Afghanistan

[ngakpa]

Afghanistan 'falling into Taliban hands'

Afghanistan 'falling into Taliban hands'

3.15pm GMT
Afghanistan 'falling into Taliban hands'


Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday November 21, 2007
Guardian Unlimited


The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into the group's hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area.

Despite the presence of tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid, the insurgents, driven out by the US invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries," the Senlis Council says in a report released today.

On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a "significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people, who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change".

It says that the frontline is getting ever closer to Kabul - a warning echoed by the UN, which says more and more of the country is becoming a "no go" area for western aid and development workers.

The council goes as far as to state: "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when this will happen and in what form. The oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a new strategic paradigm for Afghanistan before time runs out".

Its 110-page report coincides with an equally severe warning from Oxfam. In a report for the House of Commons international development committee, the humanitarian and aid agency warns that the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating significantly with the country's problems exacerbated by corruption in central and local government.

The report warns that urgent action is needed to avert a humanitarian disaster in which millions of Afghans face "severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa". Though the country has received more than $15bn in aid since 2001, the money is not getting to the people who need it most or to projects that could lead to sustained improvements in their lives, Oxfam says.

At least 1,200 civilians have been killed so far this year, it adds - half in operations by international or Afghan forces. There are four times as many air strikes by international forces in Afghanistan than in Iraq, Oxfam notes.

Senior British and US military commanders privately agree despite their public emphasis on short-term successes against Taliban fighters.

The insurgency is divided into a largely poverty-driven "grassroots" component and a concentrated group of "hardcore militant Islamists", says the Senlis Council, which has an office in Kabul and field researchers based in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in southern Afghanistan.

It says that the Nato-led International Security Force, Isaf, should have double the current number of 40,000 troops and should include forces from Muslim countries as well as those Nato states which have refused to send troops to the country or insist, like France and Germany, that they must not be involved in combat operations.

There is no sign, despite pressure from the US and Britain, of any move within Nato to send reinforcements to Afghanistan.

While western governments, like the Senlis Council and Oxfam, are increasingly concerned about the lack of effectiveness of President Hamid Karzai's government, there is no agreement about how to solve the problems.

While the Senlis Council wants Nato forces' provincial reconstruction teams to take on a bigger role distributing aid, Oxfam says the military should stick to providing security. And while the council says opium poppies should be bought by the international community and used licitly for medical purposes, Oxfam argues that such a project would be impossible given the current state of Afghanistan.

 

[Yarkand]

Smuggling (All the way from the Drug Baron to the Iranian border)

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=689_1190952895

Peace

 

[The_Tick]

Cannabis Thrives in an Balkh Province, Afghan.

Cannabis Thrives in an Balkh Province, Afghan.

November 4, 2007
Cannabis Thrives in an Afghan Province
By KIRK SEMPLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/world/asia/04cannabis.html

KHWAJA GHOLAK, Afghanistan — Amid the multiplying frustrations of the fight against narcotics in Afghanistan, the northern province of Balkh has been hailed as a rare and glowing success.

Two years ago the province, which abuts Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, was covered with opium poppies — about 27,000 acres of them, nearly enough to blanket Manhattan twice. This year, after an intense anti-poppy campaign led by the governor, Balkh’s farmers abandoned the crop. The province was declared poppy free, with 12 others, and the provincial government was promised a reward of millions of dollars in development aid.

But largely ignored in the celebration was the fact that many farmers in Balkh simply switched from opium poppies to another illegal crop: cannabis, the herb from which marijuana and hashish are derived.

As the Afghan and Western governments focused on the problem of soaring Afghan opium production, which hit record levels this year and remains a booming industry, cannabis cultivation increased 40 percent around the country, to about 173,000 acres this year — from about 123,500 acres last year, the United Nations said in an August report. And even though hashish is less expensive per weight than opium or heroin, the report said, cannabis can potentially earn a farmer more than opium poppies because it yields twice the quantity of drug per acre and is cheaper and less labor intensive to grow.

“As a consequence,” the United Nations report warned, “farmers who do not cultivate opium poppy may turn to cannabis cultivation.”

Many farmers in Balkh have done just that, officials and residents say, and the province now has one of the most bounteous cannabis crops in the country.

The plant is certainly not hard to find. It lines the main highways leading into Mazar-i-Sharif, the provincial capital, and is visible to passing drivers. The crop’s chief byproduct, hashish, is sold openly at many roadside fruit and grocery stands, particularly around Balkh, the ancient citadel town about 15 miles west of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Late on an October afternoon, Muhammad Ayud, 30, a kindly sharecropper, was finishing a day of work at the three-acre parcel he farms here in this poor village just outside the town of Balkh. His plot was covered by a forest of cannabis plants, some more than nine feet tall.

