Smokin Moose
Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex Moderator
""Freedom for Afghanistan," or "Freedom of Afghanistan." These slogans
are the calling cards of the Northern Alliance"
The US government knows that the Northern Alliance uses the profits it makes from selling hashish to fund its war against the Taliban. This profit chain includes marketing of Northern Alliance hashish to Dutch coffee shops. At the end of the clandestine "pipeline" that brings Afghan hash to Holland are coffee shop owners who pay about $4000 per kilo for the Alliance's product.
In the intersection of commerce, politics and cannabis created by the illegal system that provides marijuana products for the Dutch retail market, Afghan hash is perhaps the only cannabis commodity imprinted with a revolutionary slogan. In gold letters, stenciled on the hardened brown crust of each slate, are the words "Freedom for Afghanistan," or "Freedom of Afghanistan." These slogans are the calling cards of the Northern Alliance.
There's a lot of worry about Afghan hash in Holland these days. Most coffee shop owners, even those who consider themselves hashish specialists, are scared to associate their name with quotes about such hash. Some Dutch cannabists assume that the Afghan hash trade provides funding for the Northern Alliance's fight against the Taliban, others suspect that all factions in Afghanistan export hashish.
"Buying slates of Afghan hash from the Alliance is a very direct way
to fund the Alliance's fight against the Taliban," one shop owner asserted. "If we want to fight terrorism, the best thing we can do is buy Afghan hash."
Another coffee shop owner said that he bought hash marked with Alliance slogans, "even though it is a slower seller and costs more than I think it is worth."
"The only politics I ever thought about in this business is that the
more marijuana we sell the more money we make and the more popular our products are," the owner said. "Now I am seeing that there might be bigger things than that. Like, if we buy our hash from somebody, is that person using the money to make bombs, or to ship h****n, or to support Afghan farmers? Should I always turn a blind eye to the politics and morals of the people I get my supplies from? A lot of them are sleazy. They're real criminals. They probably bring in things other than hash, like guns and harder drugs. I don't know quite what to do."
Some American "patriots" who posted opinions on Internet sites about the geopolitical ethics of Holland's coffee shop industry after September 11 think they know what Dutch marijuana businesspeople should do: the American posters called for a boycott of many varieties of hashish, especially those from Morocco, Lebanon, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, alleging that buying hashish from those countries was tantamount to supporting terrorism.
The head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, a born-again, right-wing Christian fundamentalist named Asa Hutchinson, recently said that buying illegal drugs supports terrorism and that the war on drugs is a war on terrorism. The newly-created US Office of Homeland Security echoes internal drug war efforts which have encouraged Americans to spy on and inform on each other. The Office advises Americans to report neighbors who are quiet, who do not fit in, who express progressive sentiments. Under special war powers and antiterrorism laws rushed through Congress and the executive branch after September 11, the government can act on citizens' tips by secretly searching homes, secretly monitoring emails and phone communications, using bugging devices without a search warrant, and detaining people without arresting them and without probable cause.
Some American marijuana users have convinced themselves that these new government powers will be used only against Muslim suicide bombers and their allies, but the government definition of terrorism has included not just the fanatic Bin Ladens of the world, but also environmentalists, anti-globalization activists, and civil rights advocates.
The American commentators who alleged that buying "Middle Eastern" hashish helped terrorism advised Europeans to buy local hashish, or to make their own. A few Dutch shops reportedly removed some varieties of hash from their menus in response to the postings.
Dutch coffee shop owner and marijuana activist Nol Van Schaik provided the Afghan slates pictured in this article. Van Schaik, who owns three marijuana shops and a cannabis museum in Haarlem, Holland just outside Amsterdam, said that boycotting hashish to protest terrorism was a stupid idea.
"If the Northern Alliance are the people on the ground who are going
to defeat the Taliban, people who want to defeat the Taliban should buy as much of their hash as they can," Van Schaik said, slicing open an Afghan slate covered in red cellophane. "It's a patriotic duty to buy their hash. Boycotting hash doesn't make sense. A lot of the hashish we get comes from Hindu or secularized countries. And even if hashish is produced by Muslims, that doesn't mean that the proceeds support terrorism. Are all Muslims terrorists? People who believe that are racists."
