Category World News

Bahrain’s foreign minister Abdullatif Alzayani stated that member states are “shoulder-to-shoulder” against any threat to the GCC at its first annual meeting since Israel’s September bombing of Qatar that resulted in the death of six people.

Just days before the country’s first anniversary of Bashar al-Assad’s ousting, a UNSC delegation made its first-ever visit to Syria, according to state media.

According to state news agency SANA, the UNSC delegation “is scheduled to meet a number of Syrian officials” and members of civil society who arrived via the Jdeidet Yabous border crossing between Lebanon and Syria on Thursday.

The delegation was later informed that it was traveling to Jobar, Damascus’s severely damaged suburb, in the capital.

Before making a Friday and Saturday visit to neighboring Lebanon, the diplomats will meet with President Ahmed al-Sharaa and the new Syrian government.

Assed Baig, a journalist for Al Jazeera from Damascus, reported that the UNSC delegation would also visit some of Damascus’s historical sites.

As the country moves into the first stages of post-civil war reconstruction, “This gives them]the UNSC delegation] the opportunity to look at Syria away from the political and military dynamics,” says the UNSC delegation.

According to Baig, the UNSC visit has been “very well” received in Syria.

It merely explains to everyone that Syria is working to reestablish itself on the international stage and is attempting to establish diplomatic relations with the UN. It enjoys the support of Arab regional and neighboring nations. The United States backs it, in fact.

According to Baig, the country’s humanitarian situation will also be covered during the visit because “many people are still internally displaced in the country” and “many parts of the country continue to be affected by the destruction caused by the civil war.”

The council recently lifted sanctions against al-Sharaa, a former rebel fighter whose forces led the lightning offensive that ended Bashar al-Assad in December, as the UN works to reestablish itself in Syria.

The multiethnic nation has been urged by the UN to have an inclusive transition. The government has been attempting to stop sectarian violence because international legitimacy is one of its top priorities.

The killing of a Bedouin couple south of Homs, the third-largest city in the country, last month was expected to cause sectarian conflict similar to those that occurred in Suwayda in July and in coastal areas in March. However, security forces from the interior and defense ministries traveled to the area and calmed the tension in a partnership with some tribal leaders.

Despite claims made by al-Sharaa’s government that it is not planning to hostiliate Israel, the nation that has been devastated by 14 years of bloody civil war has also had to contend with more vicious, frequent, and violent Israeli military incursions since it has occupied southern Syria recently.

Most recently, 13 people were killed in a recent Israeli raid in Beit Jinn, southwest of Damascus, on Wednesday.

Following the 1967 conflict, Israel seized control of the Syrian Golan Heights and has held it ever since. However, Israel violated a 1974 accord and once more invaded its neighbor’s territory, occupying more land along the border as a “buffer zone,” including the strategically located Jabal al-Sheikh, a mountain that looms over northern Israel and southern Syria.

Israeli-Syria has been in talks for months over a security deal, but it seems like nothing has changed in recent weeks.

The UN’s first official visit to the Middle East in six years, according to Slovenian UN ambassador Samuel Zbogar, who spoke at a press conference on Monday.

Slovenia currently serves as the UNSC’s rotating president.

Zbogar noted the new authorities’ efforts to transition Syria and a year-old ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, both of which are “at a crucial time for the region” and “for both countries,” according to Zbogar, noting the trip’s “events that we see daily that is being challenged.”

The visit is crucial for “sharing our support and solidarity with both countries, learning about the challenges, conveying the messages, and also, conveying the messages that the council would like to see in both countries,” he continued.

He noted that “we try to break into the UN-Syria relationship with this visit by a little bit of trust.”

According to Baig, “both sides are looking to take advantage of this visit.”

The [Syrian] government wants to talk about the humanitarian aid coming to the country and reconstruction, according to the UN, but they also want support and solidarity.

On the other hand, the UN “wants to talk about the country’s] politics going forward, how this country is going to rebuild itself, and how Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government will have an inclusive government that will represent all the various factions, ethnicities, and people in Syria.”

In the coming days, Israel claims that only Palestinians who leave Gaza will cross the Rafah crossing. Egypt says it will only cooperate if both entry and exit is permitted, and the UN is calling for a full reopening of Rafah.

As China, the US, and Europe compete for power, Africa’s minerals and young workforce are piqued by the world’s attention.

More than 50 years ago, US President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse to be “public enemy number one” and declared what would soon be known as the “war on drugs” campaign.

The initiative aimed to rid American streets of marijuana, end trafficking, and create a safer environment for citizens.

Instead, decades of punitive policing and militarised crackdowns have resulted in record overdose deaths, one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and more than $1 trillion spent on drugs that have not had a discernible impact on drug availability or demand, according to Center for American Progress estimates.

The drug war in the US reshaped policing and criminal justice, disproportionately putting Black communities in jails. Similar conflicts broke out in Latin America as a result of US-backed operations that exacerbated cycles of corruption and organized crime.

Today, there are record-breaking overdose deaths linked to fentanyl, and many states have legalized it.

