LEBANON
Despite constant political turmoil in its capital Beirut, overstretched security forces and a lifeless economy, the farmers in the notorious hash fields of the Bekaa Valley have cultivated relatively large hash harvests since the 1980s. Lebanese police estimate that there are 16,000 acres of hashish in the Bekaa’s sun-baked plain. In recent years, Lebanese army units have tried to destroy the Bekaa hash crop as part of a Government-sponsored eradication programme. But it usually ends in chaos and bloodshed with angry local farmers and hash dealers turning their weapons on the troops because the farmers believe they have the right to grow cannabis. In Lebanon, hash is suspected of helping subsidise the Hezbollah terrorist group, accused of murdering Americans, Israelis, Lebanese, Europeans, and the citizens of many other nations. Originally founded in 1982, this Lebanese group has evolved from a local menace into a global terrorist network.
MEXICO
US drug enforcement officials believe that Mexico’s most violent hash cartel, the Sinaloa, is trying to set up operations in Britain, France and the Netherlands. Three members of Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) met US agents on the Texas-Mexico border in 2012 in a bid to put a stop to the Sinaloa taking hold in Britain and Europe. Mexican crime groups have previously made attempts to establish a presence in Europe but it seems that the Sinaloa is intent on pushing for worldwide ‘rights’ to the global hash market.
NEPAL
Nepal is renowned among hash smokers as the home of the finest hand-pressed hash on the globe. As a result, there is a relatively small but highly lucrative hash trade between Nepal and Europe, in particular. Yet some of the methods used by hash smugglers in Nepal down the years have defied belief. In the capital Kathmandu, in 2012, police found hash packed in tablet form in a consignment of ginger in a suitcase on a bus recently arrived from the city of Dhading. The smuggler had posed as a vegetable farmer but was caught by law enforcement officials after a tip-off.
Criminals have even turned their own houses into hashish factories. The hash is then smuggled to international cartels via India. One notorious gang shipped hash via Goa in India, wrapped in blankets that would ultimately land in different countries including the USA, UK, Canada, Japan and Germany. Officials believe much of the nation’s cannabis also goes to China through a specially organised criminal network.
NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand is believed to have more hash smokers per head of population than anywhere else in the world. This means there is a big market for hash and the authorities are struggling to crack down on the hash gangs. A rare breakthrough in the battle against the drug barons came in July 2012, when property valued at more than $2 million in cities including Dunedin, Queenstown and Invercargill were linked to a multi-million-dollar cannabis-growing ring uncovered by police. The highly organised gang had been operating for decades in New Zealand and hash valued at $4.5 million was seized during the execution of search warrants by police.
PORTUGAL
In 2001, Portugal became the first European nation to decriminalise possession of all drugs – from marijuana to heroin – within its borders. While many critics feared the drug policy change would lead to drug tourism while simultaneously worsening the country’s high rate of hard drug use, it is claimed that it did nothing of the sort.
RUSSIA
It is not clear how much, if any hash, is produced inside Russia but recent surveys suggest that millions of Russians now smoke hash on a daily basis. As a result of this demand, the notoriously cold-blooded Russian Mafia have spread their illicit tentacles into India, according to crime experts. Russian hash barons have homed in on an area around the popular Indian coastal resort of Goa, India, where they have ‘taken over’ a number of local hash farms, as well as setting up secret supply routes back to the former Soviet Union.
SCOTLAND
In Scotland south-east Asian trafficking gangs are said to be the force behind its hash farm trade – with £40 million of the drug seized by cops in 2011 alone. The invasion of these eastern drug lords – who harvest cannabis in homes across the country – was first uncovered thanks to a local newspaper investigation.
In just over four years, police battling the immigrant drug gangs have seized enough plants to cover the three pitches at Glasgow football stadiums Ibrox, Parkhead and Hampden. Police believe the properties had been converted into drug farms by trafficked workers to rake in a fortune from the illegal trade. Of 304 people arrested three-quarters were Chinese, and 22 per cent were from Vietnam, mostly victims of the evil drug barons.
