Travel Tales from the Heart of Afghan cannabis culture - Part One. By Lucas Wiseup

Lucas Wiseup has done some extensive traveling in the hash-producing
regions of the world and I am delighted to present him as today’s guest
blogger. He has agreed to do a 4 part Series on Cannabis Cultivation and
Processing in Afghanistan and I look forward to sharing these with you. His
photographs of the people and land are timeless images of a culture now
suppressed. I encourage you to take a look at his book

*"Afghanistan, Fortress of Cannabis," available at **www.wiseup-photo.com*

-Ed
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*Travel Tales from the Heart of Afghan cannabis culture*

In 2018, I stayed for two months in the city of Mazar-i Sharif in northern
Afghanistan. You may think I am crazy, lucky, or both, but what I saw as a
cannabis enthusiast is really unique. I was able to bring back amazing
photographs that you can discover in the photo book "Afghanistan, Fortress
of Cannabis." The book contains detailed information to explain how this
country has, maybe more than any other, influenced what we smoke today. In
this 4-part blog series, I'll try to describe what I saw and what it meant
to me.

Cannabis plants in a courtyard, Kholm.

Anyone with Ed's age and passion for cannabis would probably agree that he
has seen the cannabis culture change a lot in his lifetime. From the old
sinsemilla and Afghan primo to the modern hybrids and concentrates, they
have seen and smoked it all. I am one or two generations younger, and in
the past 15 years I have traveled to famous hash producing regions such as
Pakistan, Lebanon, Morocco, India, or Nepal, but nowhere had I seen such a
deeply rooted cannabis culture as in Afghanistan.

*The so-called "building blocks"*

I stayed in Northern Afghanistan from October to December, thinking it
would be the ideal time to see the harvest and the hash-making. When I
arrived, cannabis fields were easy to spot from the road, with small
patches dispersed in the cotton fields. Some lonesome plants were even
growing in the city center and, as I would soon discover, behind the closed
walls of many inner courtyards. October was still early for harvest, and
those who already did, did so in fear of getting it seized by the
provincial authorities. It was an illegal drug under the previous
government, and in this part of the country, efforts were made to try to
limit cannabis production.

Afghanistan is located between the latitudes of 38° and 30° North, the same
as San Francisco and New Orleans. The majority of cannabis available in the
United States in the 1970s came from South-East Asia, Mexico, and further
south in Latin America or the Caribbean. Growing the seeds you saved from
your joint would bring you very little results outdoors in North America or
Europe. As R. Clarke explains, it was when American breeders got their
hands on a few Afghan seeds that cannabis took on the shape of almost
everything we are growing these days.

Cannabis plant in Mazar-i Sharif city centre

Cannabis breeders were able to cross breeds of high THC tropical cannabis
that would flower too late in North America and grow too tall indoors with
one of the many variations to be found in Afghanistan. The result is almost
everything you're smoking today except for the few strains such as Haze,
which are supposed to have purely tropical lineages.

“Cannabis breeding has evolved into a very sophisticated process, but the
“ingredients,” the genetic materials, haven’t changed much since the 1980s,
with terrible effects on cannabis biodiversity.”

— Lucas Wiseup

In Afghanistan, psychoactive cannabis plants considered to be the building
blocks of our modern hybrids are still reproduced through open pollination,
and the seeds are used the following year without selection. This farming
practice ensures the continued biodiversity of the Afghan cannabis plants.
If you grow authentic cannabis seeds from Afghanistan, you can't really
know what you will get. There is the expectation of dark, broad leaflets,
high resin production, and small heights, but these are probably just the
characteristics selected in the 70's and 80's from a very small amount of
samples from Afghanistan. You may find some plants do not produce much
resin, while others grow kind of tall and green, but all are part of the
wide range of beautiful expressions that the cannabis plant can display.

Non Resinous Afghan Cannabis

From my experience in the fields, this diversity would be expressed through
various plant shapes and heights, leaflet shapes, and fragrances. In
December, you could see plants decaying while others would have needed a
few more weeks before being chopped. But throughout the genetic diversity
observable with the naked eye, some kind of uniformity also emerged in the
nose. Even if some plants smelled more fruity and others like cat piss,
each village had its own recurring scent. For example, it might be berry in
one village but lemony in another. Interestingly, you could find that same
underlying smell in the hash you would get from that village. These are all
signs of genetic diversity and a local persisting heritage (or terroir as
you may have heard Frenchy say).
*Centuries of cannabis domestication*

But let's go back further than the 1960s. Afghan cannabis plants are not
only the building blocks of our modern hybrids, they also carry a heritage
that goes much further back in time. The oldest archaeological evidence of
psychoactive cannabis has been found in Northwestern China, and the
Scythians, whose nomadic tribes traveled from the Danube to India and
Russia, were believed to get high on cannabis during funeral rituals some
2500 years ago. That puts Afghanistan, later a major hub on the Silk Road,
at the heart of the first propagations of psychoactive cannabis. The Mongol
invasions of the 13th century in Central Asia pushed waves of the
population to India or the Middle East, and that's probably when sieved
hashish began to be a thing.

Afghans don't smoke dry cannabis flowers, and they strongly advise me not
to. Some told me it would not make me feel good, and I can confirm it
wasn't good. It was very leafy, so there was more chlorophyll, and it
tasted like hay, with low effects.

“A leafy plant usually produces more resin, so that’s really interesting if
you are growing for the resin, and that’s exactly what Afghans do. Their
cannabis production has been exclusively destined to be sieved to collect
the resin powder, probably since the Middle Ages.”

— Lucas Wiseup

Buds packed with seeds
*Pressure on cannabis biodiversity*

Law enforcement eradication efforts have long been the biggest pressure on
cannabis biodiversity. Nonetheless, it can't compare with the modern hybrid
invasion taking place in most traditional cannabis-producing regions.
Cannabis farmers who grew their local cannabis switched, or are switching,
to what they thought would be more lucrative hybrids. With more and more
modern hybrids being available worldwide, pristine traditional cannabis
populations will be harder and harder to find.

Cannabis Plants in mid December

Because Afghanistan has been through so much turmoil over the past 40
years, it is almost isolated, and there are very few chances for modern
hybrids to spread their pollen on a large scale. This should make Afghan
cannabis, like any traditional cannabis or "landrace," an essential working
material for the future of the cannabis plant. That's where the "pheno
hunt" is for crop scientists to come up with cannabis plants able to face
the upcoming climate challenges and the range of pests and diseases
associated with them, as well as the growing demand for cannabinoids. As
for the hobby grower or breeder, landraces from all corners of the world
are becoming more available and could help experience what the cannabis
plant or its by-products used to be.

*Find out in more detail and photographs why traditional cannabis matters,
in the carefully printed photo book "Afghanistan, Fortress of Cannabis,"
available at **www.wiseup-photo.com*

In Part 2, we will see how Afghan hash is made!

-Lucas Wiseup

You can buy the book here *www.wiseup-photo.com*