From the farms of the Bekaa valley to the streets of Europe
General Michel Shakkour’s office, on the third floor of the Hbeish police station in Beirut, is lined with plaques and framed certificates from police departments around the world. The head of the Internal Security Force’s (ISF) General Crime Directory, Shakkour is responsible for combating narcotics, as well as prostitution and gambling. But for the past three years, Shakkour’s fight against illicit substances has largely been undermined when it comes to destroying the source of Lebanon’s narcotics production: the cannabis and poppy fields in the northern Bekaa valley.
Starting in 2006, the war with Israel and subsequent internal strife prevented the security forces from destroying the hashish crops at harvest time in early September. The next year Shakkour’s men tried again. But without the help of the army, which had been diverted to fight Fatah al Islam extremists, ISF forces came under fire from the farmers, who come from large, well-armed local families.
“This is why you have to show power through the army, because the army has tanks, planes and helicopters — they have everything,” Shakkour says.
This year has been different. Since a deal was brokered between the warring opposition and pro-government factions in Doha in May 2008, the country has witnessed a period of relative stability, allowing the security forces to focus on issues other than keeping the peace.
The ISF and Lebanese Army have reportedly succeeded in eradicating the majority of Lebanon’s illicit crops this year, as well as cracking down on some of the most notorious families in the drug trade. In late May, members of the Jaafar clan ambushed an army jeep in the Bekaa, killing four Lebanese Army soldiers and wounding a further 11. The attack was revenge for the death of a senior member of the clan, Ali Abbas Jaafar, who had 172 outstanding arrest warrants against him when he was killed by soldiers at a checkpoint near Baalbek.
In response, the army launched an offensive in the Bekaa, employing special forces and armored vehicles, setting up additional checkpoints, arresting close to 100 suspects and confiscating 1,500 kilos of drugs, weapons, military equipment and counterfeit money.

ISF seizures of illicit substances in Lebanon

According to Shakkour, the farmers keep a close eye on political developments in Lebanon in order to anticipate how much attention drug eradication will receive from security forces and their government patrons.
“They find out sometimes that they can [complete] their plantation and then get their production. So this is why they are gambling. The last three years, no eradication — so they win. This year, they lost.”

Yammouneh
During the years of the civil war, cannabis grew everywhere along the Baalbek-Hermel highway. Today the strip is barren, with little growing in the fields that line the road. Gypsies have made homes of plywood and sheets in the windswept plains where the fields once stood; scrap metal yards and junk car lots occasionally make way for men selling sacks of potatoes on the side of the road.
Turning off the highway, a winding poorly-paved road up the foot of Mount Lebanon leads to the village of Yammouneh. Nestled in a valley, the village is markedly more lush than its surroundings and has an estimated population of 4,000 to 5,000, though these days, many people live and work outside the village and abroad because of the dismal economic situation in the area.
Seventy-five percent of Yammouneh’s remaining residents depend on hashish, an extract of the cannabis plant, for their livelihoods, a local drug dealer, Mansour*, explains. According to Al Hayat, in 2007 this little village produced some 5,000 of the 70,000 hashish-cultivated dunams (1 dunam = 1,000 square meters) in the Bekaa region.
But this year, the Lebanese Army and the ISF came in and bulldozed all the fields just before the scheduled harvest.
“Why do they wait until the harvest to destroy our crops instead of doing it in June?” Mansour posits.
“Out of revenge, to punish the farmers?”

Grows like weeds
During the long lawless years of the civil war, Lebanon became a major producer and exporter of hashish, and to a lesser extent, heroin and other opiates. At its peak in 1988, Lebanon’s narcotics market was making an estimated $1.5 billion, according to Newsweek.
After the civil war ended in 1990, the United States pressured the Syrian government, whose troops were occupying Lebanon at the time, to crack down on the cultivation of illicit crops with the help of Lebanese authorities. Production continued, however, with several politicians known to be taking a cut of the profits.
Nationality of people arrested for drug offenses in Lebanon

From 1992 onwards, farmer’s crops were destroyed annually during harvest time, and farmers eventually turned to alternative crops — agricultural produce and livestock provided by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and United States Agency for International Development. The Lebanese government also opened a sugar factory in the area to spur employment.

