Cannabisskörd räddar libanesiska bönder

[bluntman]

hej!

äntligen så kanske det kommer lite libb till oss i svealand
dom har ju bara odlat opium i libanon sista 20 åren typ?(inget krig?)
älskade det där starka för halsen som man hostade som en tok av!och smakade underbart!
stora fluffiga bitar som luktade som en gudagåva!
undrar om man kanske är lite nostalgisk 😆 (det var starkt som fan för halsen)
men jag skulle kunna ge nästan vad som helst för lite libb!(röker nästan aldrig hasch nu för tiden)

mvh/
Bluntman

[tuyrens]

A Comeback for Lebanon’s Hashish

Quote:

Lebanon’s anti-drug squad and the handful of soldiers protecting them had an unpleasant surprise last month when they launched an annual raid on fields of ripe hashish in the northern Bekaa Valley. Rather than standing aside meekly while their hashish was ploughed up as in the past, the farmers this year were determined to protect their lucrative crops. “They shot at us with automatic weapons from nearby woods and houses,” Colonel Adel Machmouchi, head of Lebanon’s Drug Enforcement Bureau, told TIME. “RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] were exploding above our heads and we had to leave.”

Taking advantage of a debilitating political crisis in Beirut, overstretched security forces and a lifeless economy, the Bekaa farmers this year have cultivated the largest hashish harvest since the war-torn 1980s when this fertile valley was awash with drug crops. Lebanese police estimate that some 16,000 acres (6,500 hectares) of hashish and a small amount of opium poppies were planted this year on the sun-baked plain of the northern Bekaa. “Lebanese hashish is the best in the world, better than Turkey and Afghanistan,” says Ali, a Bekaa farmer standing in his field of knee-high hashish plants, the spiky saw-toothed cannabis leaves swaying gently in the hot breeze. Ali and other hashish farmers interviewed by TIME requested their real names not be printed.

Ali said that he expects to produce 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of cannabis resin from his eight dunam (9,568 square yards) field, which he will sell for around $10,000 to local drug dealers. “Usually, we sell hashish for about $1,000 per kilogram, but there was so much hashish grown this year that prices will drop a little,” he says. Still, with two harvests since March, Ali’s income this year from hashish growing is $20,000, a big sum for this impoverished area.

Long grown in the fertile Bekaa, cultivation of the cannabis sativa plant peaked during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war when the northern half of the valley was carpeted in hashish and opium poppies, turning simple farmers into multi-millionaire drug barons. In the early 1990s, the Lebanese government and the United Nations Development Program launched an initiative to replace drug crops with legitimate alternatives. The UNDP estimated some $300 million was required for rural development of the Bekaa. Lebanon was removed from the U.S. government’s list of major drug producing countries in 1997.

Despite that delisting, the promises of international funds never materialized and the program was dropped in 2001. Most years since, the ripening hashish crops are destroyed shortly before the harvest by drug police protected by hundreds of Lebanese troops. But this year, the Lebanese army’s manpower was stretched to the limit with security commitments in Beirut, along the southern border with Israel, the eastern border with Syria and in the north of the country where troops fought a bloody three-month battle against Islamist militants during the summer hashish growing season. Furthermore, the hashish farmers threatened to burn down the houses of local tractor owners who are hired each year by the government to plough up the illegal crops.

After Colonel Machmouchi and his men were shot at by heavily armed fighters, the annual hashish eradication program was abandoned for fear of provoking a popular uprising against the government. But the farmers say that this year’s successful harvest is only the beginning. “We are tired of being hungry. We view the government as an enemy and from now on we are going to grow hashish and we don’t care what the government says or tries to do,” said Ahmad, a hashish farmer. It is an argument that fails to win the sympathy of Lebanon’s drug police. “Does poverty in Lebanon only exist in the Bekaa?” asks Colonel Machmouchi. “No, but it’s the only area growing hashish.” The problem, he added, is that the farmers of the Bekaa are so accustomed to growing hashish that they no longer consider the practice a crime. “The solution is to change their culture, but that will take years,” he said.

Indeed the culture still celebrates people like Jamal Hamieh, a down-to-earth but shrewd farmer from Taraya village. Protected by a private army drawn from the Hamieh clan, he hosted Mafia dons, Colombian drug lords and New York gangsters, and threw lavish parties for top Syrian military intelligence officers based in the Bekaa, plying them with whisky, women and thick wads of $100 bills. Hamieh received expensive presents in return from his grateful clients. One gift was a brand-new Porsche which Hamieh, unaware of the car’s status value, blithely destroyed in a matter of days by driving it over rugged dirt tracks to visit his poppy fields. He has the dubious honor of being the only Lebanese on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of international narcotics “kingpins.” Although Hamieh says he retired years ago, he still occasionally receives foreign drug traffickers hoping to entice him back to his old ways. “The police are always watching me, but I can’t help it if foreign dealers come and visit me,” he says.

Lebanon’s maritime and land borders are also under close observation since last year’s war between Israel and the militant Shi’ite Hizballah organization, mainly to prevent arms being smuggled into the country. That makes it harder for drugs to be whisked out of Lebanon — which creates a looming local problem. With cannabis having a shelf life of about two years, most dealers plan to sell their products in the domestic market. Recreational drug use is on the rise in Lebanon. “The problem is that drugs are readily available and relatively cheap,” says Brigitte Khoury, a clinical psychologist and professor at the American University of Beirut. A problem that will only worsen if the Bekaa farmers return to their old ways.