Van Schaik says hashish should be viewed strictly as a psychoactive commodity subject to market pressures. He says that supply and demand will govern the production, price and availability of hash, and cites the example of Lebanon, which accepted US drug war money 15 years ago and used it to destroy its thriving Bekka Valley hashish industry.
Cannabis farmers went broke because the Lebanese government and its drug war allies failed to provide compensation to those who lost income due to the crackdown on cannabis cultivation and hash production. Last year, the farmers rejected the drug war and again planted crops of hashplants in the Lebanese desert. This year, Holland is seeing the first shipments of the legendary Lebanese product in more than a decade.
Van Schaik crumbles some of the Afghan hash into a Dutch joint, and lights it. The revolutionary hash has a distinct flavor and produces a formidable high, but it is nowhere near as potent or pure-tasting as gold-colored Moroccan primero that he had smoked with me the day before.
* * * * * * * * As I networked the back alleys of the Dutch pot industry searching for information about Afghan hash, I found a Muslim who admitted to being involved in the smuggling of hashish into Holland. He told me about Mahmoud, bribing military, police, civilians and government officials in several countries, and about the political-economic implications of the hash trade.
"Afghanistan people like hashish," the man said. "They have special
rooms and pipes to smoke it. It's not all just to sell here. You can go to special markets and shops to buy it, especially near the border with Pakistan."
The man said that Afghan hash had lost its formerly sterling reputation because it was now a conglomeration of resin powders from different types of plants, screened through relatively large bore screens, held together by binders like honey, animal fat, or tree sap.
"It is still stronger and better than marijuana, gram for gram," the
man said. "It has a little dust in it from the winds, but it is a flower of the desert. With this war, we might not be able to get any here for a long time."
The man seemed sad and cynical when I asked him about the effects of war on Afghanistan and Afghan hashish. The US had just announced plans to bomb poppy fields, and the man worried that cannabis plantations could also be hit.
"It's a tribal country that people make fun of because they don't
understand it," he said. "The Taliban were good at killing communists, but they are bad at running the country. The Northern Alliance isn't any better. Bin Laden's family is friends with Bush's family. They've all worked together in the past, and then they start hating each other. Who knows what is really going on? The big countries always like to use our country as a target practice. The holy men who smoke hashish say that all of them are wicked people. It doesn't matter. If we survive the winter and the snows come, there will be more cannabis planted next year. There will be more Afghan hashish to smoke in Holland."
~~~~~~~~~Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. ~~~~~~~~~
* * * * * * * * The Legendary Hash
In 1967 at 15 years of age, I was introduced to Lebanese hashish. It was a revelatory moment, when lights go on in your head. From that day, I dreamed of going to Lebanon. It took four years, but in 1971 I arrived in Beirut as a naïve hippy kid in search of this famous red hashish. I quickly met hash people and while hanging with Beirut hash dealers I learned of other desirable varieties available, like Moroccan. So I left Lebanon to stay in Ketama in the Rif Mountains of Morocco. There I met people who had been to Afghanistan, and that sounded incredible so a year later, in 1972, I went through Europe, overland to India and on to Afghanistan. (It was not an uncommon destination for young travelers until about 1974, when US/Russian manipulations overthrew the government and plunged the country into 30 years of war.)
When I arrived in Afghanistan I was immediately surrounded by Afghanis pulling out these huge hunks of black hash that cost just a couple of bucks, saying 'hashish, hashish, hashish'. So I went to the market and bought a bubbler for a buck, went back to my room, and got completely blazed. I got so high I forgot where I was and the language the people were speaking - no Afghan spoke English and I couldn't speak Afghani. Hash smoking, however, is communication easily understood everywhere!
My journey took me to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. I have read opinions in great books by Laurence Cherniak and others that say the best hash came from Kandahar, and though it was good, I believe the finest hash in 1973 came from north of Mazari Sharif, near the borders of the old Soviet Union.