Here’s a look at how the drug war began and what its effects are both nationally and internationally as the Donald Trump administration appears prepared to launch military action against Venezuela over claims that the South American nation’s government is causing narcotics trafficking into the US.

What is its history and current state?

At a tumultuous political moment, Nixon declared the war on drugs. In addition to growing drug use among young people, rising heroin use in soldiers returning from Vietnam, and years of protest and growing antiwar sentiment, the late 1960s had witnessed a rise in heroin use.

A punitive system was established under Nixon’s administration, which included new federal agencies, tougher penalties, and rhetoric that viewed drug use as a threat to national stability.

A Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, who in 2016 claimed the administration saw two main “enemies”: the antiwar left and Black Americans, later revealed the political logic behind the decision. The government instead associated “hippies” with marijuana and Black communities with heroin, and then heavily criminalized both because it was unable to demonize dissent or race.

He claimed that the goal was to destabilize and discredit those communities by robbing their homes, detaining leaders, and portraying them negatively on television.

“Did we realize that our lies about the drugs were true?” He said, “Of course, we did.”

Under President Ronald Reagan, the campaign grew even more intensely in the 1980s. The marijuana possession sentences were made stricter by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984.

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 established minimum sentences, which in turn caused significant racial disparities in prison terms. Those found with 5 grams of crack cocaine and a minimum five years in jail were exempt from the law. The maximum sentence was the same for those found with 500 grams of the much more expensive powdered cocaine.

After the passage of the law, Black Americans’ prison sentences increased by fivefold: from 50 for every 100 000 to 250 for every 100 000.

Successive administrations continued to support these strategies through the 1990s and 2000s. In a controversial “three-strikes” approach, a third violent felony conviction must be sentenced to a mandatory life sentence, as well as increased federal funding for prisons under Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill.

Under the Bush and Obama administrations, little has changed.

The debate over drug use started to change in the 2010s, especially as the opioid crisis, which was driven by the expansion of the legalization of marijuana, was uncovered by the evidence that punishment couldn’t stop addiction.

Trump has now turned his attention to America’s extended neighbourhood, despite upholding many of the domestic policies that have been in place over the past 50 years. Trump authorized US military strikes on dozens of boats close to Venezuelan waters in recent weeks, presenting the situation as a new wave of “narco-trafficking,” despite opposition claims that it is a plot to impose a new regime and remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The US has not yet provided any publicly supported evidence to support its claims that the ships it has bombed were narcotics-carrying or that they were entering its territory.

arrests and mass imprisonment

Drug trafficking dominated the US prison system from the middle of the 1970s until the early 1980s.

At its peak, police made 1.6 million drug arrests annually, primarily for possession. According to federal data, these arrests increased the number of US prisons from about 300,000 in the early 1970s to more than 2 million now.

The hardest hit were black neighborhoods. Black Americans are significantly more likely to be detained despite the prevalence of drug use among various racial groups. The Sentencing Project estimates that, despite making up less than 15% of the country’s population, Black people are behind more than one in four drug arrests in the US.

They were 3.7 times more likely than white people to be detained for marijuana possession in 2010.

The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act and the disparate sentences for those found guilty of possessing crack and powder cocaine, according to research from Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, significantly contributed to this racial imbalance in the rate of punishment.

Many more Black people were jailed than wealthier, white people who used powder cocaine because crack was less expensive and more readily available in poorer, predominately Black neighborhoods.

One of the larger arguments against focusing on drugs, which is claimed to reduce crime overall, was lost. After Reagan’s 1984 crime law was passed, murder rates in the US actually increased, and they did so until 1991.

The US continued to fail in its efforts to address addiction as a public health issue at the same time. As law enforcement increased, money was put into treating and providing mental health care. The environment promoted other forms of consumption in place of reducing use.

The focus on reducing drug trafficking has not changed. More than 1.1 million drug-related arrests were made by police in 2019, the majority for possession. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, there are currently about 360, 000 people in prison nationwide on drug charges, and hundreds of thousands more are serving time on probation or parole for drug-related offenses.

It hasn’t been helpful. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, today, the US is experiencing its most fatal drug crisis ever, with over 100, 000 overdose deaths per year, largely caused by synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Americans between the ages of 18 and 44 are currently the leading cause of death from overdose.

How Latin America became a part of the “war on drugs”

The US and its borders did not continue to be the only countries where the drug war continued. Washington funded and trained militaries and police forces in Latin America to combat drug trafficking directly in the 1980s.

According to the Latin America Working Group, the US invested at least $10 billion in Colombia between 2000 and 2000, a large portion of it going toward security forces and the fumigation of coca crops.

Coca cultivation eventually returned to record levels, but civilians paid a high price, according to Colombian human rights organizations and the country’s Truth Commission. Between 1985 and 2018, an estimated 450, 000 people were killed in the conflict.

A government offensive launched in Mexico in 2006, supported by US intelligence and equipment, resulted in a wave of turf wars and cartel fragmentation. More than 460, 000 people have died since then, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, and tens of thousands have vanished.

Cartels expanded into extortion, fuel theft, and human trafficking, while corruption spread among local governments and police.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), these crackdowns caused traffic to move more frequently through Central American nations like Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.