Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
Jane's Intelligence Review
November 1, 2005
In the first of two reports on hashish production and trafficking
in the Rif area of Morocco, Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy examines the cultural,
political and economic factors that have engendered cannabis cultivation
in the area. Part two: Morocco's
smuggling rackets: hashish, people and contraband,
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, Jane's
Intelligence Review, 1 December 2005.
The Rif region of Morocco is home to probably the largest acreage
of cannabis cultivation in the world, and the hashish produced makes
the country the world’s largest producer and exporter of the
drug.
The Rif itself is estimated to be the source for 42 per cent of global
hashish production as cannabis cultivation in the region has expanded
rapidly there since the 1980s, in part due to increasing European
demand. The practice has also been tolerated for both political and
economic reasons, allowing it to become the region's main economic
activity.
In 2003, in its first ever Cannabis survey, the United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated that 134,000 hectares of cannabis
were cultivated in Morocco, that is, a little more than the estimated
area cultivated with opium poppies in Afghanistan in 2004 (131,000
ha).
However, hashish production in Morocco differs greatly from opium
production in Afghanistan and Myanmar, and from coca production in
Colombia, for no armed conflict challenges the writ of the Cherifian
kingdom over its territory. Although cannabis cultivation in Morocco
is illegal, in the area a complex set of colonial, political and economic
factors has resulted in an entrenched tolerance of the cannabis plant.
That said, the rapid growth of cannabis cultivation in the Rif since
the 1980s means that hashish production is now the main economic activity
in the Rif area, and, according to European Union estimates and the
work of Spanish agronomist and authority on cannabis cultivation in
Morocco, Pascual Moreno, hashish production is probably Morocco’s
main source of foreign currency and is certainly a major contributor
to the kingdom’s gross domestic product.
Such economic factors, combined with the sustained demand for hashish
in Western Europe, mean that cannabis cultivation in the Rif now presents
an economic, political, and even ecological challenge, not only for
the Rif, but also for Morocco as a whole, and for the international
(and particularly European) community.
Hashish production
The UNODC estimated in 2005 that, in a regional division of cannabis
resin production, 42 per cent of global hashish production (7,400
tonnes in 2003-2004) originated from North Africa, where only Morocco
produces hashish. The UNODC also estimated that during the 1999-2003
period, Morocco yielded 31 per cent of the hashish produced by 90
countries, before Pakistan (18 per cent), Afghanistan (17 per cent),
Lebanon (9 per cent), and India (9 per cent).
Hashish is a psychoactive drug made from the resin of the female
cannabis plant. It can be obtained through two different processes,
depending on techniques employed in various production areas. In Morocco,
the resin glands of the cannabis inflorescence, where tetrahydrocannabinol
(THC), its main psychoactive substance, is concentrated, are collected
by sieving after the plant has been harvested and dried. Sieving was
also the technique favoured in the Bekaa Valley, in Lebanon, where
Red Lebanon hashish was produced in large quantities up until the
early 1990s. The other technique, only used in some parts of Asia,
is hand rubbing. Much less technical than sieving, it consists of
rubbing the flowering cannabis branches back and forth between the
palms and fingers until the resin builds up on the hands. Such a process
occurs in India, Kashmir included, and Nepal.
Sieved hashish is much easier and faster to obtain than hand-rubbed
hashish since, according to botanist Robert Connell Clarke in his
book Hashish!, one kilogram of sieved hashish can be obtained
in only a few hours versus 10 to 25 grams of hand-rubbed hashish by
one collector during a full working day.
Such a difference not only makes sieving much more suitable for
commercial-scale production but it also makes it more potent since
almost no resin is left on the plant. An estimated 130,000 hectares
of cannabis devoted to the production of sieved hashish clearly makes
Morocco the world’s largest hashish producer and exporter but
also potentially the producer of the world’s most potent hashish.
Potentially only because sieving “also makes practical the collection
of very large quantities of very low-quality powder”, something
that the fast-growing Western demand undoubtedly provoked. In fact,
Western influence not only spurred cannabis cultivation in Morocco,
through colonialism, it also initiated hashish production in the country
at the onset of the hippie culture in the 1960s.
Cannabis cultivation
The cannabis plant is thought to have taken root in Morocco’s
Maghreb region in the seventh century AD in the wake of the Arab invasions.