“This is nothing,” he said, gesturing toward the towering plants. “If you give it real fertilizer, you’d see how tall it grows!”

Last year Mr. Ayud’s parcel was mostly opium poppies. But his crop was wiped out by government officials during a campaign led by the provincial governor, Atta Mohammad Noor, who jailed dozens of growers for disobeying him and personally waded into several poppy fields swinging a stick at the flower stems.

Mr. Ayud, one of only two wage earners in his 16-member family, lost most of his expected earnings for the year, about $1,000, he said.

This year he planted cannabis instead, with some cotton as a fallback in case the government followed through on its promises to eradicate the illicit crop. It was a return to a family tradition, he said. His father and grandfather grew cannabis here.

Mr. Ayud said he knew it was illegal to grow cannabis, but that it was the only crop that would produce enough profit to feed his family. “I don’t have anything else to grow,” he said. The difference in potential earnings is vast: cannabis can earn about twice the profits of a legal crop like cotton, local officials say.

Farmers in this region have cultivated cannabis for more than 70 years and, by the estimates of several Balkh residents, at least half the adult male population smokes hashish. Resinous, pungent and black, the hashish is sold in thin, palm-size sheets that resemble large tire patches and sell for about a dollar each. Hashish from this area — called Shirak-i-Mazar, or Milk of Mazar — was once prized by smokers around the world, though its primacy has since been supplanted by varieties from other countries.

Many farmers here, as elsewhere in Afghanistan, process the cannabis into hashish in their homes, then sell it to traffickers who come to their doors to pick it up. The best hashish is exported, residents here say, while the inferior stuff is consumed nationally.

Mr. Atta says he has a plan to eradicate cannabis next growing season. Farmers have begun to harvest their current crop, and officials say they do not want to destroy the farmers’ livelihood without giving them time to plant an alternative.

“Marijuana is not difficult to control, like poppy,” the governor said in an interview in October in his vast, opulent office in Mazar-i-Sharif. “It’s very easy to eradicate. It’s a very simple issue.”

But Mr. Atta said he was still waiting for the development money that the central government and international community had promised Balkh in return for ridding itself of opium poppies. The money — he puts it at more than $5 million; officials in the central government say it is closer to $3 million — is earmarked for a range of projects including rural development programs to promote farming alternatives to poppies and cannabis.

Mr. Atta cautioned that unless the money arrived promptly, he could not guarantee that the farmers would eschew poppies.

“It’s the responsibility of the central government and international community to improve the lives of farmers, which they aren’t doing,” he said. “Well, we’ll try our best to not let them grow poppy, but it’s going to cause problems.”

Many farmers around the town of Balkh suggested that forswearing cannabis might be harder than poppies. Not only are cannabis and hashish a more integral part of their customs, they said, but beyond cannabis there are no profitable alternatives.

The farmers said they would not grow cannabis only if the government provided an alternative source of livelihood, or improved the market for their legal crops.

“If, in the future, the government helps the farmers — and really helps — we will destroy all the poppy and cannabis,” said Hoshdel, 40, a well-weathered farmer in Khwaja Gholak who has nine children. “If they don’t help us, I swear I’ll grow it.”

Photos of Afghan hash.

 

[ngakpa]

cheers for posting that fella - I just finished a pile of that Sheberghan garda you posted a link to (Mriko is a fellow wanderer of these regions)... it is lovely stuff, and a lot of people find it devastatingly potent... personally I find good Nepalese/Indian more potent, but it varies from person to person I think

I will be growing out some Sheberghan seeds I have pretty soon, very curious to see how they turn out - I am told they are shorter than the standard Mazar giants described in the article above - as well as having wider leaves, they only go to about 2m, whereas the Mazar will get up to about 4m

anyway - I hope the article goes some way to convincing the few remaining doubters, quote:

Late on an October afternoon, Muhammad Ayud, 30, a kindly sharecropper, was finishing a day of work at the three-acre parcel he farms here in this poor village just outside the town of Balkh. His plot was covered by a forest of cannabis plants, some more than nine feet tall.

“This is nothing,” he said, gesturing toward the towering plants. “If you give it real fertilizer, you’d see how tall it grows!”

 

[The_Tick]

Shedberghan Garda

Shedberghan Garda

A couple of years ago I got to try some Shedberghan Garda, very very nice and dreamy smoke. At least I was told it was from a trusted friend, it did look like Mriko's photos.

I'd love to know more about you Sheberghan seeds. I'm fascinated by this short sticky indica. The Baytik Shan looks interesting as well.

