MARIJUANA FIGHTERS FOX CANADIANS

Taleban fighters using giant Afghan marijuana forests for cover are
proving a tough foe to smoke out, the head of Canada's armed forces
has revealed.

Thickets three metres (10ft) high readily absorb heat, making them
hard to penetrate with thermal devices, said Gen Rick Hillier in a
speech in Ottawa.

"You really have to be careful the Taleban don't dodge in and out of
those marijuana forests," he added.

Burning them is not an option as they are laden with water, the general said.

He was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency that the crew of at
least one armoured car had responded by camouflaging their vehicle
with marijuana.

Canada's armed forces have more than 2,300 personnel deployed in
Afghanistan as part of the Isaf international force and have suffered
at least 40 fatalities since 2002.

Smoke scare

"We tried burning [the marijuana forests] with white phosphorous - it
didn't work," said Gen Hillier.

"We tried burning them with diesel - it didn't work. The plants are
so full of water right now... that we simply couldn't burn them."

He noted that a couple of brown plants on the edges of some of the
forests had caught fire but this had posed yet another problem.

"A section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill
effects and decided that was probably not the right course of
action," he said, speaking dryly, according to Reuters.

One soldier had told him:

"Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I'd
say 'That damn marijuana'."

Marijuana, an illegal drug in most parts of the world, grows wild
across Central Asia, where it is commonly regarded as a weed.

With illicit marijuana production on the rise in Canada itself,
police there recently identified fighting the drug as their "biggest issue".