For the second year in a row, cannabis farmers in the Bekaa Valley have been able to reap their harvests without being harassed or prosecuted by the security forces. But now farmers are facing a new problem: a flooded market and falling prices.
The Lebanese-Syrian border – from the outskirts of Al-Qaa in northern Bekaa down to the outskirts of Brital near Baalbek – has become a front line for the ongoing war between the armed Syrian opposition – mainly ISIS and Nusra Front – and Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army.
The towns and villages of the northern Bekaa Valley have been subjected to shelling and threats of attacks by the Syrian rebels, and as a result, the Army and other security forces have been forced to concentrate their efforts on neutralizing the security and military danger posed by the rebels in this area.
Citizens there are already carrying guns and helping to monitor the mountain passages, which the rebels are expected to try to use as the weather gets colder, and the cannabis farmers too have found themselves aligned with the security forces in order to keep Lebanese areas safe from invasion.
Due to these factors, the farmers’ cannabis crops are no longer targeted by the Army.
Abu Mahmoud, a cannabis farmer from the village of Yammouneh in northwest Baalbek, expressed his relief that the plants on his 10 dunums of land were not destroyed, especially given that the crop this year was good. Like most of the cannabis farmers in the Bekaa Valley, he inherited the job from his father, and has stuck with it due to the lack of any other employment opportunities in the area that pay as well.
But it seems that the Army and ISF’s decision to stop trying to destroy the cannabis plants – for the moment – has led to another problem for the farmers: the retail price is dropping due to the sheer amount of the product on the market.
With no one to destroy the crops, the local market is likely to drown in cannabis – both the more expensive version, known as the rose, and the cheaper one, called kabsha – hence the drastic reduction in prices.
No one apart from the major traders, who have ways to smuggle it abroad to Egypt, Europe and the United States, are able to benefit from this rare situation.
“Most of the cannabis is being smuggled to Syria,” said a security source, adding that the gangs in that country had been buying around 30-100 kilograms or more each time and were taking advantage of the chaos there to smuggle the drug to nearby countries, such as Turkey, Jordan, and even those in the Gulf.
Hussein N., a farmer from the village of Al-Qasr in northern Hermel, agreed that the planting and harvesting of cannabis this year had been very calm. He explained that this year the fields near Baalbek and Hermel planted with the drug covered five times more land than before and as a result the crops were no longer limited to the outskirts of Hermel but were now very close to residential villages and cities in the northern Bekaa.
The process of producing cannabis is now in its final stages, he said, after all the harvested plants have been secretly transferred to buildings – warehouses and so on – to be dried, sorted and packaged.
Workers separate the valuable powder found in the cannabis plant – known as THC – from the buds, leaves and stalks, and then store it in bags made of cotton and flax.
But while this part of the process has been easy, Hussein said that for him, the selling side of things had been at a near-standstill since last year, as they had not been able to dispose of the drug. The bittersweet truth for him and all other cannabis farmers is that this plant is now as common as other plants in the area and no longer provides the same revenues as before.
He believes this is due to a combination of the cessation of the crop destruction, which has led to a flooded market, and increased security at the Lebanese land and maritime borders, which has sown fear among traders of falling foul of such measures and has made exporting more difficult.
Three years ago, before the Syrian crisis, just over 1.2 kilograms of potent THC powder would sell for $1,500. Now, the maximum traders can get for this amount is $500, and the possibility remains that this price will continue to drop.
Mahfouz Mahfouz, the head of the Development Association in Hermel, estimated that the amount of land planted with cannabis this year totaled around 60,000-80,000 dunums, one third of the total suitable land for the drug in the Bekaa Valley. He said that each dunum of land produced between 500 and 750 kilograms of raw green cannabis, which cost $500 to produce from start to finish and could be sold for around $1,500 if it was unprocessed, or around $5,000 if it had been processed.
Mahfouz added he was in favor of legalizing cannabis, so long as it was just for medicinal purposes, given that it was a profitable crop that had not been replaced in spite of the limited substitution programs implemented from the ’90s onward.
During the Civil War, the Bekaa Valley produced up to 1,000 tons of cannabis every year, but after the war ended, a crop substitution plan was designed with the help of the United Nations Development Program. In 1994, the U.N. announced that the Bekaa Valley was clear of drug farms.
The cost of maintaining that was estimated to be $300 million. But as funds dried up, cannabis producers slowly regrouped.
Continuing crop substitution programs, including cultivating plants with medicinal properties to sell to pharmaceutical companies, eventually all failed due to a lack of funding and a strategic plan.
Over the last decade, several other programs with the objective of lifting the Bekaa Valley’s farmers out of poverty – and thus reducing their reliance on growing cannabis – have yet to be implemented.
Instead, security forces were instructed to destroy crops and prevent farmers from planting new ones, a policy that ground to a halt in 2012 after farmers blocked the roads and violence erupted in Boudai, Saideh and Allaq during a military operation.
In the end, several of the farmers were injured, an Internal Security Forces car carrying members of the anti-drug bureau was attacked and rockets were launched at the Lebanese Army.
By Rakan al-Fakih
