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In recent years, the illicit amphetamine-like drug Captagon (Fenethylline) has become a major concern in the Middle East – both as a source of addiction and due to its connection with terrorism and the armed groups who produce and traffic it.

This presentation will provide an overview on the findings of a qualitative study about the impact of Captagon on Jordan by focusing on its relationship to organised crime, and on its role as a source of addiction. This project uniquely combines knowledge from social pharmacy; criminology and international relations to gain a comprehensive understanding of the many ways in which Captagon impacts on Jordanian public health and law enforcement institutions. The research project was funded by GCRF/UK and aimed to describe and analyse Captagon addiction in Jordan from the perspective of users and workers, to ascertain the extent of Captagon trafficking into Jordan, its sources and links to regional conflicts.

About the speakers

Prof. Mayyada Wazaify

Prof. Mayyada Wazaify is Professor of Pharmacy Practice at The School of Pharmacy at the University of Jordan and an Adjunct Professor in Social Pharmacy at The University of Helsinki, Finland. She obtained The Best Scientific Research Award by the Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar in 2013, the Distinguished Researcher Award at University of Jordan in 2011 and 2012 and was an Advisor of the 41st Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) of the World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva in 2018. She has consulted for Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA) and Jordan Anti-Narcotics Department since 2004.

Dr Christina Steenkamp

Dr Christina Steenkamp is a Reader in Social and Political Change at Oxford Brookes University, where she teaches Peace and Conflict studies. She has published widely on topics related to conflict, peacebuilding and violence and has carried out extensive qualitative fieldwork in South Africa, Northern Ireland and the Middle East. She is currently writing her third book, this time on the relationship between organised crime and peacebuilding in the Middle East.

The fourth episode in the Kashmir Palestine Conversation Series addresses “Poetry and literature” and feature short presentations from Dalia Taha (poet and playwright) and Ather Zia (poet and writer, University of Colorado). The chair is Nadine El-Enany (Birkbeck, University of London)

About the speakers

Dalia Taha is a Palestinian poet and playwright living in Ramallah. Her first play Keffiyeh/Made in China was produced by the Flemish Royal Theatre and A.M. Qattan Foundation and premiered in Brussels. Her play Al’ab Nariya/Fireworks was developed under the Royal Court’s International Playwriting residency and was produced there (London) in 2015. Dalia graduated from Brown University with an MFA in Playwriting and has published two collections of poetry and one novel. She recently completed her third play There Is No One Between You and Me.

Ather Zia is a political anthropologist, poet and short-fiction writer. She is an assistant professor of anthropology and gender studies at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley. Ather is the author of Resisting Disappearances: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir (June 2019) and co-editor of Resisting Occupation in Kashmir (UPenn 2018) and A Desolation called Peace (Harper Collins, May 2019). She has published a poetry collection The Frame (1999) and another collection is forthcoming. Ather’s ethnographic poetry on Kashmir has won an award from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit and is the co-founder of Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on the Kashmir region. Ather is also the founder/editor of e-zine based on Kashmir titled Kashmir Lit at www.kashmirlit.org.

Nadine El-Enany is a Reader in Law at Birkbeck School of Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Race and Law (@CentreRaceLaw). Nadine teaches and researches in the fields of migration and refugee law, European Union law, protest and criminal justice. Her current research projects, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, focus on questions of race and justice in death in custody cases, and the role of law in addressing health inequalities arising from environmental harm. Nadine has written for the Guardian, the LRB Blog, Pluto Blog, Verso Blog, Open Democracy, Media Diversified, Left Foot Forward and Critical Legal Thinking. Her book, (B)ordering Britain: law, race and empire (2020) is published by Manchester University Press.

The Kashmir-Palestine Conversations Series aims to create space for dialogue, networking and knowledge exchange between scholars of both Kashmir and Palestine. The series is organised by the Kashmir-Palestine Scholars Solidarity Network – an initiative conceived out of a British Academy Knowledge Frontiers Seed Grant awarded to scholars at the Council for British Research in the Levant (Dr Toufic Haddad) and the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) (Dr Emma Brännlund) in early 2020.

In this webinar, the project partners share insights from the 2021/22 FIELD SONGS project, an AHRC-funded collaboration of agricultural and social scientists at the University of Edinburgh and Douzan Art & Culture and Syrian Academic Expertise, two Syrian-run organisations based in Turkey. For this project, the partners documented refugees’ intangible agricultural heritage and present-day working conditions in Turkish farming and met with local governments and Syrian agricultural entrepreneurs to envision alternative futures for Syrian labour. In a region shaped by intersecting forms of displacement and dispossession, including through climate change, conflict, and globalisation, we argue for an integrated approach to strengthening refugees’ rights as workers and agricultural experts.

