Pubdate: Thu, 05 Apr 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Neil MacFarquhar

CATTLEMEN IN LEBANON MISS LUCRE OF HASHISH

BAALBEK, Lebanon - Hussein Jaafar, former opium poppy farmer turned 
dairyman, struggles to eke out a living from a half-dozen Pennsylvania 
milking cows while fervently wishing day and night for just one thing.

He longs to grow cannabis, the crop from which hashish is derived, again.

"Let them come and take their cows back wherever they came from," said Mr. 
Jaafar, a thin man whose furrowed brow and receding black hair makes him 
seem older than his 32 years. "I will even forgive them my down payment. I 
swear if the government would let me grow just 500 square meters of 
hashish, I would sell them."

These are difficult days in the Bekaa region of Lebanon, the season when 
farmers in the once lawless valley seeded their fields with cannabis and 
opium poppies, now banned. Given the deepening economic problems, farmers 
throughout the region are itching to resurrect their outlaw traditions.

The illicit crops, almost literally, made money grow on trees. Farmers had 
only to toss out some seeds, sprinkle a little water around if needed and, 
without ever bothering to apply fertilizer or pesticides, sit back and 
watch their plants grow seven and eight feet tall. After the harvest, they 
could walk to the edge of their fields to collect wads of dollars from the 
brokers.

Government promises to find a good substitute have so far proved barren. 
Nothing, it seems, compares to the ease and profitability of illicit crops.

The American dairy cows, specifically Holsteins, wandered into this 
quandary. They have been introduced slowly over the last four years under a 
United States agricultural loan program.

The results are somewhat mixed, with perhaps the biggest hurdle being the 
mental adjustment of the farmers. Cannabis fields can be ignored, but cows 
must be birthed, fed, nurtured and milked.

"Farmers here suddenly find themselves taking care of living souls who need 
attention every day," said Mahmoud Dally, an agricultural engineer working 
in the program. "Before they were just planting hashish or poppies and they 
didn't even have to think about it."

The cows have also become the hapless agents of one of the region's quiet 
but intense political rivalries, that between the United States and Iran. 
The Iranians back Hezbollah, or the Party of God, the guerrilla movement 
that has flourished as a militant political party partly by championing the 
concerns of the impoverished, like Lebanon's long-neglected farmers.

Hezbollah's television station, Al Manar, recently ran a segment suggesting 
that the United States was dumping inferior cows, and pictures of sick 
American cows are a staple of local press coverage.

"We hear a lot of complaints from the farmers, mainly that the American 
cows are not acclimatizing and not producing milk at the promised level," 
said Muhammad al-Khansa, the director of an experimental farm in Baalbek 
set up by the Jihad for Construction, Hezbollah's public works arm. "Many 
people say that the Americans would obviously not send their best cows to 
Lebanon."

Those on the American side are quick to dismiss the Jihad farm outreach 
program. They also point out that Hezbollah is on the United States 
government's list of terrorist organizations.

"They help a limited number of farmers who are their political supporters," 
said Marwan Sidani, the director of the dairy improvement program, serving 
as the liaison between the Agriculture Ministry and the United States 
Agency for International Development. "All they really want to do is to 
show that the U.S. cows are no good."

The Bekaa region's drug-growing tradition stretches back at least to the 
start of last century, when Lebanon's Ottoman overlords, themselves not 
immune to the allure of hashish, encouraged its cultivation.

Before Lebanon's civil war erupted in 1975, an effort was made to supplant 
the cannabis with sunflowers. To collect the offered subsidies, many 
farmers circled their drug fields with a few rings of sunflowers.

Fayrouz, a famous Lebanese diva, celebrated that particular endeavor in a 
1973 musical. The lyrics went in part: "I'm being persecuted by the 
government. I planted sunflowers, which grew into cannabis."

Farmers still relish the lore of it all. They talk of the piles of dollars 
or the time when some Americans built a temporary runway in the valley, 
landing single-engine planes crammed with Smith & Wesson revolvers and 
leaving laden with hashish.

The civil war proved something of a golden age for illicit crops. Hashish 
and the newly introduced opium poppy melded well with other dubious 
activities like training militias, smuggling low-cost electronic devices 
into Syria and, occasionally, hiding kidnapped Westerners.

By the end of the war in 1990, an estimated 75,000 acres, or one-third of 
the valley's arable land, was devoted to drugs. Cannabis and opium growing 
earned the Bekaa farmers roughly $80 million a year, or some $1,500 per 
capita, according to United Nations estimates.