In the higher elevations, people take plants out of their gardens and hand-rub the hashish. This is the lineage of my Northern Lights. These Afghani strains were taken to Shid Tral in northern Pakistan; the hash there was good, but didn't compare to the Afghani hash so I went to Kashmir in northern-most India. In 1973 you could still go to Kashmir, and they had extraordinary hash and gorgeous scenery.
Next I went to Manali in northern India, and found outstanding hashish hand rubbed from plants grown at 3,000 meters (9,750 feet). Manali hash, smoked the day it is pressed, is the highest of highs I've ever experienced. After leaving Manali, I went to Nepal in 1973, where they had legal hash crops and quite a variety of temple balls and actual lengths of hash string twisted into hash rope! I eventually visited southern India but the hash there was not impressive. However, when I asked for ganja once in Kerala in southern India, they said 'Go out the back, outside the building'. There was a huge tree of cannabis. It was flowering and I was told to help myself. Not great bud, but what a scene! I estimated the plant at 18 feet tall.
Over the next 15 years I would return to Manali, Nepal, and Amsterdam to observe the evolving world of hashish. In 1972, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Lebanon, Nepal and Persia (Iran) were all beautiful exotic hashish paradises, where the people were stable, happy and at peace. After 1975, things deteriorated in Afghanistan and it became unsafe to travel there. The Russians invaded in 1979 after five years of subverting local Afghani rule. There hasn't been much good Afghani hash since. Much more opium is being produced in Afghanistan today than in 1973, while hashish production has fallen proportionately - a staggering reversal. Canadian and American soldiers there today are just the latest in a long history of attempted occupations of Afghanistan.
Nepal reversed hundreds of years of hashish tradition and prohibited pot and hash at the behest of the US government in 1973 when the Nixon Administration bribed the Monarch of Nepal to make cannabis illegal, which is having tragic repercussions in Nepal today. Lebanon broke out in a civil war in 1975, with invasions by Syria and Israel in the 1980's, forcing the hashish farmers of the famous Bekaa Valley into desperation. The US government organized the overthrow of the government of Persia (Iran) in 1953, installing the Shah Reza Pahlavi as a US satrapy. A nationalistic, anti-US movement guided by banned Islamic fundamentalists seized the government of Persia in early 1979. Since the Ayatollahs came into power, there has been little hashish out of the land where the term hashish was first coined and the culture first known. In 1973, Karachi, Pakistan was the port where more hashish was shipped from than any other port in the world but today there is a lot of military security. Hashish was made in the northern and western provinces of Pakistan, but the production of cannabis plumetted while production of opium greatly increased. The quality of Pakistani hashish has decreased in the last ten years and is not even a factor in the hashish markets.
The Times, They Are a Changin'
Smugglers all over the world will tell you that from 1976 to 1985 it got much more difficult with each passing year to bring pot in from Hawaii, Columbia, Jamaica, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Thailand.
Mexican pot deteriorated from being some of the best in the world in 1970 to being schwag of the worst sort by 1990. And due to all the instability, the quality of hashish went way down. Overlapping this decline in hashish and marijuana from outside North America was a dramatic rise in indoor home growing, kick-started in 1980 when the metal halide bulb was introduced.
Howard Marks, the world's biggest hash smuggler, had a freighter of Thai Stick encounter engine trouble in 1983 off the coast of Vancouver Island. The entire freighter was successfully off-loaded before the Canadian coast guard found the boat at sea. For one year there was Thai stick, but I didn't ever see it again. So I went looking for it in Thailand in 1990. The cannabis I found that most closely resembled my Thai stick experiences was used for my Thai Lights cross. (Thai Stick is actually marijuana soaked in opium residue and left to dry in the sun, but I haven't seen it or heard of a sighting in many, many years.)
Anon
are the calling cards of the Northern Alliance"
The US government knows that the Northern Alliance uses the profits it makes from selling hashish to fund its war against the Taliban. This profit chain includes marketing of Northern Alliance hashish to Dutch coffee shops. At the end of the clandestine "pipeline" that brings Afghan hash to Holland are coffee shop owners who pay about $4000 per kilo for the Alliance's product.
