40 2GM Thursday November 25 2021 | the times
Wo r l d
The Taliban have secured their first
deal as a legal seller of narcotics after an
Australian company pledged £330 mil-
lion to invest in a cannabis-processing
centre in Afghanistan.
The project is expected to be up and
running within days and will give
Cpharm, which produces medicinal
cannabis cream, access to thousands of
acres of Afghan cannabis crops.
Cannabis is illegal in Afghanistan but
has been cultivated for centuries with
officials typically turning a blind eye
and pocketing large sums from its pro-
duction.
Afghanistan’s deputy narcotics min-
ister met a representative of the Austra-
lian company on Tuesday, who prom-
ised to invest in the project, according
to the Pajhwok Afghan news agency.
The cannabis cream produced at the
company’s processing plant will be
flown to Australia.
Cpharm describes itself as the lead-
ing medical services consultancy in
Australia and New Zealand. Based in
the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, the
company claims to provide “collabora-
tive pharmaceutical services to clients
from start-ups to top-ten multinational
healthcare companies”.
After they seized power in August,
the Taliban said they would ban the
production of narcotics. For those in
the cannabis farms and poppy fields,
however, it appeared to be business as
usual.
Production is said to be continuing in
the poppy-growing provinces of Hel-
mand and Kandahar. Afghanistan is
the world’s largest opium producer,
accounting for 85 per cent of the global
total last year. The country also in-
creasingly manufactures methamphet-
amine using the local ephedra plant.
Yussef Wafa, a Taliban governor of
Kandahar, said last month that the
group had been arresting drug usersand would not let farmers grow canna-
bis or opium poppies. However, farmers
reported seeing no real change in the
group’s attitudes toward them.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for
the Taliban, confirmed that the group
had no plan to stop the poppy trade.
“Our people are going through an eco-
nomic crisis, and stopping their onlyTaliban export cannabis to Australia
Gaddafi’s son
banned from
election bid
Libya
Richard Spencer
Middle East Correspondent
The son of Colonel Gaddafi, the late
Libyan dictator, has been banned from
standing in the presidential elections
set for next month.
The election commission, which is
overseeing a ballot agreed under a
United Nations-run peace process,
deleted Saif al-Islam Gaddafi’s name
and those of 24 others from the list of
candidates. “The names are excluded
from the preliminary list of candidates
as they do not meet the prerequisites
and have not submitted all the necessa-
ry documents,” a statement said. The
decision is subject to appeal.
One election rule bans those con-
victed of crimes and Gaddafi, 49, was
found guilty of war crimes and sen-
tenced to death in absentia by a court in
the capital, Tripoli, in 2015.
He has been indicted on war crimes
charges by the International Criminal
Court in The Hague for his role in his
father’s suppression of protests in 2011
and the subsequent civil war.
The commission approved two other
controversial figures. The interim
prime minister, Abdulhamid Dabaiba,
63, was supposedly ineligible under the
terms of the election. Khalifa Haftar,
78, is the warlord who runs eastern
Libya, and his officers have also been
accused of war crimes.means of income is not a good idea,” he
said. Cannabis and opium crops were
known to be significant sources of
revenue for the hardline group when it
operated as an insurgency.
The United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime reported last week that
opium production in Afghanistan had
increased by 8 per cent this year.Although the Taliban said the cultivation of cannabis would not be allowed, farmers report that crops are still flourishingAfghanistan
Bernard Lagan
BULENT KILIC/AFP/GETTY100 milesKANDAHARNANGARHAR
PAKTIKAGHAZNIBALKH
KabulCannabis-
cultivating
provincesAFGHANISTAN