Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will attend his first Arab League summit in 12 years in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah on Friday. His government’s controversial return to the bloc comes as Arab states seek to curtail Syria’s thriving trade in Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine known as the “poor man’s cocaine”.
The pills are known as “Abu Hilalain” in Arabic, meaning “father of the two crescent moons” due to their two moon-shaped logos. Produced mainly in Syria, the synthetic drug – better known by its trade name “Captagon” – contains the amphetamine-type stimulant fenethylline.
Over the past ten years, the trade in Captagon has flourished. Millions of these highly addictive pills have flooded the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia.
In a bid to stop Syria’s drug trade – Syria currently produces 80 percent of the world’s Captagon – Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States have taken another step towards welcoming Syria’s Assad, a longtime regional pariah, back into the fold.
Assad has been invited to attend the Arab League Summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Friday after a 12-year suspension in the wake of Syria’s 2011 uprising against his regime.
“If there is an official normalisation [of diplomatic relations] on May 19, it will represent the culmination of a process that could not have taken place without the veto lifted by Saudi Arabia, which is the heavyweight of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),” said IRIS associate research fellow and Middle East specialist David Rigoulet-Roze.
“Current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is expected to remain in power according to the consensus – if not unanimous – among Arab League members. It’s [only] a matter of determining the conditions and the ways under which this can be done,” he added.
Arab states want the Assad regime to distance itself from Iran, its longtime ally along…
Source : france24