 

[ngakpa]

yeh - Mriko's photos are how the Sheberghan Garda I have seen looked, with that distinctly red tinge... charsees there will tell you it is best to work it your hands before smoking, so that it becomes darker and takes on a sweeter smell, and smokes better

the Garda itself I would describe as smelling of juniper, chocolate and orange essence - after it's been worked it smells closer to generic Afghani, and when it burns friends of mine have described it as almost smelling like cooking meat hahaha

yeh, lucky bastard that I am, I also have seeds of a Kullu strain from the region Mriko has photo'd, and the Yarkhun region too... the plant in the pic was probably seriously underwatered btw - it looks pretty tatty, but the smell and the high from the Yarkhun hashish is totally gorgeous... that region is pretty much off-limits these days due to endless landslides blocking roads

interactive map of Afghanistan
shows correlation of opium cultivation, insurgency, and so on
http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,,1698844,00.html

UK folk may like to note the news blackout on the loss of Helmand province in the 'Western' media at the minute - 12 out of 13 provinces now lost in Helmand, Brigadier visiting the last of these mid-November 2007 to discuss a full pull out from Helmand... read about this in your papers? didn't think so...

Helmand Insurgent Control Map November 2007 - Senlis Council
http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/maps/images/maps/insurgent_control

General - up to date maps of Afghanistan and Pakistan
http://www.drug-policy.org/modules/maps

Afghan Blog
http://www.afghanlord.org/2007/11/problem-of-musa-qala-afghanistans.html
http://www.pajamasmedia.com/2007/11/terrorism_u_afghanistans_musa.php

scathing blog covering British MoD
http://defenceoftherealm.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

 

[ngakpa]

Poppy for Medicine - Alternative Livelihood Strategy for Afghanistan
http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/P4M

 

[Hans Blix]

 

[rubber_chicken]

thanks all contributors, great thread

 

[Yarkand]

A Pashtu song from the tribal area showing support for the traditions....notice the fellow going to each guest and offering the sachrana.
Kind of a raggae music for the tribal area

Good garda/charas/hashish will never vanish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh3xSjkorEc&feature=related

 

[Londinium]

I've just spent a few hours looking at this thread and all the links and I just wanna thank Yarkand and all other contrbutors as I have found it Informative and fascinating. Excellent stuff! J

I could do with some of those plants as they've run out of my usual at the seed shop........Oh sh-t I've been asleep for 20 years....Bl--dy Indicas!!!

 

[rsh]

good thread

 

[rsh]

Many great videos. Sit back relax & light up a spliff !

-----------------------------------------------------

Smuggling Drugs Afghanistan (A look at the contraband)

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b84_1194674860

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6b6_1194675354


Smuggling and the making of heroin from opium base (Showing most of the process)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_91MFg8lDng


Mountain Drug Running (Afghanistan - Kyrgyzstan)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht8pV1t7R3M


Opium in Afghanistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKt-N4QBZ3E


Brother of Kabul (follows a journey of 2 addicts)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OU_-RckfsI


A life of a Junky in Pakistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=698cxjgC3E0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I52sdG576dE


Drugs & Aids in Larkana Sindh Pakistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHHiqqFs6Nw


Beautiful scenery in Afghanistan (lighter note)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3PuvdiAHoI


Khyber Pass Pakistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXlF9HiUmJs

Cool links

 

[ElectroSticky]

Nice thread ,, some pics of killer INDICAS from the region ,, anyone thanks !!!

 

[Bud Meister]

I served a year in Afghanistan with the Army National Guard. Got into a fire fight that ended up in a HUGE weed field. After it was all over I thought man what a hell of a place to end up in a gun fight. I often wonder what strain it was Afghani of some sort I would guess. I wish I could have tried some and even gotten my hands on some seeds but the Army watches us pretty close so I did not risk it. Who knows maybe oneday I will return as a tourist and maybe get my hands on some of those seeds and weed samples.

 

[Yarkand]

Afganistan Cannabis Farmers

Afganistan Cannabis Farmers

Taken from 420 magazine this piece was published in 2007

Thanks all for stopping by


Ask the villagers of Dalicharbolak how bad things are in the desert and they show you a boy named Saifudden. He is five, but looks two. He is too weak to walk, crawl or do anything but loll in his bearer's arms. He is bald, and his arms and legs are like sticks. Mohammed Akbar, 48, says Saifudden is an orphan. "Well, soon anyway." Akbar explains that Saifudden's father fled this ravaged village three months ago because of the drought and that his mother is dying fast. Ask about food and the villagers say that, born in the year the rains first failed, Saifudden has never tasted fruit, vegetables or meat. Ask about water and their anger boils over. "They're killing us here," says Akbar, pointing over the horizon to the lush plains upstream. "They're taking all the water. I haven't seen water in our ditches for four years. And all for chaars."

Chaars is charas—hashish, pressed cannabis resin. Production is booming here in Afghanistan, aggravating a famine brought on by years of drought and war. A healthy field of hemp needs plenty of water. Dope growers in the mountains siphon off the streams that still flow, while hash farmers in the plains dig wells up to 100 meters deep to reach the water table. The combined effect of drought, reduced water from the hills and the cannabis cultivators' new boreholes is catastrophic, says Bertrand Brequeville of French aid group Action Contre la Faim. "It's only the rich drug producers who can afford the pumps to irrigate the land. They pump all day, and all the wells in the villages around them dry up."

Driving west from Mazar-i-Sharif, northern Afghanistan's main city, you catch the smell almost immediately. Baking in the midday sun, marijuana bushes the size of a man give off the same dank stench that permeates hip parties from New York City to New South Wales. For the decade before the Soviet army invaded in 1979, the teahouses of Afghanistan were the toking tourist's hangout of choice. And even during 23 years of war, when the Afghans fought the Soviets and then one another, the hash trade thrived. "Afghan black" remained a staple sale for cannabis dealers across the world. Mazar-i-Sharif gave its name to a particularly potent variety. And last year, in the final weeks of the Taliban, Amsterdam's coffee-shop owners even boasted they were doing their bit for the war on terror by buying blocks stamped with a golden Northern Alliance stencil reading "Freedom for Afghanistan."

Now, as Afghanistan emerges from war, dope farming has never been so good—and the drought never so bad. The Taliban banned hash production, but in the postwar chaos of lawless fiefdoms that dot the land, growers and traders across the country are finding themselves free once again to cultivate and export hashish without fear, and often with warlord protection. Moreover, the international perception that cannabis is a relatively benign drug—prompting some authorities across Europe and Australia to decriminalize its use—has persuaded drug-policing agencies to largely ignore it. So, while opium cultivation is monitored to the acre, neither Interpol, the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention nor the U.S.'s Drug Enforcement Agency can offer even rough estimates for how much hashish Afghanistan produces or what the trade is worth. But around Mazar it's almost impossible to find a field where hemp is not being grown, either openly or poorly hidden behind watermelons or knee-high cotton plants. "Everybody's farming chaars now," says former Taliban fighter Faizullah, 27, watering a verdant six-hectare oasis of hemp surrounded by desert. Cannabis used to be outlawed by the Taliban. "But now," says Faizullah, "it's a free-for-all."

Once grown and pressed, Afghan hash is sold to freelance truck and jeep drivers who take it to Tajikistan or Kabul, where it is resold at four times the price. It's then smuggled via Central Asia or Pakistan to the West, where Afghan hash finds many eager buyers. But as dope smokers celebrate the new "enlightened" view of pot, any thought of the distant, parched land where it is grown has been lost in the haze. Back in the dust-bowl fields around Mazar, the growing foreign demand and new freedom to exploit it translate into a rare chance at riches. While prices are minimal compared with the eventual $3,000 to $8,000 a kilo that Afghan hash fetches in the West, Northern Alliance commander Akbar Khan says farming anything except cannabis makes little sense. "A kilo of wheat sells for 20,000 Afghanis (40¢)," he explains. "But a kilo of chaars will sell for 10 million ($200)."

The choice to grow drugs may be financially astute, but the effect on water supplies is disastrous. There hasn't been significant rain in most of Afghanistan for five years. Action Contre la Faim says even in Kabul only 30% of residents have sufficient water, defined as 15 liters a day for washing, cooking, farming and drinking and less than 250 people per water access point. That figure drops to 10% in large swaths of the north and even zero across the south. With dope growers exacerbating the shortage, centuries-old water holes and underground courses have evaporated. Crops downstream of hemp fields have withered and failed. With nothing to eat or drink and plagued by choking dust, entire villages and towns have emptied. "Whole parts of the country are turning into desert," says Brequeville. "And that's irreversible—there's no way back from the desert."

Tensions over water have even led to murder. Last month, in a village called Shakhshirale close to the Turkmenian border, hash farmers shot dead a man who walked all day to demand two buckets of water. And in Saifudden's village of Dalicharbolak, the men there admit that after 12 people died of malnutrition over the summer, some among them gunned down two cannabis growers who were hoarding water upstream. An hour's drive to the east of Dalicharbolak, a village headman says his is the only settlement out of 38 nearby that has potable water—in effect, a single half-meter-wide well must provide for 60,000 people. The headman claims that anyone is welcome to use his well, but the guards fingering AK-47s and a mounted heavy machine gun around the borehole suggest otherwise.