The problem was that the Holstein cows donated by the US government cost more in upkeep than they provided in income, and the alternative crops failed to turn a profit. The Lebanese government shut down the factory after two years and the farmers, unable to make a living, returned to cultivating their hashish crops.
While Lebanon has been removed from the US list of major narcotics producing countries, it was still the largest producer of cannabis resin in West-Asia in 2007, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. This year’s crop eradication cost upwards of $200,000, with 1,000 army soldiers deployed in a show of force, in addition to the I.S.F. officers. Tractors were rented from villagers at a $100 per day to raze the crops, and additionally, manual laborers were paid to uproot any remaining plants.
“This year, a political decision was taken,” Shakkour says, alluding to an agreement between Hezbollah, which has clout in the area, and the security forces. He explains that the entire process of eradication took some three weeks and “approximately 15,000 hectares” were destroyed, which he believes constitutes “90 to 95 percent” of cannabis crops.

The help of some of the local residents was also essential to the success of the operation, Shakkour claims.
“We have a lot of informants in the areas,” he says. “Every day we get a call from one of my informants. As soon as we get this information, we go straight to the field and eradicate it.”
Prices of heroin, cocaine and cannabis resin in various years (in $)

While Shakkour says his troops met little resistance this year because of the army’s overwhelming presence, not everything went according to plan.
“[On] the third day we were in the Bouday area, one of the tractors passed over a hand grenade. The way they put it was very smart. They got it from films,” says Shakkour.
The farmers had attached a trip wire to a grenade inside of a glass cup. “When the truck passed over, it broke. We were lucky that this bomb was under the truck. If it [exploded] under a soldier, it would cut his leg or he might die. This was the only incident that happened this year. Thank God.”

From seed to harvest
“In the best areas,” says Mansour pointing to the fields on his left, “a farmer yields about 10 kilograms (kg) of hashish per dunam of cultivated land.” In most areas, a dunam will yield an average of 4 kg of hashish. Cannabis is planted between February and April, and requires no irrigation.
The cultivation of one kilo of hashish costs the farmer about $200. This includes the wages for migrant workers who plant, weed and separate the male and female cannabis — only, the female plants are potent —  as well as rental costs of tractors and trucks to carry the crops from the plain to the storage rooms where they are left to dry. The farmer then processes the cannabis with a mechanized grinder made by and purchased from the village blacksmith.
“You only need a new one [grinder] every ten years,” says Mansour, commenting on the fact that the blacksmith makes little money from the area’s cannabis cultivation.
Finally, farmers extract the most potent powder through a large sieve. The congealed powder is then packaged and sold to the drug dealer for $300 to $400 per kilo. The farmer makes about $100 to $200 from every kilo he sells to the local dealer, and about $400 to $800 per average cultivated dunam.
Outside dealers then come to the Bekaa to buy hashish from the local dealers, who sell in bulk, starting at a minimum of 100 grams (g). One kilogram of hashish wholesale will cost approximately $1,000. In Beirut, the street value of 20g is approximately $50. Thus, dealers can make about $1,500 profit from one kilogram of hashish purchased in the Bekaa.

The export market
In Europe, a kilogram of Lebanese hashish sells wholesale for $4,400 to $5,900. Dealers, according to Mansour, come from all over including Spain, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Holland to survey the crop and negotiate the price. The dealers either ship or transport hashish by land to Europe.
“If I send 500 kg to Holland by truck, it will sell for about 1.5 to 2 million euros ($2.2 million to $2.93 million) there,” says Mansour. The dealer buys that amount of hash from the farmers for $150,000 to $200,000. He pays a truck driver $15,000 to drive the truck to Holland, and ends up keeping the rest.
“One ton of hash in Holland will sell for 3 million euros ($4.4 million). 2.5 million euros ($3.66 million) of that goes to the dealers,” Mansour claims. “In a good year, a dealer can sell 5 tons of hash and make seven to eight million dollars abroad,” taking into account expenses like labor, bribes, confiscated shipments and security.
“I used to be a dealer in Holland, Turkey and Bulgaria,” he say. From 1989 to 1997, Mansour claims he trafficked drugs with a partner who was “a policeman for Interpol.”
So who becomes a drug dealer and who remains a farmer in the village?
“People with contacts outside Lebanon become drug dealers,” says Mansour.
Shakkour says that hash can also easily be flown to Cyprus.
“The cost of smuggling is nothing — you can take it on the plane. 10 kg is [worth] 30,000 euros ($43,974). The dealer can send people with a handbag,” he says. “If he pays the ass [sic] — the guy who is taking the stuff — if he gives him $5,000, he will be very happy.”
If the estimated 20,000 hectares that were cultivated this year had been harvested and trafficked to Europe, 1 million kilos of hashish would have flooded the market, worth an estimated 3 billion euros ($4.4 billion). But when supply is up, prices go down, so even in years when the hashish plants were harvested without intervention from the security forces, dealers would often avoid selling off their entire stash.
“They didn’t plant a lot this year, because they have a lot in storage,” Shakkour says.

