LEBANESE FARMERS MISS THE GOOD OLD DAYS

When Cannabis Was King: 'Take Back The Cows'

BAALBEK, Lebanon Hussein Jaafar, former drug farmer turned dairyman,
struggles to eke out a living from a half-dozen Pennsylvania milking cows
while fervently wishing day and night for just one thing.

He longs to grow cannabis, the crop from which hashish is made, again.

"Let them come and take their cows back wherever they came from," said Mr.
Jaafar. "I will even forgive them my down payment. I swear if the
government would let me grow just 500 square meters of hashish, I would
sell them." These are difficult days in the Bekaa region of Lebanon, the
season when farmers in the once lawless valley used to seed their fields
with cannabis and opium poppies, now banned. Given the deepening economic
problems, farmers throughout the region are itching to resurrect their
outlaw traditions.

The illicit crops, almost literally, made money grow on trees. Farmers had
only to toss out some seeds, sprinkle a little water around if needed and,
without ever bothering to apply fertilizer or pesticides, sit back and
watch their plants grow. After the harvest, they could walk to the edge of
their fields to collect wads of dollars from the brokers. Government
promises to find a good substitute have so far proved barren. Nothing, it
seems, compares with the ease and profitability of illicit crops.

The American dairy cows, specifically Holsteins, wandered into this
quandary. They have been introduced slowly over the last four years under a
U.S. agricultural loan program.

The results are somewhat mixed. Cannabis fields can be ignored, but cows
must be birthed, fed, nurtured and milked.

"Farmers here suddenly find themselves taking care of living souls who need
attention every day," said Mahmoud Dally, an agricultural engineer working
in the program. "Before they were just planting hashish or poppies and they
didn't even have to think about it."

The cows have also become part of the intense political rivalry between the
United States and Iran. The Iranians back Hezbollah, the guerrilla movement
that has flourished as a political party partly by championing the concerns
of the impoverished, like Lebanon's long-neglected farmers. Hezbollah's
television station, Al Manar, recently ran a segment suggesting that the
United States was dumping inferior cows, and pictures of sick American cows
are a staple of local press coverage.

"We hear a lot of complaints from the farmers, mainly that the American
cows are not acclimatizing and not producing milk at the promised level,"
said Mohammed Khansa, the director of an experimental farm in Baalbek set
up by the Jihad for Construction, Hezbollah's public works arm.

Those on the American side are quick to dismiss the Jihad farm outreach
program.

"They help a limited number of farmers who are their political supporters,"
said Marwan Sidani, the director of the dairy improvement program.

The Bekaa region's drug-growing tradition stretches back at least to the
early 20th century, when Ottoman overlords encouraged its cultivation.

Before Lebanon's civil war erupted in 1975, an effort was made to supplant
the cannabis with sunflowers. To collect the offered subsidies, many
farmers circled their drug fields with sunflowers.

Lebanon's civil war proved something of a golden age for illicit crops.
Hashish and the newly introduced opium poppy went well with other dubious
activities like training militias, smuggling low-cost electronic devices
into neighboring Syria and, occasionally, hiding kidnapped Westerners.

By the end of the war in 1990, cannabis and opium growing earned the Bekaa
farmers roughly $1,500 per capita, according to UN estimates.

By 1994 it was all gone. The Lebanese and Syrian governments decided after
the war to get off the U.S. drug production blacklist.

But frustration set in quickly, because none of the promised crop
replacements proved viable. Either the crops had trouble growing in the
valley's fertile yet dry soil, or the government failed to help in
marketing or the price was too low. "The farmers could sell a kilo" - 2.2
pounds - "of hashish for $300 cash," Mr. Sidani said. "How can you compare
it to a kilo of potatoes for 20 cents?"

Enter the American dairy cow. The inspiration was twofold. One, Lebanon
imports up to $300 million annually in meat and dairy products. Two, the
cows might at least help feed their families. Starting in 1997, Lebanon
paid $6 million for 3,000 American dairy cows delivered over four years to
1,000 farmers, a third of them in the Bekaa. Last year the program was
extended for three years, with 5,000 cows coming for $10 million. The U.S.
government has added $1 million for things like teaching farmers the basics
of feeding and milking.

Problems are manifold. Feed, for example, is largely imported and
expensive, so farmers give the cows hay. That lowers milk production, and
the farmers blame the cows. This year has been particularly bad for milk
prices - the consumption of meat and dairy products has fallen 30 percent
because of the scares over various bovine diseases. Mr. Jaafar notes that
he used to spend almost no time in his five acres and still earned around
$30,000 a year, enough to build a sturdy two-bedroom house, drive a car and
smoke Marlboros. Now he drives a school bus in the morning and spends the
rest of the time with his cows. He has forsaken Marlboros and cannot afford
the $400 he needs to install tiles over the raw cement floors of his home.

The Lebanese believe that the United States is being miserly, given that
Washington demanded that the drug cultivation be eradicated.

"The United States program is too small, too diffuse, too expensive and
needs better auxiliary services like vets," said Ali Osseiran, a member of
Parliament and himself a farmer.

Enter the Iranian government. An Iranian delegation showed up in Beirut
last month offering $50 million in farm aid, including a farm credit
program, technicians to train the Lebanese in fish farming, beekeeping and
improved mechanization, and food processing factories.

Dire poverty is driving many back to cultivating drugs. Some limit it to
garden plots, telling the police that they are growing canary food to make
the birds sing better. Last year the army, preoccupied with the Israeli
withdrawal from South Lebanon, skipped the eradication campaign. "This year
the farmers won't leave any piece of land free of hashish," said Lieutenant
Michel Chakkour of the Internal Security Forces.

Helicopters have been dropping leaflets warning farmers that growing drugs
carries a maximum sentence of life at hard labor and a $4,000 fine.

"If there isn't an alternative crop, then I am going to grow hashish even
if the whole government shows up," said one farmer. "In the days of hashish
we were so happy. I once owned a car, but now, thanks be to God, I have a cow."