• As the United States and NATO exits Afghanistan, President Joe Biden is boosting U.S. security ties with neighboring Central Asian states that provided a vital supply route in the early days of the Afghan war.
(“Central Asia Braces for the Full Impact of US Pullout From Afghanistan,” Foreign Policy, July 16, 2021)
• Through the bloody Syrian civil war, enterprising drug traffickers prospered exporting the illicit drug Captagon, popular in dance clubs across the Middle East. The drug, similar to amphetamines, increases energy as it wards off sleep – and has an effect similar to Viagra. As Syria’s formal economy collapsed from the destruction of war, sanctions and the autocratic rule of the Assads, the Economist magazine reports the drug has become Syria’s main export and source of hard currency.
(“Narco-State on the Med,” Economist, July 19, 2021; “What You Need To Know About Captagon, The Drug Of Choice in War-Torn Syria,” Forbes, Nov. 12, 2015)
• As the U.S. Senate moves ahead with a trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill, wealthy private equity groups are targeting poor cities like Fayetteville, North Carolina, where they’ve proposed a deal to repair chronic sewer overflows and improve poor traffic signal lights. In 2020, Bernhardt Capital Partners offered the city $750 million worth of improvements in exchange for a contract to operate the city-owned water and power utilities for the next 30 years, and keep the profits.
(“Eyeing Federal Infrastructure Windfall, Private Equity Courts Public Utilities,” American Prospect, July 22, 2021)
This week’s News Summary was narrated by Leslie Rudden.
