Taliban ban weed cultivation | high times

Sharia law in Taliban-dominated Afghanistan now bans weed cultivation along with a long list of other basic freedoms.

The Express-Tribune reports that Taliban supreme leader Mawlavi Hibatullah Akhundzada has issued a decree in Kabul, Afghanistan, banning the cultivation of cannabis across the country. The decree was reported on March 19. If someone is caught growing cannabis, the facility will be destroyed and violators will be punished under Sharia law.

“Cultivation is completely banned across the country and if someone grows it, the plantation will be destroyed. The courts were also ordered to punish the violators according to Sharia law,” Akhundzada said.

Who is Akhundzada? CBS News reported on February 17, 2023 that Akhundzada essentially took Afghanistan back to the “Stone Age” with one of the most draconian interpretations of Sharia law. Within two years he was taking women out of the country’s schools again. Even the Taliban’s acting interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, criticized Akhundzada’s thirst for power.

What exactly are punishments under Sharia law? The “crimes” of apostasy, revolt, adultery, slander, and alcohol result in penalties such as amputation of hands and feet, flogging, and/or death. This includes penalties for women’s uncovered bodies and hair.

The cannabis (and opium) trade is believed to have “fueled” militancy in Afghanistan before the Taliban took power in 2021. For more than 20 years after September 11, 2001, the insurgents in Afghanistan did not give up.

On April 14, 2021, President Joe Biden announced that the remaining troops in Afghanistan would be withdrawn by September 11, 2021, 20 years after 9/11. Four presidents subsequently failed to disband the Taliban. But after the announcement of the withdrawal, the Taliban military immediately jumped into action and captured the capital Kabul on August 15, 2021, leading to the collapse of the government. About a month later, the Taliban announced control.

Hemp in Afghanistan

Cannabis cultivation is by no means a limited underground phenomenon in Afghanistan.

For background, cannabis remains one of the most commonly grown crops by farmers across the country. Afghanistan “is the second most frequently reported country of origin of cannabis resin confiscated globally, accounting for 18 percent of all top ‘country of origin’ reports in 2015-2019,” according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC ) in reported in 2021. Only Morocco reports more seizures of cannabis resin.

Between 10,000 and 24,000 hectares of cannabis were grown in Afghanistan each year, with major operations in 17 out of 34 provinces, the UNODC reported in 2010.

It’s kind of a double standard to look at what the Taliban have done in the past. Before the Taliban took power again in 2021, militants reportedly “siphoned off millions of dollars” from hemp farmers and the smugglers who ship cannabis.

To add even more hypocrisy, the Taliban claimed to have partnered with a medicinal cannabis company in 2021.

Taliban press director Qari Saeed Khosty claimed that a deal had been signed between the government and a cannabis company called Cpharm to set up a $450 million cannabis processing center in Afghanistan and that the facility would be “up and running within days”. . The news circulated worldwide and was picked up by outlets such as the Times of London.

This also coincided with a report by Afghanistan’s Pajhwok Afghan News Service that officials from the company were meeting with anti-drug officials at the Interior Ministry to discuss manufacturing medicines and creams.

Cpharm Australia, the first company named in the press as being involved in the transaction, subsequently denied the allegation, according to Reuters.

For everyone else in the country, cannabis cultivation is prohibited for the time being.