Ukraine has pioneered the use of air and ground drones, the latter known as ugvs, for casualty evacuation, typically in areas too dangerous for ambulances and paramedics. One of its medical battalions completed six robotic evacuations in a 24-hour period in April; ugvs rescued 21 wounded soldiers in a single day. But there is no evidence that Ukraine has done any of this at sea. Several armed forces have toyed with the idea. Britain’s Royal Marines were the first to use Malloy t-400 drones, hulking quadcopters which can dangle a patient underneath, to practise moving casualties. In 2023 in Jordan centcom also used a martac t-38 “Devil Ray” drone, a modified speedboat, to transfer a dummy from the Gulf of Aqaba to land. That same year, American naval forces in the Baltic attempted a similar exercise. A decade ago, Pentagon policy explicitly barred the use of drones for rescue and medical care, noted Paul Scharre, an analyst, at the time. In 2006, 2009 and 2013 the us Army Medical Centre of Excellence issued memos describing the use of “unattended” platforms for casevac as “unacceptable”, a policy that Mr Scharre compared to 20th-century fears over allowing the then-newfangled technology of the motor car to assume that role. Drone-based evacuation has several advantages. Helicopters are increasingly vulnerable to air defences. “You can assume more risk with a usv,” noted one American official during the Baltic drills, partly because they are harder to spot. But the fact that no additional humans are put in danger is the biggest draw. There are downsides, too. Humans on a plane or ship can spot a casualty and get to them. A usv on the surface cannot see as far as a plane and either needs a good connection to an operator to beam back video or on-board ai that can identify a casualty in the water. And a patient being rescued by drone has to strap himself to a small boat—and then endure a hairy ride home. ■ Sign up to the Middle East Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the loop on a fascinating, complex and consequential part of the world. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//middle-east-and-africa/2026/06/11/the-first-ever- robotic-rescue-at-sea-is-a-milestone
Middle East & Africa | A rare winner Syria is an unexpected beneficiary of the Gulf war The revival of an old oil-export route from Iraq to the Mediterranean helps Syria’s new regime June 11th 2026 These days the 860km-long road from Ramadi in Iraq to western Syria is lined with lorries heaving with oil. They rumble past ancient ruins and deserted villages before emptying their tanks at the Baniyas terminal on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. They then return to Iraq to fill up and make the journey again (see map). The closure of the Strait of Hormuz means the oil giants of the Middle East are scrambling for new routes to get their product to global markets. Saudi Arabia, the second-largest oil producer in the world, is relying on an existing pipeline to the Red Sea. The United Arab Emirates is expanding an outbound line to the Gulf of Oman. But Iraq, which is the world’s sixth-
largest producer, has been stymied by geography. It is frantically searching for a way to shift its 4m barrels of oil a day. The current answer is Syria. The country has become an unlikely winner. The Hormuz blockage forced Iraq to slash oil production by 80% in March, as its storage tanks filled up. Iraq’s state firm in charge of oil exports, SOMO, has given three firms the job of trucking 650,000 tonnes of oil per month out of the country. The Syrian route is shorter than those through Jordan or Turkey, and takes the oil straight to the Mediterranean. Iraq’s rulers are wary of Ahmed al-Sharaa’s new government in Syria, mindful of his time waging jihad during the 2000s. Some of the Shia militias that continue to dominate the Iraqi state fought for Syria’s former dictator, Bashar al-Assad, against Mr Sharaa and his allies. But commercial interests beat sectarian mistrust. Syria’s Sunni militants, now pillars of government, are providing police escorts for the thousands of Iraqi Shia lorry drivers as they go through the al-Waleed crossing, open for the first time in a decade. But there are practical limits. The tankers need petrol, too. Some of the oil is heavier and more viscous; it needs heating for storage and pumping at the terminal. Storage at Baniyas is limited. Iraq would like to send even more oil through this westward channel, but the trucking operation is hard to scale up.
