al-harfih (الحرفيه)

[Tarikat_Flow]

[Tarikat_Flow]

Druze is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion that is a gnostic offshoot and Neoplatonist sect of Isma'ilism, a branch of Shia Islam. The Druze evolved from the religion of Islam and now are an independent religion, separate from Islam.
 

The Druzites follow a batini or esoteric interpretation of the Five Pillars of Islam. Some modern scholars and the Amman Message identify them as Muslims. However, some Muslims disagree, noting that since they do not practice exoteric interpretations, "fasting during the month of Ramadan and making a pilgrimage to Mecca. Thus, they are not regarded by Muslims as Islamic".
 

The Druze follow a lifestyle of isolation where no conversion is allowed, neither out of nor into, the religion. When Druze live among people of other religions, they try to blend in, in order to protect their religion and their own safety. They can pray as Muslims, or as Christians, depending on where they are. This system is apparently changing in modern times, where more security has allowed Druze to be more open about their religious belonging.

The Tanukhids inaugurated the Druze community in Syria when most of them accepted and adopted the new message that was being preached in the 11th century, due to their leadership's close ties with Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah.
 

Historically the relationship between the Druze and Muslims has been characterized by intense persecution. The Druze faith is often classified as a branch of Isma'ili. Even though the faith originally developed out of Ismaili Islam, most Druze do not identify as Muslims, and they do not accept the five pillars of Islam. The Druze have frequently experienced persecution by different Muslim regimes such as the Shia Fatimid Caliphate, Sunni Ottoman Empire, and Egypt Eyalet. The persecution of the Druze included massacres, demolishing Druze prayer houses and holy places, and forced conversion to Islam. Those were no ordinary killings in the Druze's narrative, they were meant to eradicate the whole community according to the Druze narrative.
 

The Druze community in Syria played an important role in the formation of the modern state of Syria, and even though they are a minority they play an important role in the Syrian political scene.

 

The Druze always played a far more important role in Syrian politics than its comparatively small population would suggest. With a community of little more than 100,000 in 1949 or roughly three percent of the Syrian population, the Druze of Syria's southwestern mountains constituted a potent force in Syrian politics and played a leading role in the nationalist struggle against the French. Under the military leadership of Sultan al-Atrash, the Druze provided much of the military force behind the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925–27. In 1945, Amir Hasan al-Atrash, the paramount political leader of the Jabal Druze State, led the Druze military units in a successful revolt against the French, making the Jebel al-Druze the first and only region in Syria to liberate itself from French rule without British assistance. At independence, the Druze made confident by their successes, expected that Damascus would reward them for their many sacrifices on the battlefield. They demanded to keep their autonomous administration and many political privileges accorded them by the French and sought generous economic assistance from the newly independent government.

 

When a local paper in 1945 reported that President Shukri al-Quwatli (1943–49) had called the Druzes a "dangerous minority", Sultan Pasha al-Atrash flew into a rage and demanded a public retraction. If it were not forthcoming, he announced, the Druzes would indeed become "dangerous" and a force of 4,000 Druze warriors would "occupy the city of Damascus." Quwwatli could not dismiss Sultan Pasha's threat. The military balance of power in Syria was tilted in favor of the Druzes, at least until the military builds up during the 1948 War in Palestine. One advisor to the Syrian Defense Department warned in 1946 that the Syrian army was "useless", and that the Druzes could "take Damascus and capture the present leaders in a breeze."
 

During the four years of Adib Shishakli's rule in Syria (December 1949 to February 1954) (on 25 August 1952: Shishakli created the Arab Liberation Movement (ALM), a progressive party with pan-Arabist and socialist views), the Druze community was subjected to a heavy attack by the Syrian government. Shishakli believed that among his many opponents in Syria, the Druzes were the most potentially dangerous, and he was determined to crush them. He frequently proclaimed: "My enemies are like a serpent: the head is the Jebel al-Druze, the stomach Homs, and the tail Aleppo. If I crush the head the serpent will die." Shishakli dispatched 10,000 regular troops to occupy the Jebel al-Druze. Several towns were bombarded with heavy weapons, killing scores of civilians and destroying many houses. According to Druze accounts, Shishakli encouraged neighboring bedouin tribes to plunder the defenseless population and allowed his own troops to run amok.

 

Shishakli launched a campaign to defame the Druzes for their religion and politics. He accused the entire community of treason, at times claiming they were agents of the British and Hashemites, at others that they were fighting for Israel against the Arabs. He even produced a cache of Israeli weapons allegedly discovered in the Jabal. Even more painful for the Druze community was his publication of "falsified Druze religious texts" and false testimonials ascribed to leading Druze sheikhs designed to stir up sectarian hatred. This propaganda also was broadcast in the Arab world, mainly Egypt. Shishakli was assassinated in Brazil on 27 September 1964 by a Druze seeking revenge for Shishakli's bombardment of the Jebel al-Druze.

 

 

Edited December 30, 2023 by Tarikat_Flow

[Tarikat_Flow]

The Golden Crescent region of South Asia—comprising Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan—is a principal global site for opium production and distribution. Over the past few decades, war, terrorism, and a shifting political landscape have facilitated an active heroin trade throughout the region. Protracted conflict has exacerbated already dire socio-economic conditions and political strife within the region and contributed to a consequent rise in opiate trafficking and addiction among the region’s inhabitants. The worsening epidemic of injection drug use has paralleled the rising incidence of HIV and other blood-borne infections in the region and drawn attention to the broader implications of the growing opiate trade in the Golden Crescent. The first step in addressing drug use is to recognize that it is not a character flaw but a form of mental illness, hence warranting humane treatment of drug users. It is also recommended that the governments of the Golden Crescent countries encourage substitution of opium with licit crops and raise awareness among the general public about the perils of opium use. 

