Hash (25 page)

In Denmark, Hell’s Angels gangs dominate the hash business. In 2012, one such gang admitted smuggling 3.6 tons of hash. A court heard that the Danish police’s gang unit, Task Force East, had gathered video surveillance of four bikers storing the drugs at various locations. The 53-year-old leader of the gang owned a sports car, jewellery, a large amount of cash and a villa – assets which he had earlier claimed came from a large lottery win. Near Copenhagen, a small ‘hash’ community has sprung up in a quiet village called Christiania. Visitors to the village are able to buy all grades of hash openly. Huge blocks of hash are openly displayed on tables on both sides of the main street on market stalls made of wood and plastic. Prices vary from €8 to €20 depending on the quality, claim the dealers. However, Christiania is much more than just a hash market. Inhabitants run it as a self-sufficient village with its own houses, a school and even a bar. One recent visitor described the village as ‘a hash resort’.

The hash market in Germany is described by experts as ‘steady’ and ‘very open’ as authorities tend to take a lenient attitude towards smokers. Like Denmark, many of the hash gangs come from within the Hell’s Angel biking communities. In 2012, police raided a Hell’s Angels hide-out in the German city of Düsseldorf and entered a World War II bunker to find a huge cannabis plantation – complete with a round-the-clock team of professional gardeners.

Hash barons have turned Ghana into a worldwide drugs hub. Often shipments of the drug from Morocco travel south to Ghana and Gambia before being flown or shipped back north into Europe. One hash baron was arrested in Gambia and then escaped police custody and took refuge in Ghana. He was eventually extradited back to Gambia in early 2012.

Investigations conducted by security agencies revealed that the same drug baron had travelled widely across the world, visiting countries such as the UK, France, Belgium, Benin, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Jamaica, the UAE, Sierra Leone, Togo, The Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia.

Hash production is rife on the holiday island of Crete. In many remote mountain villages, cannabis growers and dealers routinely take pot-shots at police helicopters or vehicles patrolling their area, prompting the Greek media to refer to this region as a ‘Greek Colombia’ and a ‘narco state within a state’.

In 2010, three Greek police officers taking part in a raid on a hash plantation were ambushed and shot at by suspected growers armed with AK-47s. The attack took place in the village of Malades, about nine miles from Heraklion, the island’s largest city. The shooting was the second serious attack by hash growers against police on the island in seven months. The Greek government responded with a massive police sweep and house-to-house searches. Police arrested 16 people in connection with the ambush and a series of bank robberies, but recovered none of the hash and very few of the heavy weapons, believed to have been used in that assault.

Hash is big business in Guatemala. Not only is it an ideal dropping-off point for drugs travelling to North America, but a large section of the local population smoke cannabis.

Crime cartels – many of whom smuggle hash – are said to be winning the multi-billion-dollar drugs war. The Guatemala government admits there is little hope of bringing most of them to justice. President Otto Perez Molina – who has spent more than 20 years on the frontline battling some of the most vicious drugs gangs in the world – says narcotics of all kinds should now be viewed in the same way as alcohol and tobacco – and legalised. Many of those fighting the powerful drug cartels in Central and South America agree with the Guatemalan president that legalisation of hard drugs is the lesser of two evils.

Authorities in India are increasingly concerned by the criminal connections between hash production and terrorism. This was highlighted by the 2012 arrest of two men who worked for one of the country’s most notorious hash barons, also suspected of being the mastermind behind the 1993 Bombay (now Mumbai) bombings that left over 250 dead. India claims that narco-terrorism is a threat to itself and the global community.

The US state department even published evidence that exposed the same Indian gangs’ regular hash smuggling routes, which crossed South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa – from Afghanistan and Thailand to the US, western Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.

There is a big hash-smoking culture in Israel, which is often overshadowed by the conflicts that continue to rage in that part of the world. In the capital Tel-Aviv, local cops don’t even bother going after hash users and suppliers. Much of the hash consumed comes in via neighbouring Arabs. They smuggle it in through the West Bank, some of it wrapped in large bundles with eagles emblazoned on the seals, with the slogan, written in Arabic, ‘We are the victors!’

There is an ever-increasing demand for hash in Italy, thanks to millions of regular smokers. In July 2012, police in the south of the country arrested ten people and impounded over seven tons of hash in an operation against an alleged trafficking gang importing the drugs from Spain. The suspects were arrested and charged with drug trafficking. Police also recently seized seven tons of cannabis in the northern city of Genoa, during an operation that led to the international arrests of nine men in Canada and two in Pakistan.

Hash has been a way of life for many growers and users here for many decades but in recent years the authorities have tried to ‘clean up’ the island’s image by cracking down on the mass hash production on their doorstep. It’s claimed that much of the confiscated hash eventually finds its way back onto the island’s lucrative drugs market. But Jamaican authorities have now begun a programme of publicly destroying huge quantities of hash oil during burning operations on wasteland near the capital, Kingston.

Japan’s notorious gangsters, the Yakuza, have been involved in the hash trade for centuries. This Japanese version of the mafia claims to be descended from Robin Hood-like characters, who defended their villages against roving bandits many centuries ago. But today, the Yakuza is a mighty and entrenched criminal network with nearly 80,000 members operating in 22 crime syndicates, and raking in billions of dollars a year, much of it from the sale of hash on Japan’s streets.

The emergence of hash in Kuwait has alarmed officials in the oil-rich kingdom. Two Kuwaitis were recently arrested for possessing hashish when their car was stopped for driving too close to the US Embassy in Kuwait City. Not long after this, a Kuwaiti youth was arrested by a police patrol for possessing hashish and was immediately handed over to the General Department for Drug Control.

In June 2012, a gang of hash smugglers dumped 242 kilograms of cannabis in the ocean off Kuwait when they spotted a Coast Guard boat approaching. Authorities had been alerted thanks to the Coast Guard surveillance system that detected a motorboat entering the territorial waters of Kuwait. The men on the boat threw two bags into the sea before they were arrested. A team of divers later retrieved the two bags.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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’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.

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.

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.

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.

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.