The Kingdom is working with European partners in its war on drugs. But with such stellar profits to be made and such keen demand, it has been an uphill battle.
Its central location has made it a crucial hub. Today, Iraq not only trafficks drugs but produces them, and 60% of its citizens are now users. Unemployment and corruption have fuelled the problem.
Criminal enterprise in the country is not new, but the past decade's unstable landscape has created the perfect conditions for it to flourish. Al Majalla explains how Syria became a drug lord.
A prevalence of cheap drugs, a lack of awareness, and an inability to detect problems at an early stage are just some of the factors that have created a perfect storm
The Middle East and Central Asia have been major opium production centres for millennia but the growing legitimate and illegitimate use of these powerful drugs is also causing big problems
The interception of more than a dozen unmanned aerial vehicles in recent months has shown that smuggling has a highly effective new toy, while the Jordanians have a new security headache
Jordan's swift and tough military action has forced Damascus to address a problem it has long sought to ignore. Meanwhile, sources claim Iranian involvement in weapons smuggling.
There are concerns about Iranian attempts to influence the internal situation in Jordan, either by using its territory for military actions against Israel or by attacking American entities there.
That the Biden administration delivered a strategy for countering the Syrian narco-trade is a welcome development. But absent due pressure on Damascus, the strategy will unlikely have any real effect.
Israel's coalition government contains far-right parties that do not want to see an end to the bloodshed in Gaza, so it is no surprise that bombs have started falling again
As voters grow frustrated with Labour and with Conservatives consigned to the political wilderness, the man who became the face of Brexit gets a spike in the polls
The apprehending of Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu is the culmination of weeks of a crackdown, which appears to have been aimed at eliminating a political threat to President Erdoğan's grip on power
Picking up where he left off in his first term in office, the US president is machine-gunning the legislation, funding, and personnel aimed at tackling the planet's most existential threat
Some predict partition, others federalism or fragmentation. Amidst the competing interests of Arab states, Russia, the US, Israel, Iran, Türkiye, and Europe, Syria treads its own path