QUAD BREATH
Well-Known Member
The geopolitics of Afghani hash
By Pete Brady on March 20, 2002
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.
Dutch nerderhashYet, 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.
Morrocan oil hashHash bashed
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).
Morrocan oil hashPapa 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.
By Pete Brady on March 20, 2002
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.
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).
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.