By 1994 it was all gone. The Lebanese and Syrian governments decided after 
the war that if they could get off one American blacklist, it was the drug 
production list.

But frustration set in quickly, because none of the promised crop 
replacements proved viable.

"The farmers could sell a kilo" - 2.2 pounds - "of hashish for $300 cash," 
Mr. Sidani said. "How can you compare it to a kilo of potatoes for 20 cents?"

Enter the American dairy cow. The inspiration was twofold. One, Lebanon 
imports up to $300 million annually in meat and dairy products, so any 
local production would reduce import bills. Two, given the farmers' 
increasing poverty, the cows might at least help feed their families.

Starting in 1997, Lebanon paid $6 million for 3,000 American dairy cows 
delivered over four years to 1,000 farmers, a third of them in the Bekaa. 
Last year the program was extended for three years, with 5,000 cows coming 
for $10 million. The American government has chipped in $1 million so far 
for things like teaching farmers the basics of feeding and milking.

Problems are manifold. Feed, for example, is largely imported and 
expensive, so farmers give the cows hay. That lowers milk production, and 
the farmers blame the cows. This year has been particularly bad for milk 
prices - the consumption of meat and dairy products has fallen 30 percent 
because of the worldwide scares over various bovine diseases.

Mr. Jaafar, the erstwhile hashish farmer, notes that he used to spend 
almost no time in his five acres and still earned $30,000 a year, enough to 
build a sturdy two-bedroom house, drive a car and smoke Marlboros. Now he 
drives a school bus in the morning and spends the rest of the time with his 
cows. He has forsaken Marlboros and cannot afford the $400 he needs to 
install tiles over the raw cement floors of his home.

"When I got the first cow, I wasn't terribly happy with the idea of having 
a cow, but I thought at least I could live off it," he said.

Burglaries have picked up, and someone killed a gas station attendant a few 
weeks ago in an armed robbery, the first in memory.

Mr. Jaafar's neighbor Moheeb Lakis points out that in the hashish days the 
farmers had never heard of secondhand clothes. "Now everybody is buying 
secondhand clothes," he said, "no more Armani and Versace."

A main complaint about the United States program is that the cows cost too 
much. Although American officials say the $1,900 price tag per cow 
represents no profit, the Lebanese believe that the United States is being 
miserly, given that Washington demanded that the drug cultivation be 
eradicated.

"The United States program is too small, too diffuse, too expensive and 
needs better auxiliary services like vets," said Ali Osseiran, a member of 
Parliament and himself a farmer.

Enter the Iranian government. An Iranian delegation showed up in Beirut 
last month offering $50 million in farm aid, including a farm credit 
program, technicians to train the Lebanese in fish farming, beekeeping and 
improved mechanization, and food processing factories. Plus they have cows 
at $1,000 a head.

"It is a tempting proposal," said Ali Abdullah, the new agriculture 
minister. "I wish all nations would compete to help Lebanese farmers, not 
just the Americans and Iranians." Officials on the American side are 
dismissive, muttering darkly that Iranian cows carry Rift Valley fever and 
produce far less milk.

Farmers give both sides average marks. One of his American cows died, Mr. 
Jaafar noted. On the other hand, an engineer from the Hezbollah arm that 
the Iranians work through came and told him his cow shed needed better 
ventilation and a water trough.

"I told him I couldn't afford it, so if he wanted to do it, God bless him," 
Mr. Jaafar said, "But nobody has any money to do anything."

Poverty is driving many back to cultivating drugs. Some limit it to garden 
plots, telling the police they are growing canary food to make the birds 
sing better. Last year the army, preoccupied with the Israeli withdrawal 
from south Lebanon, skipped the eradication campaign.

"This year the farmers won't leave any piece of land free of hashish," said 
Lt. Michel Chakkour of the Internal Security Forces. Helicopters have been 
dropping leaflets warning farmers that growing drugs carries a maximum 
sentence of life at hard labor and a $4,000 fine.

Farmers respond by saying they will plant hashish as soon as the snow melts 
in the high fields lying hidden behind the foothills.

"If there isn't an alternative crop, then I am going to grow hashish even 
if the whole government shows up," said one farmer.

"In the days of hashish we were so happy," he said, adding, "I once owned a 
car, but now, thanks be to God, I have a cow."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens