Book. The Middle East – from Egypt to Afghanistan – not only produces oil, it is also the world’s leading exporter of poppies, the latex of which is used to manufacture opium and heroin, but also a particularly active in the production of amphetamines and methamphetamines. And also hashish, if we extend this region to Morocco. This is not the case with the book by historian Jean-Pierre Filiu (contributor of Monde), which leaves out the Maghreb in its vast fresco of the history of narcotics in the Middle East.
Under the title of Stunning Middle EastJean-Pierre Filiu draws the portrait of a region that has two narco-states: the Afghanistan of the Taliban, whose poppy and its derivatives form the main export earnings, and the Syria of Bashar Al-Assad, whose trafficking in amphetamines – the best known is captagon, misleadingly described as the “drug of the jihadists” – and in methamphetamines floods the entire Middle East, in particular the rich Gulf countries, and the Mediterranean.
The drug trade thrives on poverty and war, which weaken states and shift borders. Thus, we learn that the Israeli army has long facilitated the delivery of hashish from the Lebanese Bekaa to Egypt.
The irony of fate, as the historian recounts, is that the only Afghan regime that succeeded in putting an end to the cultivation and export of poppy is that of the Taliban first way, in 2000. Eager to do well see from the West, students of religion had banned the poppy, whose cultivation had exploded in favor of the war with the USSR (1979-1988). A year later, they were overthrown, after the September 11 attacks.
Hashish with a teaspoon
Afghan heroin is flooding Iran, which has some 6.5 million regular users of various drugs. This endemic is not new, it has gone through regimes and dynasties for five centuries. Oddly, neighboring Turkey, at the heart of various drug routes and trafficking, has never sunk into excessive consumption.
In this pleasant to read work, Jean-Pierre Filiu goes back to Antiquity to discover traces of the use of hallucinogenic drugs, whether for liturgical or recreational purposes. He takes the opportunity to cast a spell over the cliché of the Assassin sect − derived from hachachin, the “hashish consumers” in Arabic – whose murderous motivation is said to have originated from his high consumption of “kif”. This last word derives from the Arabic « kaif »which means “contentment”.
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