In the intersection of commerce, politics and cannabis created by the illegal system that provides marijuana products for the Dutch retail market, Afghan hash is perhaps the only cannabis commodity imprinted with a revolutionary slogan. In gold letters, stenciled on the hardened brown crust of each slate, are the words "Freedom for Afghanistan," or "Freedom of Afghanistan." These slogans are the calling cards of the Northern Alliance.
There's a lot of worry about Afghan hash in Holland these days. Most coffee shop owners, even those who consider themselves hashish specialists, are scared to associate their name with quotes about such hash. Some Dutch cannabists assume that the Afghan hash trade provides funding for the Northern Alliance's fight against the Taliban, others suspect that all factions in Afghanistan export hashish.
"Buying slates of Afghan hash from the Alliance is a very direct way
to fund the Alliance's fight against the Taliban," one shop owner asserted. "If we want to fight terrorism, the best thing we can do is buy Afghan hash."
Another coffee shop owner said that he bought hash marked with Alliance slogans, "even though it is a slower seller and costs more than I think it is worth."
"The only politics I ever thought about in this business is that the
more marijuana we sell the more money we make and the more popular our products are," the owner said. "Now I am seeing that there might be bigger things than that. Like, if we buy our hash from somebody, is that person using the money to make bombs, or to ship h****n, or to support Afghan farmers? Should I always turn a blind eye to the politics and morals of the people I get my supplies from? A lot of them are sleazy. They're real criminals. They probably bring in things other than hash, like guns and harder drugs. I don't know quite what to do."
Some American "patriots" who posted opinions on Internet sites about the geopolitical ethics of Holland's coffee shop industry after September 11 think they know what Dutch marijuana businesspeople should do: the American posters called for a boycott of many varieties of hashish, especially those from Morocco, Lebanon, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, alleging that buying hashish from those countries was tantamount to supporting terrorism.
The head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, a born-again, right-wing Christian fundamentalist named Asa Hutchinson, recently said that buying illegal drugs supports terrorism and that the war on drugs is a war on terrorism. The newly-created US Office of Homeland Security echoes internal drug war efforts which have encouraged Americans to spy on and inform on each other. The Office advises Americans to report neighbors who are quiet, who do not fit in, who express progressive sentiments. Under special war powers and antiterrorism laws rushed through Congress and the executive branch after September 11, the government can act on citizens' tips by secretly searching homes, secretly monitoring emails and phone communications, using bugging devices without a search warrant, and detaining people without arresting them and without probable cause.
Some American marijuana users have convinced themselves that these new government powers will be used only against Muslim suicide bombers and their allies, but the government definition of terrorism has included not just the fanatic Bin Ladens of the world, but also environmentalists, anti-globalization activists, and civil rights advocates.
The American commentators who alleged that buying "Middle Eastern" hashish helped terrorism advised Europeans to buy local hashish, or to make their own. A few Dutch shops reportedly removed some varieties of hash from their menus in response to the postings.
Dutch coffee shop owner and marijuana activist Nol Van Schaik provided the Afghan slates pictured in this article. Van Schaik, who owns three marijuana shops and a cannabis museum in Haarlem, Holland just outside Amsterdam, said that boycotting hashish to protest terrorism was a stupid idea.
"If the Northern Alliance are the people on the ground who are going
to defeat the Taliban, people who want to defeat the Taliban should buy as much of their hash as they can," Van Schaik said, slicing open an Afghan slate covered in red cellophane. "It's a patriotic duty to buy their hash. Boycotting hash doesn't make sense. A lot of the hashish we get comes from Hindu or secularized countries. And even if hashish is produced by Muslims, that doesn't mean that the proceeds support terrorism. Are all Muslims terrorists? People who believe that are racists."