SINGAPORE
Singapore’s draconian Misuse of Drugs Act punishes possession of even minuscule amounts of hash, and prescribes execution if you’re found guilty of carrying large amounts of any drug. Under the Misuse of Drugs Act, the burden of proof lies with the defendant, not on the government. If you’re caught with large amounts of drugs, you are simply presumed by law to be trafficking. It goes even further: if you own a house or a car in which illegal drugs have been found, you are presumed under the law to have possession of the drug, unless you can prove otherwise.
SOUTH AFRICA
Well-organised gangs are said to be taking advantage of the rock-bottom price of South African hash – known locally as dagga – to enjoy profit margins as high as 4,000 per cent. Police are warning that those behind the trade could become richer and more powerful than those trafficking cocaine and heroin. Hash from South Africa and neighbouring countries is some of the most potent in the world and now accounts for a relatively large number of seizures in the UK.
SRI LANKA
The sunshine paradise island Sri Lanka – desperately trying to promote peace and stability after a generation of civil war – has stepped up its pursuit of hash criminals. In April 2012, police arrested a 23-year-old British national linked to a hash smuggling ring. The country’s Police Narcotics Bureau (PNB) at the island’s Katunayake airport detained the man as he attempted to leave for Thailand. He was a member of a street drama troupe and allegedly a drug addict. His friend, another British national, was arrested when he attempted to pick up the parcel left by the first man, which contained hashish hidden inside magazines. Both men deny the charges that have been levelled against them.
THAILAND
Two Chinese tourists visiting Thailand in 2011 were caught in possession of hash in the town of Naklua. They claimed they were unaware that hash was illegal in Thailand. The police did not accept their excuse for smoking and possessing the drug and the pair were locked up to await a court appearance.
TURKEY
A total of 26 tons of cannabis were seized in a police anti-trafficking operation in the province of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey, in July 2012. Local officials claimed the hash had been produced by the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella political organisation that includes the notorious terrorist group the PKK. In the towns of Lice, Hazro and Kocakoy in Diyarbakir, the PKK and KCK openly grow cannabis and turn the majority of it into hash. The PKK is labelled as a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States, and it seems drug trafficking is a main source of its income.
UAE
In January 2011, police in the city of Sharjah made their biggest drug haul in 20 years after seizing 2,534 kilograms of hash at a local port following a tip-off and sting operation. The drugs were found in a ship transiting through Khorfakhan waters. Police said they were tipped off when the smugglers began searching for a local buyer for their hash.
Police eventually arrested twelve Iranians and two Pakistanis in connection with the bust. The boat was brought to shore by a tugboat, and the suspects confessed to planning to smuggle the drugs into the UAE.
UNITED STATES
The US continues to pile pressure on many hash-producing countries to eradicate all cannabis harvesting, and the world’s most powerful nation regularly passes some of the heaviest sentences in the world for those connected to the hash b
usiness. The Oklahoma Senate recently passed a bill that would mandate a sentence of up to life in prison for making hashish out of marijuana.
VIETNAM
Vietnam became renowned for its high-quality hash during its 10-year war with the United States, but the communist government in power since the war ended in 1975 has some of the toughest drug trafficking laws in the world. Despite this, buying pot in Hanoi is ‘very easy’, and it costs about 100,000 VND – about $6 – a joint.
In 2009 five Chinese men, ranging in ages from 42 to 57, were sentenced to death in northern Vietnam for trafficking almost eight tons of hash destined for Canada. The cannabis came from Pakistan and was about to be shipped to North America through the Vietnamese port of Mong Cai when Vietnamese customs agents swooped.
APPENDIX
THE DIRTY DOZEN BIGGEST EVER HASH BUSTS
• Afghan police in the province of Kandahar seized what is reckoned to be the biggest stockpile of hash ever recovered, in 2008, with a wholesale value of $400 million. The hash weighed 261 tonnes – as much as 30 double-decker London buses – and was found hidden in several trenches. The region is about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Pakistani border.
• US Federal drug agents uncovered 50,000 pounds of marijuana hidden in a ‘nondescript’ house in Queens, New York, in 2009 as part of a crackdown on a drug-smuggling operation in neighbouring Canada. The street value was $150 million. Ten people were arrested.