However, historians seem to agree that cannabis cultivation only
started around Ketama, in the mountainous Berber-inhabited Rif area
north of Fez, in the 15th century. Much later, in the 19th century,
Sultan Moulay Hassan (Hassan I) officially authorised cannabis cultivation
for local consumption in five douars, or villages, of the Ketama and
Beni Khaled tribes, in the Senhaja area of the Rif.
In 1912 the kingdom was split into two protectorates by Spain and
France, and the right to cultivate cannabis was again granted to a
few tribes, this time by Spain. In 1920, Abdelkrim el-Khattabi unified
the Berber tribes of the Rif in their resistance to Spanish authority
and set up the independent Republic of the Rif (1921-1926), before
being defeated by a French-Spanish coalition.
Abdelkrim el-Khattabi had successfully advocated against “un-Islamic”
cannabis cultivation and consumption during the five years that the
independent Republic of the Rif existed. But after 1926, according
to the 1957 United Nations Bulletin of Narcotics, the restored Spanish
power “set up a zone of toleration to the north of Fez”,
around Ketama in Al Hoceima province, “in order to allow adaptation
to the new economic order of tribes. That zone was gradually reduced
until, in theory, it was abolished in 1929, although in fact, production
continued at a high level, particularly during the last few years
of the protectorate. The main economic problem of substitution of
other crops was in practice never solved”. Far from being solved
the problem has only worsened.
Since France was a signatory to the 1925 Geneva International Convention
on Narcotics Control, organised by the League of Nations, cannabis
cultivation was progressively prohibited in the French protectorate.
In 1932, production was forbidden by a dahir, a royal decree, except
for cultivation undertaken around Kenitra (Gharb) and Marrakech (Haouz)
for the Régie des Tabacs et du Kif, a multinational
company, largely controlled by French capital, which benefited from
the extraterritoriality of the international zone of Tangier where
it was conveniently based. Only in 1954 was cultivation completely
prohibited in the French protectorate. In 1956, when Morocco gained
independence, cannabis prohibition was extended to the former French
and Spanish zones. However, Mohammed V decided to condone cannabis
cultivation in the five historical douars of the Ketama and Beni Khaled
after the prohibition led to conflict in the Rif.
Historical cultivation in the Rif
The Rif is one of the Berber areas of Morocco, and Berbers,
as shown by the 1921-1926 episode, have resisted foreign rule whenever
possible (Arab rule included).
The Rif was part of the bled as-siba, the “land of
insolence” that stayed out of the sultan’s control (bled
al-makhzen) until 1912 when it was absorbed into the Spanish
Protectorate. As the anthropologist Clifford Geertz explains in his
study The Integrative Revolution, the establishment of the
Arabised, Islamic reformist Cherifian dynasty at the end of the 17th
century and, later, the colonial rule of Morocco, reinforced the distinction
between bled as-siba and bled al-makhzen. First, notes Geertz, the
Cherifian dynasty tried to reduce “the field of Berber customary
law in favor of Koranic law, to repress saint worship and cultic practices,
and to purify Islamic belief of local pagan accretions”. The
French colonial power increased this distinction after the decade
during which the proconsul Lyautey kept the tribes in check and reinforced
the Makhzen bureaucracy, only to be defeated by the tribal uprising
led by Abdelkrim al-Khattabi. Philippe Pétain, the successor
of Lyautey, initiated the "so-called Berber Policy, dedicated
to drawing a sharp distinction between Arab and Berber and isolating
the latter from the influence of the Makhzen entirely", notes
Geertz.
Starting in 1956, Berber chiefs, such as the Interior Minister of
Mohammed V and the governor of the province of Tafilalet, promoted
a kind of tribal primordialism and neo-traditionalism aimed against
the Istiqlal nationalist party, the administrative arm of the throne
that had reinstated the Islamic judicial system. Loyalty to the king,
however, was never challenged. Sporadic Berber uprisings occurred,
particularly in the Rif from 1958 to 1984. In 1958 the region rose
in rebellion against the government and the uprising was put down
by a military expedition composed of two-thirds of the Moroccan army,
which, under the command of then-Crown Prince Hassan, even resorted
to napalm bombardments. These uprisings were partly caused by economic
deprivation, since Moroccan Berbers make up the majority of the poorest
classes in Morocco, and since Berber regions have not seen the same
development aid as Arabised coastal and urban regions. Moreover, cultural
frustration relating to the status and teaching of the Berber language
added to economic grievances.
Cannabis cultivation in the Rif is intrinsically tied up with this
long, complex and violent history of rivalries, tolerance, and conflict,
and is thus well entrenched in the region, both politically and economically.