A pretty penny for nose candy
Mansour also explains how cocaine is brought from South America to Lebanon for local sale. He says that on the street in Brazil cocaine sells for around $2 per gram.
“So for 5 kg, you’ll pay about $10,000 in Brazil. It will fit in the handbag you are carrying now,” he says. “In Brazil at the airport, you pay a bribe of $1,000 per kilo. So that’s $5,000 for 5 kg. [Upon arrival] in Lebanon, you pay $5,000 at the airport as a bribe. I’d pay you $30,000 to do that and I make a few hundred thousand dollars when I sell it here for $100 to $110 [per gram].”
Cocaine, however, is almost never sold pure to the end consumer.  Fahed*, a Lebanese man who dealt drugs in Europe before fleeing German authorities, says he normally cuts the cocaine he buys with lactose powder, at between a one-to-one to a one-to-three ratio.

The only game in town
There are few overt signs of loyalty to political parties in Yammouneh or even much of a political presence — there are close to none of the portraits of religious and political leaders or party flags that usually adorn homes and public spaces around the country.
Ahmed* is 21 years old and works as an assistant to Mansour. He also runs a one-man drug business — growing his own small plot of hashish, but also weeding, harvesting, processing, packaging and selling his stash across the country.
Asked how much money he earns. “A lot!” he boasts, adding, “This year was excellent, because supplies are down… I sell about 2 to 3 kilos a year… all over the country. In Beirut, I make the most money. I sell a gram for $2 there.” Ahmed grosses about $6,000 per year or $500 a month, not including the cost of gasoline for his moped. In addition, he delivers drugs for other dealers. Compared to his parents, who grow apples, Ahmed earns a good living. “My father hates what I do,” he says. “But what else is there?”

Learning from UNDP’s failures
So far, no alternative crops have succeeded in earning the farmers a livable wage.
“We can grow some apples,” Mansour says, “but only one harvest in five years is any good, because of the cold.”
He adds that the merchants who purchase the apples often shortchange the farmers on even the pittance the apples sell for.
“The farmers pay more [to plant and harvest] than they get back with apples,” he says.
UNDP alternative crop programs were ceased in the late 1990s, and pledged international donations never materialized. According to a Newsweek article in 2001, donors gave only $16.7 million of the $300 million the UN says it needed to develop Bekaa agriculture. But Western officials accused the UN of wasting the money it did receive through mismanagement and corruption.
“We succeed in the eradication only by force,” says Shakkour. “But we didn’t succeed to combat the idea. This is why the next year, or any year, if they [the farmers] will find that the situation in the country is not good, they will go back to planting [hashish]. The only solution is to get rid of the idea from their minds. And to get rid of the idea, you have to show them [other] projects, [other] alternatives.
Edgard Chehab, the current UNDP Energy and Environment Program manager, admits that the agency made major mistakes in the past.
“They [the UNDP’s earlier initiative] did not identify alternative crops that farmers were used to,” he says. “The crops needed lots of water, maintenance and investment, which made the project unsuccessful. They didn’t look at the marketing for farmers before.”