The thousand-odd lorries a day are clogging up Baniyas’s pumping facilities. It is a far slower route than a pipeline. Still, Syria is delighted. This Iraqi oil helps fire up some of its own power plants that rely on Russian oil which, in turn, replaced oil from Iran that had kept Syria going during its past decade of civil war. Syria’s own vast but ravaged oilfields will take years—and many millions of dollars—to be resuscitated. Its new regime seems more interested in exploring new fields and reconnecting with American oilmen than in renovating old ones. Meanwhile, it is exulting in this rare inflow of cash. It is charging a transit fee. Its new and expanded border authority gets a cut. The rest goes to the Syrian Petroleum Company, a new state-backed firm, whose subsidiaries manage the storage and pumping of oil onto tankers at Baniyas. Another private firm handles the merry-go-round of lorries. So far the sums are relatively modest. Estimates of daily revenue range from $1m to $2m. The thousand-odd lorries crossing the desert every day carry only about 5% of pre-war Iraqi oil exports. But this is enough to keep everyone relatively happy and frees up much needed storage space in Iraq. The revived oil-export corridor through Syria, long shut off from the world, will give the new regime in Damascus a strategic lever once a new pipeline is built (much of the old Syrian one is inoperable or was destroyed), at a cost of at least $4bn. Until then, with Hormuz blocked, the new route may become crucial and Syria could become an important transit hub. The closure of Hormuz has shown the oil-rich states of the Middle East that they need to diversify their transport networks. If Syria could upgrade its oil infrastructure and build new pipelines fast, it could find a lucrative spot for itself on the world’s energy map. Its first task would be to increase its storage capacity at Baniyas. If Syria manages to get its oilfields up and running, new markets for its products may open, drawing in desperately needed foreign investment. The estimated cost of Syria’s overall reconstruction is at least $200bn. But in the short run, the country is a rare beneficiary of the Iran war. ■
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Middle East & Africa | Dilemmas in the horn Could Eritrea come in from the cold? Isaias Afwerki, its reclusive dictator, has spotted an opening to reconcile with America June 11th 2026 When eritrea’s national football team returned home from South Africa in April, seven of its players did not. It was not the first time. Plenty of the 3.5m or so people living in the reclusive dictatorship on the Red Sea would like to escape the indefinite “national service” (essentially, forced labour for the state) and the absence of rights and freedoms enforced by the regime of Isaias Afwerki, the dictator since 1991. Mr Isaias has been shunned by the West for decades. In 2021 America imposed sanctions on Eritrea after its soldiers raped and pillaged their way across northern Ethiopia during the war in Tigray, a province on the border with Eritrea.
Could times be about to change for Mr Isaias? The signs are multiplying. Donald Trump’s top Africa adviser is reported to have met the dictator in late 2025. Marco Rubio, America’s secretary of state, has talked of a “new era of us–Eritrea relations”. Much chatter suggests America will soon lift the sanctions it imposed five years ago, perhaps opening the way for Mr Isaias’s wider rehabilitation. Precisely what America seeks from Eritrea is unclear. Perhaps it wants to muscle in on its mining industry, which Chinese firms currently dominate. Perhaps it would like Mr Isaias’s help fighting the Houthis, the Iran-backed militia that rules much of Yemen, just across the Red Sea. It almost certainly wants to prevent a war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, its expansionist neighbour, which would rock the Red Sea just when passage is needed for ships that cannot use the Strait of Hormuz because of the war with Iran. Mr Isaias’s motives are more straightforward. He worries about Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s truculent prime minister. Ethiopia lost its coastline when Eritrea seceded in 1993; Mr Abiy has in effect threatened to invade to get part of it back. Many suspect his real goal in Eritrea is regime change, if not re-annexation. To deter Mr Abiy, Mr Isaias has made overtures not just to America but also to Saudi Arabia. He has also built a regional network of allies and proxies hostile to Ethiopia’s prime minister. These include Egypt