大象传媒

Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine-like drug, is causing huge problems around the Middle East, as millions of pills are smuggled out of Syria. 大象传媒 News Arabic collaborated with the investigative journalism network OCCRP to find out who's behind the trade. Emir Nader tells us about the direct links they discovered to leading members of the Syrian Armed Forces and President Bashar al-Assad's family.

De-Russifying Kazakhstan
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, young people in Kazakhstan have been increasingly reclaiming their roots. There鈥檚 growing talk of 鈥渄ecolonisation" in Central Asia鈥檚 largest country, whose language and culture were suppressed in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, as 大象传媒 Russian鈥檚 Nargiza Ryskulova explains.

Pakistan floods: natural disaster or human failure?
This year's pre-monsoon rains have already caused disruption and deaths in Pakistan. It's brought back worrying memories of last year's catastrophic floods, in which a third of the country was under water. 大象传媒 Urdu's Umer Draz Nangiana looked back at the 2022 floods in a series which revisited many of the worst hit areas to assess whether nature, or human failure, was to blame for the devastation.

Fake news in Iran
A story suggesting that Steven Seagal - US actor and supporter of President Putin - had replaced General Sergei Shoigu as Russian Defence Minister, circulated in some Iranian media this week. And it鈥檚 not the first time Iranian media have missed the joke, as Ali Hamedani explains.

(Photo: Captagon pills found by border patrol forces. Credit: 大象传媒)