Harnessing cannabis’ potential
Chehab thinks he might have found a solution for Lebanon’s illicit crop farmers. In cooperation with the Beirut-based private investment firm Phystone, the UNDP is introducing pilot projects in the Bekaa for hashish farmers to grow industrial hemp — the non-intoxicating cousin of cannabis.
“The farmers are used to hashish and industrial hemp is very similar,” says Chehab. “It doesn’t need water and the Bekaa is dry. No fertilizer is necessary. ”
Hemp oil, which is rich in Omega 3 and Omega 6, can be extracted from the plants, and is a popular dietary supplement in Europe and the US to reduce cholesterol and the likelihood of heart attacks. In addition, the oil is used in cosmetics, and the fibers can be used as a combustible to heat homes, or to make rope and textiles.
Cultivation will begin in March 2010, in Deir El Ahmar, Baalbek and Hermel, according to Chehab. For the first year, they will cultivate only 500 dunams. By 2011 it will increase, he says.
“The UNDP will make sure that this is a joint venture between small farmers — who are guaranteed a lump sum — and that in addition, part of the profit will go to the farmers so they can stop thinking about hashish.”
Safi Harb, the chief executive officer of Phystone, says that the hemp seeds have already been purchased. He says his company identified the sector because they are interested in agro-industries, and to fill the void left by the Lebanese government and its seemingly non-existent infrastructure.
“This is a private equity project. We will have to convince the farmers that it can work by buying all the crops from them,” during the pilot phase. “Once we have enough supplies and raw material, we plan to set up a factory in Lebanon for hemp oil,” as well as for hemp-based cosmetics and by-products, and eventually a textile industry. Harb says he is ready to invest with the farmers and that they will not be exploited.
“We’ll buy all their products… at pre-agreed rates,” he says.
Harb acknowledges that they have yet to see how many kilos of seeds will be harvested per hectare. Phystone and the UNDP will guarantee the farmers a net profit of $150 to $160 per dunam, and farmers can plant and harvest two cycles per year, because each cycle lasts only 3 months.
“With industrial hemp, their profit will be cut by half — but its legal and sustainable,” Chehab says. “It is better than tomatoes, but not as good as hashish.”
Phystone plans to increase their project’s reach to a maximum of 5,000 to 7,000 hectares of industrial hemp. But while the project seemingly has all the elements of a successful venture, Harb admits that this depends on the farmers.
“This is the only plant that you can use everything with… Lebanon has the perfect climate and conditions — sunshine, the soil and seasons,” he says. Each phase of the project requires capital investment, though, and enough raw materials.
“The profits,” he says, “depend on the volume [produced].” With the pilot projects, Phystone will not be losing money. “We would not enter if the return on investments is below 20 percent over a three to four year period,” he says confidently. “The return on equity is higher.”
Harb plans to invite the farmers to be involved in the agro-industrial sector and also says he will offer the farmers shares. Chehab says the UNDP will ensure that the farmers are not exploited.
But not everyone has a sunny view of this newest venture.
“What are they doing — experimenting with us?” Mansour asks skeptically. “We will grow hashish until something works. We want a valid alternative, or next year, we will protect the hashish plants with our blood.”

The legalization debate around the world
In 2005, 500 economists, including the prominent conservative Milton Friedman, published an open letter to the US President and Congress advocating the legalization of marijuana.

“Replacing [cannabis] prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation would save $7.7 billion per year in… expenditures on prohibition enforcement and would produce tax revenues of at least $2.4 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like most consumer goods,” stated the letter. “If… [cannabis] were taxed similarly to alcohol or tobacco, it might generate as much as $6.2 billion annually.”

Additionally, economists argued that the state would put drug traffickers and dealers out of business if the drug market were regulated.

Some European countries, Canada and recently Mexico, have taken the step of decriminalizing cannabis possession, meaning that personal use and — in some cases — cultivation of small amounts will not incur criminal penalties. This separates governments’ soft drugs policy from their hard drug policy, though drug trafficking is still illegal.

Holland decriminalized cannabis possession and consumption in 1994 and did not witness an associated increase in drug abuse as a result — crime rates actually dropped. According to a 1995 report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the Dutch have the lowest drug addiction rates in Europe. The US, in contrast, which has severe penalties for drug possession, has a much higher rate of drug abuse, and incarceration rates for drug-offenders are higher than for any another crime, including murder. On the state-level alone, the US spends more than $6 billion per year to incarcerate drug offenders.

Drug producer countries, like Columbia, have recently started to consider decriminalization or legalization as a way of combating drug mafias and reducing drug-related violence. Currently the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and related UN agencies are opposed to member states legalizing illicit drugs, which is largely a reflection of the US’ position.

Shakkour also expressed skepticism over the program, noting that the UNDP has not coordinated properly with the ISF. This recently led to the confiscation of hemp seeds which were being imported into the country, as the authorities confused them with their illicit counterparts.

The legalization question

The other program the UNDP has looked into in recent years is the legalization of cannabis.
“We were asked by the previous minister of agriculture in 2007 to study the possibilities for the legalization of hashish for medical purposes,” says Chehab.
The UNDP concluded, however, that hashish couldn’t be legalized because it has not proven useful for medical reasons. “It’s only useful for patients with HIV and cancer, against vomiting and loss of appetite. But it’s not yet proven to be a medicine,” say Chehab. The UNDP also concluded however that opium, which is used to make codeine, could be legalized.
“But the UN has very strict guidelines for this: Lebanon does not fulfill the minimum requirements in terms of stability, etcetera,” Chehab says.
While it seems like the private sector and the UNDP are the only ones concerned with a long-term solution to Lebanon’s cannabis problem, Shakkour thinks that the solutions for Bekaa farmers should not come from the outside, but rather from the Lebanese government. On this, the drug enforcement chief and Mansour, the drug dealer, agree.
“The government has done nothing but make promises,” says Mansour. “They have to understand, there is no life for us after hashish.”

*Editor’s note: Names have been changed to protect anonymity.

By Executive – Issue 123 – October 2009 (http://www.executive-magazine.com/getarticle.php?article=12332)