Pubdate: Mon, 11 Jun 2001
Source: San Francisco Bay Guardian (CA)
Copyright: 2001 San Francisco Bay Guardian
Contact:  http://www.sfbg.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/387
Author: Brian Whitaker
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

GREEN GOLD

Pot Production Returns To Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, After 10 Years Of 
Government Eradication And Poverty

When Lebanon wiped out the Bekaa valley's $500m-a-year cannabis 
industry in the 1990s, it was a catastrophe for the impoverished 
area. Its people are now returning to drug production to survive - 
and are ready to fight the government to protect their crops.

High in the Bekaa valley, relaxing under a fig tree's shade, farmer 
Ali pours glasses of tea. This year, God willing - and the Lebanese 
army permitting - his harvest will be good. The spring rains have 
been generous and now even the gravel at the roadside is flecked with 
green. Hundreds of wind-blown seeds are germinating among the stones, 
and those with a second pair of leaves have the distinctive 
saw-toothed shape of cannabis sativa. "God planted them," Ali says 
with a grin. But God did not plant what is growing further up the 
hill. The two lower terraces have potatoes, but the rest - less 
easily seen from the road - are packed with cannabis plants, still 
only a few inches tall, but sturdy and growing well. It is on these 
fields that Ali, his wife, his parents and his six children pin their 
hopes for the coming year. Elsewhere in the valley, for thousands of 
other families, it is the same story. The Bekaa - noted also for 
smuggling and Hizbullah militancy - is returning to drug production 
on a grand scale.

According to reliable estimates, 6,000 hectares (15,000 acres) of 
cannabis have been planted this year - by far the largest amount 
since the Lebanese government began its eradication programme 10 
years ago at the end of the civil war.

For the farmers, illicit crops are a huge but irresistible gamble: 
the difference between a comfortable existence and financial ruin. 
Last year, Ali's neighbour got away with it and made $20,000 from a 
single hectare of cannabis. Now everyone in the village is trying to 
copy him. The risk is that the army will come with tractors to uproot 
their crops and burn them. This usually happens in July - a month 
before the cannabis is ready and too late in the year for farmers to 
plant a second crop and harvest it before winter.

Last year, with only a few hundred hectares of illicit crops under 
cultivation, there were armed clashes when the authorities came to 
destroy them. This year, with thousands of hectares planted, there 
could be serious trouble. "We are ready to fight the government and 
anyone who comes here. We will fight for the food for our children," 
Ali says.

Dressed in combat trousers and a psychedelic shirt, with a chequered 
keffiyeh wrapped around his head and a week's growth of beard on his 
face, he looks as though he means it. There are 460 adults in the 
village, he says, and they have 400 guns.

Dr Mohammed Ferjani, the Tunisian head of the Bekaa's UN-sponsored 
integrated rural development programme, predicts a full-scale 
rebellion if the illicit crops are destroyed. "The people are obliged 
to search for a cash crop to ensure a respectable income," he says. 
"This year, I'm sure they will fight."

So far, the government's response has been to drop leaflets from 
helicopters. These threaten life imprisonment with hard labour, plus 
a fine of 100m lire, for anyone found cultivating illicit plants. In 
addition, any male or village guard who fails to inform the police 
about the cultivation of illicit crops risks imprisonment for one 
year and a fine of 2m lire.

The villagers' disdainful response has been to destroy the leaflets 
or hand them in to Hizbullah officials. Despite being bombarded with 
aerial warnings, the Bekaa's farmers are betting that this year, with 
so much cannabis under cultivation, the authorities will not take the 
political risk of trying to destroy it. But if the authorities take 
no action there will not be a mere 6,000 hectares of cannabis in the 
valley next year: there will be many times more.

Cannabis first came to the Bekaa from south-east Anatolya in the days 
of the Ottoman empire, but the valley's subsequent worldwide fame as 
a drug production centre was not based on any magical properties of 
the soil or climate. Cannabis, as anyone who has experimented on 
British windowsills will attest, is not a fussy plant. In the Bekaa, 
it grows readily on hillsides without irrigation and with very little 
human intervention.

It became a major crop in the Bekaa mainly for social and economic 
reasons. Most of the inhabitants are Shia Muslims - a group 
marginalised by Lebanon's Sunni and Christian elements over many 
years. Ignored by central government, and with little in the way of 
public services or policing, they did more or less as they pleased. 
Then, when demand for cannabis mushroomed in Europe and North 
America, they struck gold.

The first government clampdown came in 1963, with the ill-fated 
sunflower seed project. The idea was to replace cannabis with 
sunflowers, but without irrigation the yields were extraordinarily 
low and the production costs extraordinarily high. To keep the 
cannabis at bay, the government then had to buy up the sunflower 
crops at twice the normal price. This continued until the outbreak of 
civil war in 1975, when, with the collapse of central government, the 
subsidies stopped.

