Reflectii

Abstract: The fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria in December 2024 may have disrupted large-scale production of the illicit drug captagon, but the trade has, by no means, disappeared from the black market. Instead, a new, post-Assad Syria marks a shift in this illicit trade, from state monopoly over production and trafficking to non-state entrepreneurialism in the captagon trade. The remnants of the captagon trade now lie in the hands of warlords, tribes, prominent families, armed militias, and terrorist organizations seeking to engage in captagon production and trafficking as a lucrative alternative revenue stream. With the Assad regime no longer holding a monopoly over the supply of captagon, new non-state actors are seeking to fill a vacuum both inside and outside of Syria, moving production and trafficking sites to new contested areas. The result is not an eradicated captagon trade, but a more complicated, challenging landscape for regional governments.

Qui commande en Europe ? En Allemagne, BlackRock détient des participations, directement ou par l’intermédiaire de fonds qu’il possède, comprises entre 3% et 10% dans Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Continental, Adidas, Bayer, Lufthansa, Sofran, Daimler, AG, Basf, Allianz, Siemens, Thyssen Krupp, Münchener Re, Rheinmetall, Hensholdt. À cet ensemble de participations s’ajoute une longue liste d’actions détenues, en dessous du seuil de 3%, dans de très nombreuses autres sociétés allemandes, notamment dans le secteur du crédit et des assurances.

On October 11, 2025, Afghan Taliban’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi was given a grand reception by the students and teachers of Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband in the town of Deoband, about 180 kilometers from New Delhi. Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband is the largest Islamic seminary in the world after Cairo’s Al-Azhar University and is considered the spiritual fountainhead of the extreme religious teachings espoused by the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.[1] Muttaqi arrived in New Delhi for a six-day visit on October 9-15, which is seen as reviving India’s presence in Afghanistan.

It’s generally accepted that right-wing politicians in power are a boon to economic growth, since, unlike leftists, they favor business freedom, strong competition, and reasonably low taxes. In the current context of a pan-European economic downturn, moderate right-wing governments are forced to implement unpopular reforms, as in Italy and Greece. But the downturn in Europe is also leading to growing support for far-right populists with completely different policies that run counter to the traditional tenets of the economic right: fighting migrants, rejecting integration, tariff wars, etc. Implementing this program threatens European countries with growing budget deficits, acute labor shortages, and new debt crises.

Protests continued in Madagascar for a third week in a row, led by Generation Z—people born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s—inspired by protests and demonstrations elsewhere throughout the Global South, including in Nepal and Kenya, which are also plagued by political instability and economic fragility.

Giannis Kafkas had dreams of making it as a photographer until he was bashed in the back of the head. Fourteen years ago, Greece was in the throes of a sovereign debt crisis that was threatening to bring down the euro-zone. On May 11, 2011, Kafkas joined tens of thousands of his fellow Athenians in a mass demonstration against the crippling austerity measures imposed by Greece’s international creditors. As the crowd snaked past the parliament building, it was abruptly set upon by riot police. “There was no escape, they were beating everyone,” he recalls. “I’ve never seen such fury.”

La question de l’immigration et de l’intégration est un des sujets importants des convulsions politiques que traverse la France. La politique migratoire actuellement en vigueur en France est aujourd’hui remise en cause, non seulement dans sa mise en œuvre, mais aussi dans son principe même. Les tensions identitaires croissantes obligent à mener une analyse froide et non-partisane : que nous enseignent les dernières décennies sur l’abandon d’une politique d’assimilation forte, et quel avenir se dessine pour la France ?

This week’s summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh looks like nothing short of a triumph for the United States in the Middle East. U.S. President Donald Trump met with representatives of thirty countries, and the declaration signed there to end the war in Gaza stands in stark contrast with the Kremlin’s failed attempts to hold its own summit with Arab states in Moscow at around the same time.

Former UN monitor Heinz Jacob Schindler cautions that large-scale deportations may offer IS-KP new opportunities to grow

[ISLAMABAD] Multiple reports confirm a sharp surge in Afghans being forcibly expelled from Pakistan and Iran—a mass return that has alarmed diplomats and security officials.

Personal and economic context for Yugoslavia’s collapse

I vividly remember the summer day in 1991 when my father and I boarded a 3 a.m. bus from Prishtina to Belgrade, where we would catch our morning flight to JFK airport in New York City. A mix of excitement and anxiousness kept me from sleeping that night. The beige-colored bus, operated by the once renowned Tourist Kosova company, departed from the front of the Grand Hotel Prishtina, likely for the convenience of the rare foreign journalist or visitor who might have been staying there during those tumultuous years. Just weeks earlier, I had severely injured my ankle in a fall, so I limped from our apartment to the bus with my luggage. I bid my mother and my great aunt, who had graciously come out that morning to see us away, farewell, climbed onto the bus with my father, and we set off.