Summary: May’s parliamentary elections saw candidates for change emerge as winners and Hezbollah and its allies sustain significant losses so could this be the signal that the country’s long descent into economic chaos may finally be coming to a close?
Summary: as the captagon trade continues to boom in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, its security and geopolitical implications have become harder to ignore.
Summary: with a record number of independent candidates winning seats, the hold that Lebanon’s corrupt elites have over the country may be weakening but this still represents only a small step on a very long and difficult road to true reform.
Summary: with resentment growing in Turkey towards Syrian refugees, President Erdoğan offers homes and promises of a ‘self-sufficient economic infrastructure’ to encourage 1 million to leave.
Summary: the election is expected to do little other than reinforce established sectarian elites but a strong diaspora vote could see non-sectarian independents secure gains if voter turnout in Lebanon is low.
Newlines Institute senior analyst Caroline Rose joins Arab Digest editor William Law to discuss how Syria’s Assad family runs a narco state built on captagon, the illicit drug of choice for the Levant, the Gulf states and the wider Middle East. Working with Hezbollah, the family oversees the manufacture, distribution and sale of a drug that is cheap and easy to produce and is generating billions for the family and their associates.
Summary: the governor of Banque de Liban was saluted internationally for the adept way he managed Lebanon’s tangled financial and banking sector but as his house of cards comes tumbling down the corruption at its core is revealed.
Summary: before the Russians invaded Ukraine, food insecurity was already an issue for many MENA countries but as of 24 February a bad situation got a whole lot worse.
Summary: with the exception of occasional news reports, the war in Syria grinds on with little coverage of the growing threat of IS or awareness that the international community has moved to accept Bashar al-Assad back into the fold even as millions of Syrians continue to suffer inside and outside the country.
Summary: a rampant COVID crisis, ongoing economic collapse and justice denied for victims of the Beirut harbour blast demand that change come to Lebanon and now may be the best opportunity for the country to achieve it.