During the war, the farmers reverted to cannabis growing (heroin 
poppies also appeared for the first time) and the valley enjoyed a 
boom, the like of which it has never seen before or since. Around 
30,000 hectares of illicit crops brought in $80m a year for the 
farmers themselves, but associated businesses such as processing and 
distribution brought the valley's total earnings from drugs to an 
estimated $500m a year.

Some of the money went on fast cars and flash clothes, but almost 
everyone among the Bekaa's 250,000 inhabitants benefited - even the 
conventional farmers on the valley floor. "High purchasing power 
brought high consumption," Dr Ferjani says. "Butchers in Baalbek used 
to sell 20 lambs a day - though today they are lucky to sell two or 
three."

Despite the war, the cannabis trade also crossed the political 
divide. One trail led from the Shi'ite farmers to Hizbullah's enemy, 
the Israeli-sponsored south Lebanon army, and then to Israel itself, 
providing many a happy daze in Tel Aviv.

After the boom came the bust. With the end of civil war, the Lebanese 
and Syrian governments (since the Bekaa borders Syria) decided 
jointly to eradicate the illicit crops - this time by force. In 1991 
they destroyed 80%. By 1993 the illicit crops were down to a mere 300 
hectares, and in 1994 a UN mission to the area found none at all. The 
government did not repeat its sunflower blunder, and gave the farmers 
"education and information" instead. The ministry of agriculture also 
provided some cows.

"They promised the cows would give 20 litres of milk a day," says 
Hassan, another farmer in Ali's village. "But after two months we 
were getting only five." The ministry's calculations were for cows 
fed on fresh grass, but there is little of that in the Bekaa, and the 
farmers, far from being grateful, believed they had been lumbered 
with defective cows.

The crop destruction programme may have pleased foreign governments, 
but over the past 10 years it has succeeded in making the Bekaa one 
of the most impoverished parts of Lebanon. The gross domestic product 
in the northern part of the valley, where most of the drugs are 
grown, is only $500 per person, while the national average is $3,500.

While the people look to drug production for their economic 
salvation, for political and religious salvation they turn to 
Hizbullah. Along the road into Hermel, at the northern end of the 
valley, instead of the usual advertising hoardings there are 
larger-than-life portraits of Hizbullah "martyrs" (men killed in the 
struggle against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon), six to 
a billboard. These are interspersed with even larger pictures of 
Hassan Nasrallah, the party's leader. Even the telegraph poles are 
painted in Hizbullah colours and carry its God-and-gun logo.

In Baalbek, the regional capital, the best and cheapest hospital is 
run by Hizbullah, and the hottest nightspot is a Hizbullah-owned cafe 
by the river where young men and women sip non-alcoholic drinks or 
smoke hubble-bubble pipes (tobacco only, though it comes in three 
flavours: apple, strawberry and honey).

Officially, Hizbullah disapproves of drugs and encourages alternative 
crops. To limit unemployment (and possibly to prevent mischief) it 
continues to pay the salaries of 9,000 guerrillas who returned - 
jobless - to the Bekaa after the Israeli withdrawal from the south 
last year. But to confront its core supporters head-on over the drugs 
issue would be suicidal for Hizbullah.

At the UN office in Baalbek, Dr Ferjani displays a flowchart showing 
that the valley's drug production and its political extremism are 
part of the same problem. Marginalisation, poverty and frustration 
are the causes. Tackle them, he says, and the extremism and illicit 
crops will wither away. The key, he believes, lies in soil 
conservation; better use of water resources; infrastructure such as 
cold stores and grading centres for produce; and loans for farmers at 
reasonable rates.

Water, people constantly point out, is the most expensive liquid in 
the Bekaa valley. Bottled spring water costs 1,000 lire (50p) a 
litre, petrol 850 and Pepsi 750. With Pepsi, you also get a free 
digital watch if you buy 12 litres. In fact, there is plenty of 
water: 40m cubic metres of rain runs off the mountains every year - 
mainly in short, sharp deluges - and flows, unused by the local 
farmers, into Syria, Turkey and Israel. "Under irrigation," Dr 
Ferjani says, "any crop is more profitable than cannabis or poppies."

The solution may be obvious, but it costs money. In 1993 the UN 
estimated that an investment of $30m a year for 10 years would solve 
the Bekaa's problems permanently. "We would be able not only to 
replace illicit crops but let the region return to the control of 
central government and become developed without any prospect of a 
return to illicit crops," Ferjani says.

But foreign governments are reluctant to provide aid to an area 
controlled by Hizbullah. In the seven years since the development 
programme started, it has received less than 7% of its total needs - 
almost all from the Lebanese government and the UN. "Colombia has had 
hundreds of millions of dollars to fight drugs, but the Lebanese 
government is not getting support from the international community," 
Ferjani says. "It's the wrong approach. The international community 
think they are fighting Hizbullah, but they are pushing the people to 
be more extremist. We tried to explain to the Americans: if you 
refuse to support this programme you are indirectly supporting 
extremism. They didn't understand."
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe