Lebanon’s bumper crop

You will find broad smiles on the faces of farmers in the northern Bekaa this autumn after they successfully brought in the largest hashish harvest since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. The grinding political crisis between the government and the opposition as well as the additional security commitments of an overstretched Lebanese army encouraged the farmers to return to old ways this year to supplement their meager income from legitimate crops by growing hashish which they process into cannabis resin and sell to local dealers for a hefty profit. The Internal Security Forces (ISF) estimates that some 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres) of drug crops — mainly hashish with a small amount of opium poppies — were planted this year in remoter stretches of the northern Bekaa. Farmers normally can sell the cannabis resin for about $1,000 a kilo although they expect the price to drop to about $600