The right to cultivate cannabis in the Rif was first granted to five
douars by Sultan Moulay Hassan. Cultivation was further allowed under
the Spanish Protectorate, except for the short period during which
Abdelkrim al-Khattabi argued against it.
Even Mohammed V tolerated cannabis cultivation at the onset of Moroccan
independence, for tribal discontent with cannabis prohibition had
to be quelled. People from the region of Ketama now either assert
that Mohammed V orally allowed them to cultivate cannabis around the
village of Azilal, or that a 1954 dahir gives them the official right
to do so. However, as stressed by the Moroccan economist and sociologist
Kenza Afsahi, the aforementioned dahir clearly does not allow such
a thing. Notwithstanding the illegality of cannabis cultivation in
the kingdom, its tolerance continued under the reign of Hassan II.
This in spite of the “war on drugs” that he declared in
September 1992, which, as the UNODC’s 2003 survey showed, fell
short of the planned intention to step up interdiction, prosecution
and economic development alternatives to wean the Rif from the lucrative
drugs trade.
Ongoing growth
Cannabis cultivation in the Rif extended over probably less than 10,000
hectares in a limited geographical area until the early 1980s, when,
as a result of complex economic, and some geopolitical, factors, the
area under cultivation expanded rapidly.
The economic crisis that unfolded in Morocco in the late 1970s and
early 1980s hit especially hard in the Rif Mountains, where the mechanisation
of agriculture was never satisfactorily developed and where emigration
opportunities proved insufficient to compensate for the lack of employment.
At the same time, growing European demand for hashish - that developed
during the 1960s and 1970s - turned the Moroccan cannabis economy
from producing kif, a mixture of chopped marijuana and tobacco, to
producing hashish. In addition, conflicts in Afghanistan, Lebanon
and Syria, and increased counter-narcotics efforts in Lebanon and
Turkey, affected their respective hashish productions, creating a
balloon effect that benefited Moroccan production.
Morocco was one of the very first destinations on the “Hippie
Hashish Trail”, early in the 1960s. While kif was produced and
smoked in Morocco at that time, the only hashish available was most
likely from Lebanon. It is not certain when and how hashish was first
produced in Morocco, although various accounts point to a likely start
in the mid 1960s when Westerners tried making sieved hashish around
Ketama.
Growing Western demand and Morocco’s closeness to this booming
consumer market spurred hashish production in the Cherifian kingdom,
especially in the Rif, where the Berbers have a saying that “only
Kif grows on the land of Ketama”. According to Dutch and European
Union official estimates, cannabis was grown on around 25,000 hectares
in the mid 1980s, on 60,000 hectares in 1993, and on 75,000 hectares
in 1995. In June 2005, according to Robert Connell Clarke, “pollen
counts in Southern Spain revealed that huge quantities of cannabis
pollen were blowing north from the Rif Mountains, 42 km across the
Straits of Gibraltar and up to 160 km inland”.
During the 1980s and 1990s, cannabis cultivation expanded outside
of the traditional growing area of the Senhaja country, into the Ghomara
and Jebalas regions and also to the east of the province of Al Hoceima.
Since the turn of the century cannabis cultivation has reached unprecedented
surface areas and geographical limits, as shown by the estimated 134,000
and the 120,500 hectares cultivated in 2003 and 2004 respectively.
Both ecologically and economically, cannabis cultivation and its
rapid increase in the Rif Mountains are understandable. The Rif is
one of the most unsuitable regions for intensive agricultural production:
a rugged relief of steep slopes and poor soils, combined with heavy
but irregular rainfall compounded by a lack of irrigation infrastructures,
make most crops other than cannabis not worth the labour invested.
According to the UNODC, rain-fed cannabis cultivation brings seven
to eight times more revenues than barley cultivation; 12 to 16 times
more when irrigated. Moreover, demographic trends require any agricultural
production to be as economically viable as possible: at 124 habitants
per square kilometre human density is three times higher in the Rif
than in the rest of the country.
Increased land pressure combined with a lack of economic development
in the region has led to two distinct geographical expansions of cultivation
– first, at the expense of forested areas, with thousands of
hectares of forest being burned every year to clear new areas for
cannabis production; and also in the valley bottoms where better soils
and better access to water are available.