Van Schaik says hashish should be viewed strictly as a psychoactive commodity subject to market pressures. He says that supply and demand will govern the production, price and availability of hash, and cites the example of Lebanon, which accepted US drug war money 15 years ago and used it to destroy its thriving Bekka Valley hashish industry.
Cannabis farmers went broke because the Lebanese government and its drug war allies failed to provide compensation to those who lost income due to the crackdown on cannabis cultivation and hash production. Last year, the farmers rejected the drug war and again planted crops of hashplants in the Lebanese desert. This year, Holland is seeing the first shipments of the legendary Lebanese product in more than a decade.
Van Schaik crumbles some of the Afghan hash into a Dutch joint, and lights it. The revolutionary hash has a distinct flavor and produces a formidable high, but it is nowhere near as potent or pure-tasting as gold-colored Moroccan primero that he had smoked with me the day before.
* * * * * * * * As I networked the back alleys of the Dutch pot industry searching for information about Afghan hash, I found a Muslim who admitted to being involved in the smuggling of hashish into Holland. He told me about Mahmoud, bribing military, police, civilians and government officials in several countries, and about the political-economic implications of the hash trade.
"Afghanistan people like hashish," the man said. "They have special
rooms and pipes to smoke it. It's not all just to sell here. You can go to special markets and shops to buy it, especially near the border with Pakistan."
The man said that Afghan hash had lost its formerly sterling reputation because it was now a conglomeration of resin powders from different types of plants, screened through relatively large bore screens, held together by binders like honey, animal fat, or tree sap.
"It is still stronger and better than marijuana, gram for gram," the
man said. "It has a little dust in it from the winds, but it is a flower of the desert. With this war, we might not be able to get any here for a long time."
The man seemed sad and cynical when I asked him about the effects of war on Afghanistan and Afghan hashish. The US had just announced plans to bomb poppy fields, and the man worried that cannabis plantations could also be hit.
"It's a tribal country that people make fun of because they don't
understand it," he said. "The Taliban were good at killing communists, but they are bad at running the country. The Northern Alliance isn't any better. Bin Laden's family is friends with Bush's family. They've all worked together in the past, and then they start hating each other. Who knows what is really going on? The big countries always like to use our country as a target practice. The holy men who smoke hashish say that all of them are wicked people. It doesn't matter. If we survive the winter and the snows come, there will be more cannabis planted next year. There will be more Afghan hashish to smoke in Holland."
~~~~~~~~~Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. ~~~~~~~~~
* * * * * * * * The Legendary Hash
In 1967 at 15 years of age, I was introduced to Lebanese hashish. It was a revelatory moment, when lights go on in your head. From that day, I dreamed of going to Lebanon. It took four years, but in 1971 I arrived in Beirut as a naïve hippy kid in search of this famous red hashish. I quickly met hash people and while hanging with Beirut hash dealers I learned of other desirable varieties available, like Moroccan. So I left Lebanon to stay in Ketama in the Rif Mountains of Morocco. There I met people who had been to Afghanistan, and that sounded incredible so a year later, in 1972, I went through Europe, overland to India and on to Afghanistan. (It was not an uncommon destination for young travelers until about 1974, when US/Russian manipulations overthrew the government and plunged the country into 30 years of war.)
When I arrived in Afghanistan I was immediately surrounded by Afghanis pulling out these huge hunks of black hash that cost just a couple of bucks, saying 'hashish, hashish, hashish'. So I went to the market and bought a bubbler for a buck, went back to my room, and got completely blazed. I got so high I forgot where I was and the language the people were speaking - no Afghan spoke English and I couldn't speak Afghani. Hash smoking, however, is communication easily understood everywhere!
My journey took me to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. I have read opinions in great books by Laurence Cherniak and others that say the best hash came from Kandahar, and though it was good, I believe the finest hash in 1973 came from north of Mazari Sharif, near the borders of the old Soviet Union.
In the higher elevations, people take plants out of their gardens and hand-rub the hashish. This is the lineage of my Northern Lights. These Afghani strains were taken to Shid Tral in northern Pakistan; the hash there was good, but didn't compare to the Afghani hash so I went to Kashmir in northern-most India. In 1973 you could still go to Kashmir, and they had extraordinary hash and gorgeous scenery.
