The World Cup has afforded space for Mexico’s President Sheinbaum to play a constructive role in defusing Middle East tensions, but asymmetric realities will make it hard to repeat the trick on Cuba or the cartels.

The RSF has leveraged a combination of territorial control and family-based corporate networks to create one of the richest statelets in existence, with geopolitical weight that extends far beyond Sudan’s borders.

The assassination of New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG) leader ‘el Mencho’ is a game-changer, but not necessarily in the way that some analysts were hoping.

The US war on cartels will not end the global drug economy. At best it will merely shift it, and Africa could become the next frontier.

Once the backbone of Afghanistan’s rural economy and a pillar of the global heroin trade, the opium sector is now in retreat, reshaping drug markets and security dynamics across the wider region.

It’s not the volume of Washington’s drug boat strikes that’s most important – it’s the precedent they set for future military action. This forecast examines the diplomatic, economic, and military risk factors inherent to President Trump’s militarized approach to counter-narcotics.

This week we cover the deterioration of US-Venezuela relations in the wake of a US military strike on alleged drug traffickers; Fitch downgrading France sovereign debt to the lowest rating on record; a new government in Nepal after a wave of deadly protests; and signs of destabilization along the Afpak frontier.

The rise of ‘kush,’ a cheap and deadly synthetic drug, is fueling crime, weakening governments, and reshaping global drug trafficking networks.

Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids have produced an unprecedented public health crisis in the United States. This backgrounder explores the pharmacological, criminal, and technological factors that make the fentanyl crisis a regulatory and policing challenge like no other.

In an exclusive interview, photographer Jonathan Alpeyrie discusses the security dynamics and social costs of cocaine trafficking in Holland.

Flush with cash from North America’s drug markets, and armed by guns smuggled from the United States, drug trafficking gangs have unleashed a wave of violence in the Caribbean.

Trans-national criminal networks are becoming entrenched in Cambodia, posing new trafficking, fraud, and governance threats throughout the region and even globally.

A civil war in the powerful Sinaloa Cartel has unleashed a wave of brutal violence across Mexico, and more violence could be in store for US cities as longstanding narcotic supply chains fracture.

Costa Rica is faced with a growing security crisis, and how it ultimately responds to the gang violence will be a crucial test for one of the strongest democracies in Central America.

The discovery of ephedra plants in Afghanistan and a booming end-user market in the Gulf States is fueling a growing drug crisis across the Middle East.

Syria has ramped up captagon production in the post-civil war period, with destabilizing consequences for the region and, gradually, the regime itself.

Spiking cartel violence has spilled onto the campaign trail, leading some organizations to classify Mexico as a high-risk country.

Now over half a century since the War on Drugs was launched, has the broader campaign against the cartels become a forever war in Ecuador?

Photographer Jonathan Alpeyrie discusses humanitarian and security risk stemming from a recent surge in drug trafficking along the Pacific route in the Americas.

US-China cooperation on fentanyl precursor chemicals has proven effective in the past; however, it has become a geopolitical casualty as relations sour between Washington and Beijing.