In 2003, the survey conducted by the UNODC showed that 96,000 families,
or 804,000 people, were involved in cannabis cultivation: 66 per cent
of the rural households that were surveyed and 6.5 per cent of all
the Moroccan agricultural households, i.e. 2.5 per cent of Morocco’s
total population in 2002. In terms of surface area, 1.5 per cent of
the total arable land of Morocco was covered by cannabis in 2003.
Up to half cannabis growers' income is provided by cannabis production,
however, as is always the case when illicit crops are concerned, cannabis
growers receive far less income than might be expected. The annual
per capita income generated by cannabis production has been estimated
at US$267, compared to the GDP per capita of about US$1,260 in Morocco
in 2002.
During the last decade cannabis cultivation has spread in and outside
of the Rif, the economic appeal of a cash crop proving increasingly
detrimental to forest preservation as well as to other agricultural
activities. Cannabis monoculture has developed considerably, to the
point of becoming a subject of ecological concern. The extensive use
of fertilisers causes soil pollution, insufficient or inexistent fallow
periods cause soil depletion, and deforestation, increasingly perpetrated
to accommodate new cannabis fields, increases soil erosion.
In the absence of a strong political will to address the economic
and demographic issues of the Rif area, cannabis cultivation will
soon prove to be unable to make up for the lack of development the
region has long suffered.
Box:
Estimating Cannabis yields
In 2002, about 735 tonnes of cannabis resin were seized in Western
Europe and 66 tonnes in Morocco. Spain, Morocco’s closest European
neighbour, made 57 per cent of total worldwide hashish seizures in
2001, indicating both the primacy of Moroccan hashish production and
the importance of Spanish territory as a transit zone for traffickers.
In its 2005 World Drug Report, the UNODC estimated that, in 2003-2004,
cannabis was produced in 163 countries; noting however that “most
of these countries produce solely to satisfy local demand”.
In only a few countries is cannabis cultivated primarily for export
and consumption abroad: in Morroco's case most of its hashish production
is exported to, and consumed in, Western Europe.
In terms of gross volumes of “cannabis herb” production,
the UNODC has estimated that North America (Canada, US, Mexico) accounted
for 33 per cent (14,000 tonnes) of global production in 2003-2004,
followed closely by Africa with 28 per cent (12,000 tonnes). South
and Central Asia only accounted for 9 per cent and 5 per cent of the
global output.
However, these estimates are only for “cannabis herb”,
and not for hashish, a cannabis derivative that is produced only in
some countries, including Morocco. The production of hashish must
be added to that of “cannabis herb” if an estimate of
global cannabis cultivation is to be obtained. Very few statistics
are available regarding cannabis cultivation in the world and when
UNODC conducted its first surveys of cannabis production in Morocco
in 2003, it estimated the area under cultivation at 134,000 hectares,
yielding 109,000 tonnes of “gross cannabis” with the potential
to produce 3,070 tonnes of cannabis resin (hashish). However, such
figures raise questions since UNODC’s World Drug Report 2005
states that the 2003-2004 global production of “cannabis herb”
– different from “gross cannabis” – is estimated
at 42,000 tonnes.
Actually, estimating cannabis crops has always proved extremely
difficult. The UN itself warned in documents older than the two aforementioned
reports that “There is little reliable information on the extent
of cannabis cultivation. Though cannabis is the most widely abused
illicit drug, actual knowledge of the extent of production is much
more limited than for other narcotic plants”. In The Botany
of Desire Michael Pollan reminds us that this has been true even
in the country that started a global war on drugs in the 1970s: “In
1982 the Reagan administration was chagrined to discover that the
amount of domestic marijuana being seized was actually a third higher
than its official estimate of the total American crop”.
With its survey on Morocco the UNODC produced the first serious
estimate of cannabis cultivation and hashish production in any given
country. But this survey now raises questions regarding global estimates
of cannabis cultivation and the share taken by Morocco in the global
output. In fact, the “gross cannabis” mentioned by UNODC
in its survey on Morocco is the whole female cannabis plant and thus
cannot be compared to the “cannabis herb”, or marijuana,
referred to by UNODC in its World Drug Report. Here the difference
is important because the cultivation and production techniques employed
across the world depend on which final product is sought: marijuana
or hashish.
Dr. Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy is a geographer
and research fellow at the CNRS, France. He studies the geopolitics
of illicit drugs in Asia and produces www.geopium.org.
His most recent book is Yaa
Baa. Production, Traffic, and Consumption of Methamphetamine in Mainland
Southeast Asia (2004, Singapore University Press).
© 2005 Jane's Information Group