Bluntman wrote:

hej!

äntligen så kanske det kommer lite libb till oss i svealand
dom har ju bara odlat opium i libanon sista 20 åren typ?(inget krig?)
älskade det där starka för halsen som man hostade som en tok av!och smakade underbart!
stora fluffiga bitar som luktade som en gudagåva!
undrar om man kanske är lite nostalgisk 😆 (det var starkt som fan för halsen)
men jag skulle kunna ge nästan vad som helst för lite libb!(röker nästan aldrig hasch nu för tiden)

mvh/
Bluntman

Visserligen bör diskussionen tas i Coffeeshopen, men med tanke på TIME-artikeln kanske man inte bör hoppas för mycket, går tydligen främst till libanesiska marknaden.

[tuyrens]

Lawless clans grow rich in the fertile kingdom of hashish

Quote:

The dimly lit basement reeks of hashish. Piled high along a wall are dozens of large white sacks filled with the leaves and seeds of the Cannabis sativa plant. In one corner lies a sprawling 8ft-high haystack of dried marijuana plants awaiting threshing and sieving into powder and compressing into blocks of hashish.

With his armed bodyguards looking on, Abu Rida grasps a thick fluffy bunch of dried leaves and sniffs them appreciatively. “I believe that the hashish grown here is a blessed and holy plant,” he said.

Abu Rida has good reason to thank his blessings. The biggest cannabis farmer in Lebanon, he has just taken in the largest harvest of the lucrative crop since the late 1980s, when the sun-baked plains of the northern Bekaa Valley were awash with cannabis and opium poppies.

Usually, Lebanese police backed by soldiers and armoured vehicles destroy the cannabis crops just before harvesting in late summer. This year the overstretched Lebanese Army was unable to support the police raids because of security commitments elsewhere in the crisis-plagued country, including a three-month battle against Islamist militants in the north.

Also, the farmers were determined to protect their crops. Local tractor owners normally hired by the drug police to plough up the fields were warned by the farmers to stay away this year or their houses would be burnt down. When the police began tearing out cannabis plants by hand, the farmers shot at them from nearby buildings and woods with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

One of those firing the rocket-propelled grenades was Abu Rida.

At 36, he has built a multi-million-dollar fortune from hashish. Sentenced to death in absentia by the Lebanese State for past drug-related murders, he lives in a fortified compound protected by gun-toting militiamen drawn from his home village.

The northern Bekaa is a lawless district where the Government carries little weight against the powerful tribal clans. In its dusty villages stolen cars and weapons are traded, opium resin from Turkey and Afghanistan is refined into heroin and coca paste from South America is turned into cocaine.

The pony-tailed Abu Rida, more than 6ft (1.8m) tall and powerfully built, keeps a 9mm automatic pistol in a shoulder holster slung beneath his jacket. “I run this village. Everybody works for me. We are a big clan and they all belong to me,” he said.

He agreed to talk freely but asked that his real name and the village where he lived should not be printed.

The fertile Bekaa Valley has a long history of growing the cannabis plant. It was not until the lawless years of the 1980s, midway through the 16-year Lebanese civil war, that cultivation soared, turning peasant farmers into multimillionaire drug lords and generating an annual economy of $500 million in one of the most impoverished areas of Lebanon.

The biggest dealer in the Bekaa was Jamil Hamieh, a farmer from Taraya village, who built a fortune from cannabis and heroin. At his height in the late 1980s, he hosted Colombian drug barons and Italian Mafia dons eager to buy his drugs. He is the only Lebanese cited on the US Government’s list of international drug kingpins.

Now retired, Hamieh lives in an air-conditioned tent, Bedouin style, erected beside the mansion he built for his family. “It wasn’t the Government that made me stop. I was tired of being ripped off by all the foreigners I was dealing with,” he said.

With the end of the war in 1990, the Lebanese Government, with the help of the United Nations Development Programme, ushered in a drug eradication programme to encourage farmers to grow alternative crops. The scheme met with success initially and by 1994 the Bekaa was declared drug-free. But the promised international funds to finance the programme did not materialise. By 2001 only $17 million of the pledged $300 million had arrived and the programme fizzled out a year later. Since then the disgruntled farmers have begun returning to cannabis cultivation in ever-growing numbers.

The northern Bekaa Valley is dominated by the militant Shia Hezbollah party of Lebanon. Officially, Hezbollah disapproves of drug production but it has chosen to turn a blind eye to the practice rather than confront the clans that dominate the area.

Abu Rida owes his continued freedom and survival to cash payouts to police, politicians, army officers and even clerics. He can afford to be generous. He cultivated more than 568 acres of cannabis this year. That was processed into 20 tonnes of resin – worth about $13 million (£6 million).

‘Assassin sect’

— The term “hashish” refers to the resin derived from the cannabis plant. It is widely linked to the Hashashim sect of Ismaili Shia Muslims active from the 11th to 13th century, from which the word “assassin” is thought to originate

— The sect was founded in 1090 by Hasan-i Sabbah to disable the Abbasid Caliphate, with a campaign of murders targeting its most notable members

— According to popular tales, sect members, or hashishiyun, would consume hashish to promote fearlessness before their missions

— Hashish is also said to have been used as a tool for drugging new sect recruits in an effort to establish loyalty. Some argue that this is merely fiction, popularised in Western Europe by the Crusaders

[tuyrens]

In Lebanon, a Comeback for Cannabis