Making Hash of War

"As you know, our politicians are thieves. We gave them time to reform the region, to introduce alternative industries, but they did nothing. Every time we get help from overseas to this end they steal it."
"We are selling hashish, and if anyone from the government tries to come close to it, we'll kill them."
"This year we had a good year. All of my main growers made at least half a million dollars this year."
Ali Nasri Shamas, Lebanese drug lord, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon

^{A huge mound of marijuana at Ali Nasri Shamas's factory (Ruth Sherlock/The Telegraph)}

Subsistence farmers across the region no longer grow beet crops. Huge tracts of agricultural land are now covered in marijuana plants, carefully tended, offering the kind of economic returns that make them the crop of choice in this country which the last thirty years has seen transformed from one of edgy though useful cooperation between its religious factions, to a country perpetually at war with itself. A country, moreover, that seems to have two governments, two militaries, two agendas.

And the legitimate government is losing out, while the Islamist Hezbollah, now a 'democratic' part of the government, has replaced it in a sense when it comes to dictating where Lebanon holds its regional alliances. The distemper between Christians, Shiites and Sunnis has never been completely without its threats of disequilibrium, but threat has become reality, and everyone treads on tenterhooks. Syria's occupation of Lebanon, brought to an end, does not appear to have released the country back to its previous state of intolerant tolerance.

It is now bound to the Islamic Republic of Iran through the overwhelming military presence of its proxy Islamist military, Hezbollah, and since Syria is within Iran's tight orbit, so too is Lebanon drawn inexorably into that orbit. It isn't that kind of politics, however, that appears to consume Lebanon's new drug lords, but the non-interference of government in their marijuana fields. The drug lords have their very own militias, in any event, and will brook no interference in their trade.

No longer will government forces seek to stem the growth of the illegal crops by burning them; the army's focus is riveted on the Syrian civil war, and the destabilization brought to the neighbourhood by the broader Islamic State threat. Even the farmers growing their crops and selling them at a tidy profit to the drug lords have stockpiled AK47s, ammunition, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades to defend themselves and their trade.

Processing plants sift out top-quality hash en route to Europe. Lebanon's security forces  turn a blind eye to the industry. Armed as competently as they are, the thought is they could be of use in keeping order if ever the instability next door floods completely into Lebanon. As criminal as the drug industry is, even greater criminality oozes out of Syria and Iraq.

There is an abundance of marijuana, so much so that prices have plummeted reflecting the oversupply. Where two years earlier a kilo of hashish brought $1,200, the price now is a mere $350, but still representing more than farmers could expect growing any other crop. Most of it heads out to Syria and Egypt, some of it lands in Europe.

Ali Nasri Shamas, now a local drug lord, portrays himself righteously as a man in conflict with a corrupt government. He 'redistributes' money to an area of the country undeveloped for centuries. His employees speak of him as "the friend of the poor". How can he go wrong?

Decades of civil war has left the country flooded with militia groups and weapons. The government hasn't the political unity or military authority to exert national laws. Security forces know that in the past when they destroyed illegal crops, farmers and their protective squads retaliated by attacking military bases. Was there any country more fractured than this one, once called the most beautiful and civilized of the Arab Middle East?