Perhaps the starkest illustration of what cannabis is doing to Afghanistan is to be found at the village of Deh Naw, half an hour to the north of Mazar along Afghanistan's main north-south highway. Just out of sight of the hash hills upstream, the desert is swallowing Deh Naw whole. Five-meter-high sand dunes have crashed over the village's mud walls like desiccated tidal waves, burying houses, blocking streets and suffocating the vines and the mulberry, fig and pomegranate trees that once blossomed here. The 600 villagers survive by gathering desert thornbushes—used for lighting fires—and trading them for access to fetid water from a ditch half a day's ride away by donkey. Abdul Shakur, 63, says every few weeks a huge sandstorm traps him, his wife and their 11 children inside their hut for days on end. Four months ago, the storm came at night and lasted four days; Shakur and his neighbors dug out a family of five after a dune enveloped their front door and all their windows.

"The storms are terrible," he says. "Even if you have something to eat, you can't open your mouth or it just fills with sand. All you can do is hide and sleep." Shakur has given up blaming anyone for Deh Naw's troubles. He knows the landowners for whom he once worked the fields around Deh Naw are the same people who now deprive that land of water for the sake of greater profits in the hemp-rich hills. But after 23 years watching a succession of conquerors—the Soviets, the Taliban, and now the Northern Alliance and the Americans—come and go, he has learned to focus on survival. "I don't know about governments or armies or landowners or chaars," he says. "All I know is sand, and all I dream of is water."

 

[mriko]

Nice article Yarkand, actually much older than 2007. Don't remember exactly but it dates from 2004 if not before.

Irie !

 

[Yarkand]

Thank you my green mujahidid friend

Have a greeaaat weekend

 

[Yarkand]

2002 article

Enjoy

Afghanistan was once known for producing world-class hashish. What does the future hold?
In the middle of the night, in mountains northwest of Kabul, Afghanistan, where American bombs and missiles have fallen like acid rain, a young man named Mahmoud is arranging a shipment of precious, psychoactive agricultural merchandise.
Impoverished Afghanistan, home to 25 million oppressed people, demonized and flattened by war, lacking permanent water supplies, surrounded by hostile neighbors who shut out its refugees, has long been an important source of quality cannabis products. India, Iran, Pakistan, Kashmir, Nepal, Afghanistan and most other nations in this region have marijuana traditions that span centuries and embody the highest arts of cannabis production, processing, and consumption.
Mahmoud's cargo is one of the last shipments of Afghani hashish to leave the country before September 11, 2001. His commodity is a five hundred pound collection of hashish slates. The individual slates, about the size of a book, are chocolate-colored on the outside, reddish brown on the inside, wrapped in plastic and tape, weighing between 250 and 800 grams each.

The resin powder used to produce them was gathered from short, tenacious Indicas grown in isolated semi-arid areas in Afghanistan. Some of the powder is collected and formed into hashish in Afghanistan, but the Afghan powder is also processed in regions of Pakistan such as Kurram, Orakzai and Tirah.
The slates are then dispatched on an odyssey that may take them through Tajikistan and Russia, or through Pakistan and India. The shipment might travel via caravan through tribal areas, headed for Baluchistan, where it will exit Pakistan into Iran. It might also travel through Central Asian republics.

Eventually, after the slates have been transported and handled by a variety of methods, including mules, camels, trucks, and intermediaries, they arrive in Europe, primarily to be sold in Dutch coffee shops for six to eight US dollars per gram.

Today's Afghani hash is considered a mid-grade product, slightly inferior to primo traditional hashish from Morocco, Nepal, India, and Europe. It is only about 40% as potent as the newest types of hashish, such as Ice-O-Later, Nederhash, and Bubblehash, that are made using technology and modern quality control that results in a far purer product than can be produced by farmers and processors in desert countries like Afghanistan.

Yet, during the 1960's and early 70's, Afghani hash was considered the best available. Cultivation of squat, rugged, phat-leaved Indica plants, which cannabists now call "Hindu Kush," "Afghani," and "Hashplant" became prevalent during this era; some ethnobotanists say Afghanistan's earlier cannabis farmers mostly grew Sativa varieties.

According to cannabis pioneer Wernard Bruining, who created Holland's first coffee shop nearly 30 years ago, Western hippies collected Afghan marijuana seeds and spread them across the world in the 1970's, most notably to Northern California, where the seeds became genetic precursors for many of today's most popular cannabis cultivars.

"People who we call the early Skunk pioneers' were experimenting with these Afghani seeds," says Bruining, whose Positronics seed bank was one of the earliest to offer a large menu of international marijuana seeds. "Afghan plants were highly sought after because they grew fast and short, were hardy, and produced huge tops full of resin. Some of them had the characteristic skunky smell and powerful body high that now identifies varieties known as Skunk.'"

Afghani hash was known for its sticky, resiny, unadulterated color and texture, its sweet, tangy taste, and its narcotic, dream-inducing high. Before US anti-drug pressure changed Afghanistan's cannabis policies in 1974, super-potent connoisseur hashish was available at teahouses inside Afghanistan, and as exported fingers, sticks, hooves, half moons, slabs and bricks that had a wide array of colors, tastes, and cannabinoid profiles.

Foreign cartels, including drug networks from North America, purchased tons of Afghan hashish and resin powder, using the substances to produce and market what came to be known as "honey oil," a highly-refined, amber-colored fluid that was often two to three times as potent as hashish.

Farmers in many parts of Afghanistan used primitive methods such as hand irrigation and fertilization techniques to produce resin glands for the burgeoning industry. It's not easy work, because most of the country is barren desert, with marginal soils, inadequate and unpredictable water supplies, dry, hot summers and harsh winters.

Huge fields of cannabis, surrounded by huts, barns and other buildings where resin powder was stored and processed, were seen near the southern city of Kandahar, in Central Afghanistan, and around the north-central city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

As this article is being written, US forces are using aerial bombardment and ground troops against Afghan Taliban government strongholds in Kabul, Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif. It may well be the first time that a global war machine has attacked a city that is so linked to marijuana that it has a variety of marijuana named after it as advertised in the Marc Emery seed catalog, "Mazar-i-Sharif" is a potent Afghani crossbred with a classic "Skunk #1" variety.


The modern history of Afghanistan is permeated with cannabis and conflict. The British ran the country for decades before they were kicked out in 1919, but the country was relatively stable during the reign of King Mohammad Zahir Shah, a pro-cannabis monarch who governed Afghanistan from 1933 until he was overthrown by a jealous relative in 1973.

According to reports from US spy agencies and Afghan sources in Holland, the King offered armed protection and horticultural advice to marijuana growers, encouraging them to increase their yield with modern fertilization techniques. The ruler's top aides were allegedly involved in overt hashish smuggling. DEA officials even allege that the King's private jet was used to smuggle tons of hashish to Italy and other European countries.

After King Zahir Shah was deposed, the US began sabotaging the Afghan cannabis industry, beginning a series of intermittent drug wars in Afghanistan. The US paid Afghan governments millions of dollars to eradicate cannabis crops and hash producers beginning in the mid-1970's. The elimination of ganja farming and hashish production cost lives and money, spurred production of opium poppies, and plunged a poor country further into poverty, and also resulted in numerous human rights violations.

By the time the country was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union in 1979, the Afghan cannabis industry was a mere shadow of what it had been. Mediocre commercial Afghan hash, like the kind that Mahmoud smuggles, is still exported, but the glory days, when American pot pilgrims viewed Afghanistan as Mecca, are long gone.

For those who don't know the historical context of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, it's instructive to note that the US used to consider communism, China, and the Soviet Union (now called Russia) as its most dangerous enemies. Today, President Bush woos China despite its abysmal human rights record and proclaims former KGB leader Vladimir Putin (who was deemed a mortal enemy of the US when Bush's father was head of the CIA) to be a "good man" and an ally in the war against Afghanistan.

In 1979, the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (a country often accused by the US of sponsoring terrorism), trained and funded Islamic fundamentalist "freedom fighters," generally known as the mujahadin, instructing them to use merciless guerrilla tactics and terrorism to kill large numbers of Russian soldiers and civilians. Like many of the insurgents that the USA has employed or assisted, the mujahadin were known producers and smugglers of illegal drugs, using sales of hashish and heroin to augment other funding for their war against Russia.

This situation has analogies in Yugoslavia, where the US went to war two years ago to support the goals of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), even though the KLA is one of the world's biggest heroin trafficking organizations (CC#19, Kosovo Drug War).

It's also similar to a situation in Southern California in the 1980's, as outlined in the book Dark Alliance, when the CIA, DEA and other government agencies helped right-wing agents smuggle tons of cocaine into America, so that the profits could be used to fund the Nicaraguan contra rebels (CC#07, Coo-coo cocaine corruption, CC#20, Exposing CIA corruption).

Papa poppy

Hounded and humiliated by the mujhadin, the Russians fled Afghanistan in 1989, leaving their soldiers' blood and thousands of live land mines behind. Mujahadin factions fought amongst themselves for control of the war-ravaged country; the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban won the power struggle and established a theocratic government in Afghanistan in 1996.

The Taliban relied on the drug trade for funding. In 1999, 79% of the world's opium poppy cultivation took place in Afghanistan. The Taliban also encouraged domestic production of heroin; United Nations officials claim that 95% of the heroin that reaches Europe comes from Afghanistan.

Taliban leader Mohammad Omar recently tried to appease drug warriors by waging war against domestic poppy producers. Last May, the US gave the Taliban $43 million, congratulating them for supposedly eliminating 90% of the country's opium poppy cultivation in the previous growing season. Intelligence sources say that 225,000 acres of poppies were cultivated in 1999, but only 19,000 acres were cultivated during the 2001 poppy season.

Three years of drought almost certainly contributed to the alleged decrease in cultivation, but whatever anti-poppy progress has been made is likely to be reversed: the war on Afghanistan has resulted in Afghan poppy farmers getting the go-ahead from the Taliban to again increase cultivated acreage.

US anti-drug officials allege that the Taliban uses heroin as a terrorist weapon. They claim that massive heroin stockpiles inside Afghanistan are being shipped to Europe at cut-rate prices, and that Osama Bin Laden had unsuccessfully tried to create a super-strong form of heroin, called "Tears of Allah," that would spread throughout the West like a biological weapon, causing instant addiction and death.

Yet if the US is really serious about its drug war, it's puzzling to see that it is now using the Northern Alliance, one of the mujahadin factions that worked with the US and the Taliban to defeat the Soviet Union, to defeat the Taliban. US forces are working in concert with the Northern Alliance as it tries to take key cities. US officials refer to the Northern Alliance as allies. Yet, these "allies" are heavily involved in hashish and heroin production and marketing. Last year, the only parts of Afghanistan that saw an increase in poppy cultivation and heroin production were those controlled by the Northern Alliance.

The perils, contradictions, and ironies of the drug war are starkly outlined by US policy failures in Afghanistan. Almost two decades ago, the anti-drug US government hired drug producers and smugglers to do its dirty work against the Russians. The people that George W Bush now refers to as "the evil ones" were at that time called "freedom fighters" by president Ronald Reagan, and by Bush's father, who was then vice president. While Reagan and Bush revved up the domestic and international drug war, they turned a blind eye to the drug trade and brutalities of their allied Afghani freedom fighters.

During the 1990's, the US government overlooked the Taliban's involvement in terrorism in order to enlist it as a paid ally in the drug war. The US also worked to decrease hashish trafficking carried out by the Northern Alliance. Now that the US has declared that the Taliban must be vanquished by the Northern Alliance, it has gone silent about the Northern Alliance's involvement in drug running. The US has also intimately allied itself with Pakistan, another country that until recently was condemned by the US for harboring terrorism, nuclear weapons, and drug smugglers.

Officials also acknowledge that the US wants to overthrow the Taliban and reinstall King Zahir Shah, who is now 86 years old and living in Italy, to the Afghan throne that he lost in 1973. If the former King is reinstalled, will the US allow him to again implement his cannabis-friendly policies in Afghanistan?

Freedom for Afghanistan

The US government knows that the Northern Alliance uses the profits it makes from selling heroin and hashish to fund its war against the Taliban. This profit chain includes marketing of Northern Alliance hashish to Dutch coffee shops. At the end of the clandestine "pipeline" that brings Afghan hash to Holland are coffee shop owners who pay about $4000 per kilo for the Alliance's product.

In the intersection of commerce, politics and cannabis created by the illegal system that provides marijuana products for the Dutch retail market, Afghan hash is perhaps the only cannabis commodity imprinted with a revolutionary slogan. In gold letters, stenciled on the hardened brown crust of each slate, are the words "Freedom for Afghanistan," or "Freedom of Afghanistan." These slogans are the calling cards of the Northern Alliance.

There's a lot of worry about Afghan hash in Holland these days. Most coffee shop owners, even those who consider themselves hashish specialists, are scared to associate their name with quotes about such hash. Some Dutch cannabists assume that the Afghan hash trade provides funding for the Northern Alliance's fight against the Taliban, others suspect that all factions in Afghanistan export hashish and heroin.

"Buying slates of Afghan hash from the Alliance is a very direct way to fund the Alliance's fight against the Taliban," one shop owner asserted. "If we want to fight terrorism, the best thing we can do is buy Afghan hash."

Another coffee shop owner said that he bought hash marked with Alliance slogans, "even though it is a slower seller and costs more than I think it is worth."

"The only politics I ever thought about in this business is that the more marijuana we sell the more money we make and the more popular our products are," the owner said. "Now I am seeing that there might be bigger things than that. Like, if we buy our hash from somebody, is that person using the money to make bombs, or to ship heroin, or to support Afghan farmers? Should I always turn a blind eye to the politics and morals of the people I get my supplies from? A lot of them are sleazy. They're real criminals. They probably bring in things other than hash, like guns and harder drugs. I don't know quite what to do."

Some American "patriots" who posted opinions on Internet sites about the geopolitical ethics of Holland's coffee shop industry after September 11 think they know what Dutch marijuana businesspeople should do: the American posters called for a boycott of many varieties of hashish, especially those from Morocco, Lebanon, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, alleging that buying hashish from those countries was tantamount to supporting terrorism.

The head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, a born-again, right-wing Christian fundamentalist named Asa Hutchinson, recently said that buying illegal drugs supports terrorism and that the war on drugs is a war on terrorism. The newly-created US Office of Homeland Security echoes internal drug war efforts which have encouraged Americans to spy on and inform on each other. The Office advises Americans to report neighbors who are quiet, who do not fit in, who express progressive sentiments. Under special war powers and anti-terrorism laws rushed through Congress and the executive branch after September 11, the government can act on citizens' tips by secretly searching homes, secretly monitoring emails and phone communications, using bugging devices without a search warrant, and detaining people without arresting them and without probable cause.

Some American marijuana users have convinced themselves that these new government powers will be used only against Muslim suicide bombers and their allies, but the government definition of terrorism has included not just the fanatic Bin Ladens of the world, but also environmentalists, anti-globalization activists, and civil rights advocates.

The American commentators who alleged that buying "Middle Eastern" hashish helped terrorism advised Europeans to buy local hashish, or to make their own. A few Dutch shops reportedly removed some varieties of hash from their menus in response to the postings.

Dutch coffee shop owner and marijuana activist Nol Van Schaik provided the Afghan slates pictured in this article. Van Schaik, who owns three marijuana shops and a cannabis museum in Haarlem, Holland just outside Amsterdam, said that boycotting hashish to protest terrorism was a stupid idea.

"If the Northern Alliance are the people on the ground who are going to defeat the Taliban, people who want to defeat the Taliban should buy as much of their hash as they can," Van Schaik said, slicing open an Afghan slate covered in red cellophane. "It's a patriotic duty to buy their hash. Boycotting hash doesn't make sense. A lot of the hashish we get comes from Hindu or secularized countries. And even if hashish is produced by Muslims, that doesn't mean that the proceeds support terrorism. Are all Muslims terrorists? People who believe that are racists."

Van Schaik says hashish should be viewed strictly as a psychoactive commodity subject to market pressures. He says that supply and demand will govern the production, price and availability of hash, and cites the example of Lebanon, which accepted US drug war money 15 years ago and used it to destroy its thriving Bekka Valley hashish industry.

Cannabis farmers went broke because the Lebanese government and its drug war allies failed to provide compensation to those who lost income due to the crackdown on cannabis cultivation and hash production. Last year, the farmers rejected the drug war and again planted crops of hashplants in the Lebanese desert. This year, Holland is seeing the first shipments of the legendary Lebanese product in more than a decade.

Van Schaik crumbles some of the Afghan hash into a Dutch joint, and lights it. The revolutionary hash has a distinct flavor and produces a formidable high, but it is nowhere near as potent or pure-tasting as gold-colored Moroccan primero that he had smoked with me the day before.

As I networked the back alleys of the Dutch pot industry searching for information about Afghan hash, I found a Muslim who admitted to being involved in the smuggling of hashish into Holland. He told me about Mahmoud, bribing military, police, civilians and government officials in several countries, and about the political-economic implications of the hash trade.

"Afghanistan people like hashish," the man said. "They have special rooms and pipes to smoke it. It's not all just to sell here. You can go to special markets and shops to buy it, especially near the border with Pakistan."
The man said that Afghan hash had lost its formerly sterling reputation because it was now a conglomeration of resin powders from different types of plants, screened through relatively large bore screens, held together by binders like honey, animal fat, or tree sap.
"It is still stronger and better than marijuana, gram for gram," the man said. "It has a little dust in it from the winds, but it is a flower of the desert. With this war, we might not be able to get any here for a long time."
The man seemed sad and cynical when I asked him about the effects of war on Afghanistan and Afghan hashish. The US had just announced plans to bomb poppy fields, and the man worried that cannabis plantations could also be hit.
"It's a tribal country that people make fun of because they don't understand it," he said. "The Taliban were good at killing communists, but they are bad at running the country. The Northern Alliance isn't any better. Bin Laden's family is friends with Bush's family. They've all worked together in the past, and then they start hating each other. Who knows what is really going on? The big countries always like to use our country as a target practice. The holy men who smoke hashish say that all of them are wicked people. It doesn't matter. If we survive the winter and the snows come, there will be more cannabis planted next year. There will be more Afghan hashish to smoke in Holland."

 

[Yarkand]

http://www.wairarapa.co.nz/times-age/weekly/2002/afghanistan.html

A very good read of the Gun bazaar