• In Afghanistan in 2007, coalition forces uncovered £200 million worth of hash buried deep in an underground complex of trenches and bunkers. The haul was reportedly meant to help finance the Taliban in their war against the West.
• At the port of Riyadh, in Saudia Arabia, in 2010, almost 12,000 pounds of hashish worth in the region of $35 million was seized. Seven East Asian men and an Arab male were arrested in connection with the bust. Saudi Arabia is governed by Sharia law – which prescribes the death penalty for convicted drug traffickers.
• Law enforcement authorities in Houston, Texas, seized more than 19,000 pounds of hash stored inside two yellow school buses in a remote area south west of the city in March 2007. US Immigration and Customs agents estimated that the hash haul had a street value of almost $50 million.
• The Mexico-based ‘Victor Emillio Cazares-Gastellum’ drug trafficking gang was busted with 27,229 pounds of marijuana by US authorities in 2007. That and other drugs found by agents were given a conservative street value of $45.2 million. More than 400 members of the cartel were arrested and authorities confiscated $6 million in property assets, 100 weapons and 94 vehicles.
• A US Coast Guard unit discovered 26,000 pounds of hash aboard a 63-foot yacht Arrakis, in November, 1984. It was the largest West Coast bust up to that time and worth in excess of $10 million on the open market.
• In October, 2009, members of the British Army’s Black Watch regiment in Afghanistan seized six tons of hash – including a block the size of a football pitch – during a three-day aviation assault mission to clear insurgent equipment from the Lakari Bazaar in the Garmsir district of American-controlled southern Helmand Province. The hash was said to be worth ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ on the open market.
• A raid by the US Drug Enforcement Agency and Afghan counter-narcotics agents in July, 2012, in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province uncovered a massive underground bunker that contained approximately 3,125 kilograms of pre-packaged hashish and another 2,500 kilograms of marijuana worth more than $200 million on the open market.
• Canadian police in late 2010 arrested eight people and seized more than 43 tons of hashish with an estimated street value of CAN $860 million after raids in four different countries.
• Three Israelis were arrested in the British port of Southampton in April, 2008, on suspicion of trying to smuggle over six tons of hash into the country. Police at the time called it the UK’s largest ever hash haul. The hash had been purchased for hundreds of thousands of dollars and was expected to fetch more than $15 million on the open market.
• Mexican hash traffickers built their own version of an underground railroad in 2011 to transport cannabis across the California–Mexico border. After following a suspicious truck to a Tijuana warehouse, police found the entrance to the freshly-excavated 1,800-foot long tunnel complete with a light rail system that smoothly delivered hash through a crawlspace on the Californian side. All in all, authorities seized 30 tons of hash worth $20 million.
ALSO BY WENSLEY CLARKSON
On 26 November 1983 six armed robbers escaped with £28 million worth of gold bullion from a Brink’s-Mat warehouse at London’s Heathrow Airport. The heist changed the face of British crime for ever. In the following years, many of those involved, innocent and guilty alike, have been sent to an early grave. Two decades on, the death toll is still rising.
Nobody is better placed than Wensley Clarkson to track the vicious, violent and unexpected waves that followed in its wake, or bring to life its cast of larger-than-life characters. From small-time crime in south-east London, to ‘the heist of the century’ and its bloody consequences, Wensley Clarkson’s The Curse of Brink’s-Mat is an epic tale of villainy, gold and revenge.
Available from:
www.amazon.co.uk
www.quercusbooks.co.uk
ALSO AVAILABLE
Among Bali’s drug dealers ‘It’s snowing in Bali’ is code that the paradise island is full of cocaine. For the men who run the country’s drug empires, it’s time to get rich and party hard.
Snowing in Bali is the story of the drug scene that’s made Bali one of the world’s most important destinations in the global distribution of narcotics. Kathryn Bonella, bestselling author of Hotel K, has been given extraordinary access into the lives of the biggest players in Bali’s drug world. She charts their rise to incredible wealth and power, and their drug-fuelled lifestyles: filled with orgies, outrageous extravagance and surfing.
From the highs of multi-million dollar deals to the desperate lows of death row in an Indonesian high security jail, Snowing in Bali is a unique, uncensored insight into a hidden world.
Available from:
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