“These people have been forced to grow hash and be outlaws, because this region has been abandoned by the Lebanese state and the regional and international community,” says Hamadan Dandash, farmer from the Hermel district, referring to those who continue to grow illicit crops despite the government’s decade-long crackdown. “If there weren’t patrols everyone would grow it because they are, prisoners; the crisis taken hold of them more and more.” (, Though still minute compared to what was grown during the war, the last couple of years has seen an increasing number of farmers in the Baalbek-Hermel region plant illicit crops, according to the Internal Security Forces (ISF). “Each year the farmers try to go back to planting hashish and poppies,” says colonel Michel Chakkour, head of the ISF’s drug control unit, at his office in Ras Beirut’s notorious Hobeiche building. “But we believe we destroy more than 95% of