 

The Golden Crescent of South Asia comprises Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan. This region is considered a global hub for heroin and related opiate production and trafficking. In recent years, these countries have battled many challenges, including political turmoil, economic instability, war, and terrorism. The current review explores how such forces may have influenced the growth and expansion of the heroin trade within the region and how the trade has had implications for an epidemic of injection drug use, rising incidence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other blood-borne infections.

 

There are three well-defined heroin trafficking routes that originate from the Golden Crescent region. The Balkan route operates through Iran and Türkiye and traffics the bulk of Afghan heroin to Europe. The Northern route supplies heroin to the Russian Federation and Central Asia. Due to increased law enforcement along these two routes, alternate routes have emerged, collectively called the Southern route, that traffics heroin to Iran and Pakistan, and from these countries, via sea and air, to other parts of the world.

 

Heroin is a derivative of opium that is obtained from the poppy plant, papaver somniferous. People addicted to heroin experience intense craving for the drug that interferes with their abilities to manage work, family, and other life commitments. Long-term heroin use is thought to accelerate aging. 

On Christmas Eve 1979, the army of the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Over the course of the war’s 9 years, many madrassas (religious seminaries) materialized in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many of the graduates of these madrassas formed the core of the Taliban movement that started besieging Afghanistan in 1993–1994 until the war with the USA in 2001. The decade-long war with the Soviet Union had resulted in the destruction of the nation’s subsistence agriculture. This, coupled with taxes paid to regional warlords, left farmers with little choice but to plant opium, a crop that requires little water and returns high profits. The profits obtained from the sale of opium were used to fund, among other things, the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation. Opium production rose steadily throughout the 1980s and 1990s until 2000 when opium production fell precipitously on account of a fatwa issued by Taliban leader Mullah Omar that banned poppy cultivation. Opium production resumed after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The opium trade, though not reliable, has been a relatively lucrative enterprise for Afghan farmers. Between 2002 and 2008, poppy farmers made $6.4 billion. The drug traffickers, on the other hand, earned $18 billion. Much of the profits fell into the hands of warlords and Taliban militias, funding terrorist activities. As the opium trade funded terrorism in Afghanistan, it also weakened the integrity of civic institutions, further facilitating the illicit opium trade.

 

A 2010 study describes the following heroin use patterns in Afghanistan, based on patient profile: the war pattern, the refugees’ pattern, and the social and economic crisis pattern. The war pattern entails long-term drug use (>30 years) by ex-Afghan soldiers. The refugees’ pattern includes people who began to use drugs while they were refugees in Pakistan and Iran. The social and economic crisis pattern includes people who began to use drugs as a means of escape from their harsh realities. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2008 declared that along with the war on terrorism, the war on drugs is also a prerogative of the international community and NATO troops can be employed to help with anti-narcotics operations.

 

At the peak of its opium production in 2007, the Golden Crescent produced more than 8,000 of the world's almost 9,000 total tons of opium, a near monopoly. The Golden Crescent also dominates the cannabis resin market due to the high resin yields of the region (145 kg/ha), four times more than Morocco (36 kg/ha). The Golden Crescent also caters to a much larger market, about 64% more than the Golden Triangle. It produces and distributes over 2,500 tons of opiates to Africa, Europe, the Americas and Central Asia and supplies almost 9.5 million opiate users worldwide.

Despite worldwide efforts to capture and to seize as much opium product as possible, total opiate seizures brought in only 23.5% of the total estimated product distributed worldwide. Of these seizures around 97% of opium and morphine seizures are made in the Middle East and heroin seizures are made mostly in India, the Middle East and Europe. In Afghanistan, only 1%t of the heroin that is exported illegally is intercepted and destroyed by the national governments. Although Afghanistan is the major producer of opiates in the Golden Crescent, most of the seizures are made in Iran. This is because traffickers are arrested while crossing the border from Afghanistan to Iran so that they can distribute the product to Europe and Africa where there is a high demand for opiates. In Pakistan the majority of traffickers arrested are 38% Nigerians and 32% Pakistanis. These traffickers, essential to the transportation of the drugs from the source to end-user markets, make large profits because of how risky the job is. A rough estimate of how many people are currently involved in drug trafficking is above one million. The majority of opium produced in Afghanistan comes from Helmand and Kandahar provinces. Of the 5,300 tons of opium produced in Afghanistan, 2,700 tons is transformed into heroin. In 2008, almost half of the heroin produced was used in Iran. Even though Afghanistan is the leading producer, only 7% was used there

Edited December 30, 2023 by Tarikat_Flow

[Tarikat_Flow]

Reserved

[Tarikat_Flow]

OOC

We're portraying a loose cell of Middle Eastern fugitives, drug addicts, small-time criminals and murderers-for-hire. This is a thread just showcasing our characters' development, in an attempt to also shine the light on Arab cells and the way they operate within America. The prospect of becoming a faction is not at the behest of our primary interests. For those who want to contribute, we remain a closed group and only cater to those who we believe are capable of barring our expertise and roleplay standards. 

Edited December 30, 2023 by Tarikat_Flow

[Stefano]

Lol how would this align or integrate with the context of San Andreas

 

 

Edited December 30, 2023 by Stefano

[Wop]

Muah

[Faugh]

love it boys enjoy it

[Acid]

Locked nd archived. If you wish to roleplay as a group you'll have to apply for a faction.

Find below all the requirements you need to do so, or which concepts are accepted without an IFM-approved thread.
 

With that being said, the roleplay as a group is to cease immediately.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Acid