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Lebanon: Fighting an ongoing battle against drugs in the Bekaa Patrick Galey Daily Star, Lebanon Friday 28 Aug 2009 The plot is typical of the scores of cannabis fields that cover large areas of the Bekaa Valley in northeast Lebanon. For many growers, the crop is their livelihood and has been grown for generations in the shadow of the snow-capped mountains that straddle the Lebanon-Syria border. For the authorities, however, the cultivation of cannabis in Lebanon is a lucrative and criminal pursuit. The Internal Security Forces (ISF) recently announced it aimed to destroy the country’s entire crop; no mean feat, given the scale and remoteness of much of its production. Shakkour is part of the team that has been charged with supervising the crop eradication in the Bekaa. His motorcade speeds along the highway which cuts through the fertile valley plain before slowing to negotiate the narrow alleys of a remote farming village. From the convoy, gnarled wooden huts are visible in some of the village’s larger gardens. They are crammed with cannabis plants, freshly harvested and drying in the midday heat. The field cuts a vivid green streak across a horizon of desiccated scrubland and charred earth, still smoldering from an earlier clearance operation. Although this is just one of several plots still to destroy, Shakkour is undaunted by the task ahead. “It’s a hard job and we are doing well,” he says, as a tractor trundles past churning soil in its wake. “This is our tenth day of eradication in this area and we have about 10,000 hectares already cleared. We are expecting to finish our campaign in 10 days’ time.” The sheer scale of the challenge has led to the Lebanese Army and foreign embassies such as the US, Australia and Italy, getting involved in the laborious process. Terrance Hinton, the US Embassy’s deputy regional security officer, explains the role it is playing in the Bekaa. “We provide training and equipment to the LAF to assist in their eradication efforts,” he says. Hinton adds that part of the US administration’s interest in the Bekaa’s drug growing stems from previous experiences with other countries. “We have a program called Anti-terrorism and Assistance and we wouldn’t want Lebanon to fall into anything similar to the narco-terrorism that we have seen recently in some South American countries.” The purge is the latest in a series of eradication efforts launched in the Bekaa in the past decade. Each time the crop is claimed to be destroyed, the cannibas grows back even stronger than before. General Anwar Yehia, the acting commander of the ISF, has vowed not to stop this time “until all the crops are destroyed.” Nadya Makdishi, a director at the Lebanese Addiction Center, welcomed the ISF’s operation but was skeptical as to whether the current eradication program would leave Lebanon permanently hashish-free. “I commend their effort. We have a lot of our own people growing hashish and that does contribute to the availability and the low cost of it. It can be problematic, especially amongst young people,” she said. “If they eradicate the crop [in Lebanon] then it will cause a slight rise in the cost of hashish in the short term and it will be a little bit harder to get. “It will affect local markets but is it going to decrease over time the amount of people using hashish in Lebanon? I don’t know.” The per-ounce price of hashish in Lebanon has reportedly plummeted in the past year from $500 last summer to its present level of roughly $200. Although this decline is partly attributable to an increased international demand, it nevertheless demonstrates the abundance of Lebanon’s hashish production. Hinton is equally unsure as to the long-term efficacy of destroying cannibas in the Bekaa. “I’m not sure at this time that there will ever be a definitive answer. These are steps we take to assist the government in their efforts to make the area a better place for everyone,” he says. It is difficult to estimate the number of families whose incomes rely on revenue generated by growing hashish. Farmers have indicated their willingness to forgo drug cultivation on the condition they be provided with viable and sustainable alternatives. Hinton is sketchy on substitute crops, which have been said to include chickpeas, cereals and barley, which are suitable to the Bekaa’s soil acidity levels. “At this point I am not in the program for that but … we will look into it. [We will] see if the UN has a plan to help provide alternative crops for the farmers in the area,” he says. Although the growers see the responsibility for sourcing alternative crops as lying with the Lebanese government, Shakkour suggests that international interested parties could do more to replace the aborted harvest. “We have destroyed the crops on one hand but did nothing for the farmers on the other,” he says. “We hope that foreign countries help us develop programs that secure the farmers’ incomes from alternative crops.” Makdishi said that until a real legal alternative was offered to the Bekaa’s farmers, hashish production would continue in Lebanon. “If we don’t give them an alternative then Lebanon will be like anywhere else in the world. If we don’t give the farmers in the Bekaa another crop they are going to continue growing hashish,” she said. By the time Shakkour leaves the field, the bulldozers and tractors have scraped hundreds of square meters worth of cannabis from the soil. They leave in their wake broken stubble and upturned roots. In spite of hashish’s apparent ability to survive even the most meticulous purge, Shakkour is confident he knows when this particular crop will resurface. “Never. This is finished. I’m sure,” he says. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=105836
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