Summer 2010: "The “Afghan Drugs” Problem" –
A Challenge to Iran and International Security"

"In 1999 three scientists from the Uzbekistan Institute came to the Long Ashton research centre in Bristol where Greaves was based. UN documents confirm that since the project began it has been extended to look at fungi to kill cannabis plants. The documents also reveal that, despite widespread concerns from environmentalists and scientists, this fungus has already been field-tested in three Central Asian states: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Two other states, Kazakstan and Turkmenistan, have so far refused. Disclosure of the extent of British involvement in what some see as 'biological warfare' in breach of the global Biological Weapons Convention will be highly embarrassing for the government."


"Until very recently, the drugs were brought across the deserts at the southern end of the Iran-Afghan border in customised jeeps. The sheer pace of their vehicles - Toyota 4x4s, customised high-suspension Dodge trucks - took them past the anti-drugs patrols. And if they were somehow stopped, they fought. For every three jeeps carrying drugs, one would be loaded with a heavy machine-gun, a mortar, a multiple-barrelled rocket launcher."


"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."


"The organisation I work for, Spirit Aid, has developed a plan to replace Afghan opium - 75% of the global supply - with industrial hemp. Hemp is a fast growing, legal cash crop that presents a host of immediate benefits to Afghan society, including a potentially lucrative source of foreign exchange earnings. The hemp tree is part of the cannabis species, which includes marijuana plants. However, leaves from hemp trees carry very little of the psychoactive components of the marijuana plant that makes it popular among drug users. It can be used to produce heating and cooking fuel, thereby ending the need for people to cut down and burn their remaining forests during severe winters. Using hemp in this way would also help prepare areas of land for future tree planting projects."

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 70,000 hectares this year - from about 50,000 hectares last year, the United Nations said in an August report.


"In southern Kandahar province, farmers in nearly three-quarters of the villages recently surveyed by the United Nations said they would plant cannabis this spring. Jan Mohammad, a tenant farmer outside Kandahar City, spends nine hours a day filtering cannabis leaves and then kneading the residue into clumps of hashish." He earns $30 a day — five times as much as he earns from harvesting wheat."


"The drugs reform organisation "Transform" disputed the main findings. Its director, Danny Kushlick, said that with drugs now a £320bn business, arresting any drug lords would create a vacuum that would be immediately filled by others. "People don't take drugs because Amy Winehouse takes drugs," added Kushlick. "It entirely misses the point. They take drugs because they make them feel better or they stop them feeling bad." He said the only solution was a regulated market."


"Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), today congratulated the Minister of the Interior of Afghanistan for finding and destroying, with support from ISAF, what is believed to be the world's largest seizure of drugs. The 236.8 metric tonnes of hashish would have had a wholesale value of $400 million, according to the NATO operation in Afghanistan."


"The Afghan police ... has made a huge step forward in proving its capability in curbing the tide of illegal drug trade in this country," US General David McKiernan, the commander of Isaf, said. "With this single find, they have seriously crippled the Taliban's ability to purchase weapons that threaten the safety and security of the Afghan people and the region." Garrison Courtney, the spokesman for the US Drug Enforcement Agency, said he thought the drug bust was the world's largest in terms of weight. "I can't think of any other time I've ever heard of that large an amount in one hit," he said.

Feb 19, 2009: "International drugs body calls for global action as internet dealing rises to 'alarming' levels"

"One new development had been the re-emergence of Afghan cannabis, a major type used in the 1960s and 70s. The report suggests that "cannabis cultivation has increased as this crop has become more lucrative."

March 7, 2009: "Pressured On Opium Crops, Many Afghan Farmers Switch To Cannabis"

"UNODC data suggest that more than 70,000 hectares of Afghan farmland is now being used to grow cannabis -- putting Afghanistan ahead of Morroco as the leading producer of cannabis and hashish made from cannabis."

(Reuters) - "Long the world's largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, Afghanistan has now become the top supplier of cannabis, with large-scale cultivation in half of its provinces, the United Nations said on Wednesday." Similar article from the Guardian also at RAWA.


"Every day since the survey was released there's been stories in the media about the bumper crop of cannabis grown in Afghanistan this year. Now people are realizing that the world's top producer of opium is also handy at growing weed and making great hash. Since 2006 they've bumped Morocco out of that top spot for Hash production."

"The reasons quickly became evident: three command wires for explosive devices were uncovered in the tall stands of cannabis plants in the first few minutes. Half an hour later a cluster of mines was discovered lying in the open, close to a small madrasa (religious school) and mosque named after Mullah Bujan, a dead Taliban commander. Inside the madrasa and the nearby houses was what they had come looking for: a Taliban command centre including a bomb-making cell, ammonium nitrate for making explosives, and a cache of equipment for treating injured insurgents."