Next I went to Manali in northern India, and found outstanding hashish hand rubbed from plants grown at 3,000 meters (9,750 feet). Manali hash, smoked the day it is pressed, is the highest of highs I've ever experienced. After leaving Manali, I went to Nepal in 1973, where they had legal hash crops and quite a variety of temple balls and actual lengths of hash string twisted into hash rope! I eventually visited southern India but the hash there was not impressive. However, when I asked for ganja once in Kerala in southern India, they said 'Go out the back, outside the building'. There was a huge tree of cannabis. It was flowering and I was told to help myself. Not great bud, but what a scene! I estimated the plant at 18 feet tall.
Over the next 15 years I would return to Manali, Nepal, and Amsterdam to observe the evolving world of hashish. In 1972, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Lebanon, Nepal and Persia (Iran) were all beautiful exotic hashish paradises, where the people were stable, happy and at peace. After 1975, things deteriorated in Afghanistan and it became unsafe to travel there. The Russians invaded in 1979 after five years of subverting local Afghani rule. There hasn't been much good Afghani hash since. Much more opium is being produced in Afghanistan today than in 1973, while hashish production has fallen proportionately - a staggering reversal. Canadian and American soldiers there today are just the latest in a long history of attempted occupations of Afghanistan.
Nepal reversed hundreds of years of hashish tradition and prohibited pot and hash at the behest of the US government in 1973 when the Nixon Administration bribed the Monarch of Nepal to make cannabis illegal, which is having tragic repercussions in Nepal today. Lebanon broke out in a civil war in 1975, with invasions by Syria and Israel in the 1980's, forcing the hashish farmers of the famous Bekaa Valley into desperation. The US government organized the overthrow of the government of Persia (Iran) in 1953, installing the Shah Reza Pahlavi as a US satrapy. A nationalistic, anti-US movement guided by banned Islamic fundamentalists seized the government of Persia in early 1979. Since the Ayatollahs came into power, there has been little hashish out of the land where the term hashish was first coined and the culture first known. In 1973, Karachi, Pakistan was the port where more hashish was shipped from than any other port in the world but today there is a lot of military security. Hashish was made in the northern and western provinces of Pakistan, but the production of cannabis plumetted while production of opium greatly increased. The quality of Pakistani hashish has decreased in the last ten years and is not even a factor in the hashish markets.
The Times, They Are a Changin'
Smugglers all over the world will tell you that from 1976 to 1985 it got much more difficult with each passing year to bring pot in from Hawaii, Columbia, Jamaica, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Thailand.
Mexican pot deteriorated from being some of the best in the world in 1970 to being schwag of the worst sort by 1990. And due to all the instability, the quality of hashish went way down. Overlapping this decline in hashish and marijuana from outside North America was a dramatic rise in indoor home growing, kick-started in 1980 when the metal halide bulb was introduced.
Howard Marks, the world's biggest hash smuggler, had a freighter of Thai Stick encounter engine trouble in 1983 off the coast of Vancouver Island. The entire freighter was successfully off-loaded before the Canadian coast guard found the boat at sea. For one year there was Thai stick, but I didn't ever see it again. So I went looking for it in Thailand in 1990. The cannabis I found that most closely resembled my Thai stick experiences was used for my Thai Lights cross. (Thai Stick is actually marijuana soaked in opium residue and left to dry in the sun, but I haven't seen it or heard of a sighting in many, many years.)
Anon
Ganja paste is the cure for disease and fammine in Africa. Afgan , Iraq , and Pakistan Farmers can grow the best Sativa for fammine and disease ! Cut down weed and seal up for freshness then shipped to Africa for mixing in the field. Liquid Aloe can be shipped to Africa from Irving ,Texas. Fruit of the Earth ! Farming Jobs for the poor and a cheaper way to fix Africa with a safer medicine. 
Hey man I need yall to help me spead this. I think this is the winner ! Twilight Onearmbiker 420 