In the webinar, the project partners share best practices, such as municipal cooperatives for long-term refugee employment, how refugee farmers build new supply chains around traditional Syrian products, and how to link decent working conditions to climate-smart agriculture. Together, the findings on the continuing relevance of Syrian agricultural heritage and expertise can inform sustainable and collaborative policy-making in Turkey and other forced migration contexts.

About the project:

The One Health FIELD Network was launched in 2019 by Professor Lisa Boden at the University of Edinburgh. Through projects in Syria and across the Middle East, it collaborates with researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers to ensure a successful transition away from humanitarian provision of short-term food supplies and agricultural inputs towards long-term contingency planning for food security in conflict affected states.

Douzan Art and Culture is a Syrian cultural organization launched in Turkey in 2019, to enable Syrians to build their contemporary cultural identity, through: Preserving cultural memory, providing spaces for interaction, building capacities, and enhancing solidarity and cooperation to build our cultural future between the heritage and modernity.

Syrian Academic Expertise is a network of Syrian academics and experts in Syria and the diaspora. It implements sustainable projects and studies in various sectors to provide innovative solutions appropriate to crises and post-crisis contexts and contributes to experiences exchange to raise self-resilience and promote peacebuilding in Syria.

This is the third in our Kashmir Palestine Conversation Series which features short presentations from Ala Al Azzeh (Birzeit University) and Inshah Malik, and was be moderated by Virinder Kalra (University of Warwick).

The first Kashmir-Palestine Conversation will feature a screening of the film “Bring Him Back” (dir. Fahad Shah, 2015), followed by a discussion with Palestinian academic Suhad Daher-Nashif and filmmaker Talat Bhat.

Bring him Back is a documentary film about the struggle of Maqbool Bhat’s mother to get her son’s mortal remains back from Tihar jail of India. It is directed by Kashmiri journalist and writer, Fahad Shah, and produced by Talat Bhat, under RåFILM Productions. 

About the speakers

Suhad Daher-Nashif is a medical and cultural anthropologist, dedicated to study and analysis of the intersectionality between science, society, politics and bureaucracy throughout health and death practices in the MENA region. Originally trained as occupational therapist, she holds a Masters in Health Sciences, and PhD in sociology and anthropology. She worked in several academic and research institutions in the Middle East, most notably the College of Medicine at Qatar University-Qatar, and the School of Medicine at Keele University-UK, where she currently is a Lecturer in the Sociology of Health. Her most recent published works include In sickness and in health: The politics of public health and their implications during the COVID-19 pandemic (2022) and; Colonial management of death: To be or not to be dead in Palestine (2021). 

 Talat Bhat/Butt, producer and editor of Bring Him Back, is an activist, documentary filmmaker, Journalist and trade union campaigner based in Sweden. He has a Master’s degree in Media Production and researching on the impacts of new media technologies in conflict zones. He is also the project leader of RåFILM’s project Jammu Kashmir TV/JKTV Live Kashmir’s first WebTV to promote freedom of free speech and dialogue in all parts of the occupied areas under Pakistani and Indian occupation. Furthermore, Bhat’s trade union documentary project, Rocking the Birger Jarl, deals with his struggle for non-EU seamen workers in Sweden. www.birgferjarl.info

Palestine and Kashmir are two of the most longstanding unresolved geopolitical puzzles resulting from the end of the British Empire. They share an unenviable list of commonalities in their historical conditions: from the legacies and vestiges of British colonial partition, to the large refugee populations and extensive diasporas they produced. Their struggles for national self-determination are also repeatedly shaped by the prominent influence of regional actors. More recent history has witnessed even more linkages emerging as a product of the post-Cold war detente between India and Israel; their military, political and economic cooperation; ideological affinities between Hindutva and Zionism; aspirations to act as regional hegemons, and; influence from global institutions. 

Despite the many commonalities between Kashmir and Palestine and the prolonged durations of their conditions, opportunities for dialogue, networking and knowledge exchange between scholars have been limited. This initiative aims to fill this gap by exploring possibilities for networking and cross-fertilisation between scholars working on Palestine and Kashmir respectively. 

This network was initially conceived out of a British Academy Knowledge Frontiers Seed Grant awarded to scholars at the Council for British Research in the Levant (Dr Toufic Haddad) and the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) (Dr Emma Brännlund) in early 2020.

After encountering significant delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the initiative finally seeks to publicly launch, creating a space where scholarly conversations on Kashmir and Palestine can take place.

The keynote lecture on “Scholar-activist Solidarity: Building Alliances” was given by Dr Goldie Osuri, author and editor of multiple articles and special journal editions that have addressed Kashmir and Palestine in tandem. She spoke in-house at CBRL’s Jerusalem Kenyon Institute.