusively in the Middle East, the drug poses an increasing health and security risk to the region, according to New Lines…
Ramzy Baroud A succession of events in recent weeks all point to the inescapable fact that nearly 75 years of Israel’s painstaking efforts aimed at hiding the truth…
I CANNOT quite say goodbye to Edward Said, because he remains so present among us and alive in the world. He was our conscience and our ambassador to…
Yassamine Mather n the aftermath of every Islamist terror attacks in America, Europe or the UK, such as the stabbing of Tory MP David Amess, we hear the…
Adam Tooze on Andreas Malm’s post-pandemic climate politics The carbon clock is ticking. Governments and official agencies assure us that all will be well, that they can balance the…
Mohsen Shahmanesh This is a transcript of a talk given in a webinar organised by the journal Critique in October 2021 entitled “Pandemics in junctures of historic change”…
Jean Shaoul Petrochemical workers across Iran have been waging strikes since June 19 to demand higher pay, the payment of back wages, the elimination of intermediary contractors and…
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad Outside the town of Agdam, in the foothills of Nagorno-Karabakh, trucks and tank carriers had left tracks in the muddy road. Bomb craters and mangled military…
Cihan Tuğal Ten years ago, Erdoğan’s Turkey was hailed in Washington as an example to the Muslim world—a free-market, pro-American Islamic democracy with high growth rates, renowned cultural…
Lee Fang President Joe Biden’s administration is being asked to punish Hungary, Colombia, Chile, and other countries for seeking to ramp up the production of Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics without…
Cihan Tuğal Ten years ago, Erdoğan’s Turkey was hailed in Washington as an example to the Muslim world—a free-market, pro-American Islamic democracy with high growth rates, renowned cultural…
Abdullah Al-Arian Last month, Tunisia’s parliamentary speaker and head of the Ennahda Party, Rached Ghannouchi, came under fire for comments he made following a meeting with the French ambassador. Following a recent string…
Brian Terrell On February 4, in his first major foreign policy address, President Joe Biden announced “we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war…
Mohamad Reza Shalgouni was a founder-member of the Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran (Rahe Kargar). He spoke to Yassamine Mather about his strategic reassessment as a prisoner…
Perry Anderson Since the turn of the century, the Arab states have come to constitute a zone for Western military intervention without parallel in the post-Cold War world—us…
Abdullah Al-Arian Last month, Tunisia’s parliamentary speaker and head of the Ennahda Party, Rached Ghannouchi, came under fire for comments he made following a meeting with the French ambassador. Warning…
Andrew Cockburn The Drone Age: How Drone Technology Will Change War and Peace by Michael Boyle. Oxford, Drone Art: The Everywhere War as Medium by Thomas Stubblefield. California, The Kill Chain: Defending America…
This month, Covid-19 vaccines are set to begin rolling out to patients worldwide. Some countries in the Middle East and North Africa have already ordered doses from manufacturers…
Patrick Cockburn I was in Israel on 4 November 1995 when a student named Yigal Amir assassinated the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin as he left a peace…
Jade Saab “A spectre is haunting Europe…” This is how Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels opened their Communist Manifesto, written on the eve of several uprisings on the continent…
Robert Fisk, a veteran Middle East correspondent for The Independent and the most celebrated journalist of his era, has died after an illness. He was 74. Fisk was…
Elizabeth Tsurkov “They sent us directly to the front lines. The situation is terrible. Terrible. There is fighting every day. We are charged with storming. There is no…
Jessica Barnes Water is a prominent topic in discussions about the Middle East. Fishing at the Chebayesh marsh in Dhi Qar province, Iraq, April 2019. Thaier al-Sudani/Reuters Yet…
Bell Trew One of the songs was recorded during an air strike, parts of another by a fleeing refugee aboard a boat. The man behind the album is…
Simon Watkins Two key questions logically arise from last week’s announcement from Iran’s Petroleum Ministry that it has awarded a US$1.3 billion development deal to more than double…
Jeff Mackler That Russia paid the Taliban financial bounties to kill 18 U.S. and “coalition” soldiers in Afghanistan is in dispute to say the least. Both Democrats and…
Farnaz Fassihi and Steven Lee Myers Iran and China have quietly drafted a sweeping economic and security partnership that would clear the way for billions of dollars of…
Moshé Machover Rashid Khalidi ‘The hundred-years war on Palestine: a history of settler-colonial conquest and resistance’ Profile Books, 2020, pp336, £17.99 As part of their professional training, historians…
Marco Carnelos The impacts of coronavirus have been tremendous everywhere, but in the Middle East, the situation seems to be assuming the features of a perfect storm. In…
Mike Macnair, Moshé Machover, Yassamine Mather Crisis and need for conflict Mike Macnair What we are seeing today is a situation where the United States is lashing out…