The Chui Valley is a place no less legendary than, for example, Baikonur, although it is associated primarily not with the cities that are located in it, and not with the achievements of local agricultural producers. In the popular consciousness, this area, divided between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, is associated primarily with the wild hemp growing here, which has pronounced psychotropic properties. For local authorities, this “shaitan grass,” as it is sometimes jokingly called, has always been a headache, but it is possible that in the near future Mother Nature herself will come to the aid of law enforcement officers.

Last week, the head of the department for combating drug trafficking of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Zhambyl region of Kazakhstan, Shopyrkhan Dzhapabaev, reported that the area where hemp grows in the Chuyskaya (in Kazakhstan it is called Shuskaya) valley has been steadily shrinking in recent years, and this is not due to the efforts of the authorities, but to changing climatic conditions . “Every year, the area where hemp grows, fortunately, is decreasing. But even now there is still plenty of work for employees to combat drug trafficking,” said Dzhapabaev. According to him, today the area where hemp grows is 126 thousand hectares, while just recently it exceeded 140 thousand.

It seems that the climate changes that Dzhapabaev is talking about are associated with a decrease in precipitation in the region. And for moisture-loving hemp, this is like death. According to the World Bank, which assessed climate change in Central Asia in 2005, drought duration in the Chu Valley was 18 percent of the time between 1975 and 1992, compared with 7 percent between 1960 and 1974. During this period, the frequency of occurrence of droughts of varying degrees of intensity doubled; atmospheric droughts were also observed (when an abundance of solar heat and gradually decreasing air humidity create increased evaporation), lasting several years without interruption.

Hemp picker in the Chui Valley Photo: Damir Otegen / Voxpopuli.kz

There is talk on the other side of the border that the ecological situation in the valley is changing. As the former director of the state agency for geology and mineral resources, Ishimbay Chunuyev, said recently at a meeting of the government of Kyrgyzstan, fresh water reserves in the Chui region are being depleted due to uneven use and lack of control. “Our hydrogeological expedition predicts that in 10-15 years there will be problems with drinking and fresh water in the Chu Valley,” the specialist explained. According to him, since the times of the USSR, about 10 thousand water wells have been explored in the valley, but today about 500-600 are effectively exploited, while water flows out aimlessly from the rest.

At one time, the low level of humidity already played into the hands of the fighters against hemp - back in Soviet times, local drug dealers made attempts to establish hashish production in the valley, but the Chuya varieties turned out to be of insufficient quality for this, and the imported Indian ones did not take root. Therefore, today they mainly collect classic “grass”. Hashish, however, is also produced, but not in such quantities as, for example, in Afghanistan and Morocco, which are leaders in the volume of exports of this drug (the yield in Afghanistan is 145 kilograms of hashish per hectare, in Morocco - 40 kilograms).

The volume of hemp harvest in the Chui Valley has recently been estimated at 5-6 thousand tons annually. At the same time, attempts to reduce the area of hemp thickets have been made more than once since the middle of the last century. The hemp was poisoned with chemicals and burned, after which nothing alive remained in the treated areas. Except for hemp, whose root system, up to seven meters long, allowed the plant to survive all the “repressions.” Moreover, the newly grown grass only increased its psychotropic qualities. Even if the area where hemp grows is plowed, the next year it will grow even more. If you destroy the grass by the roots, which in itself is an extremely labor-intensive task, then the cleared lands will begin to be occupied by sands.

It is curious that there is still no exact answer to the question of where such a quantity of hemp came from in the Chui Valley. According to one version, it has grown there since prehistoric times. “In Kazakhstan, wild hemp grows only in the Dzhambul region, in six districts,” said the head of the DIA of the Dzhambul region, Police General Meirkhan Zhamanbaev, in 2009. — Hemp has been growing here since time immemorial, in ancient times the Kazakhs grew it and used it in everyday life: they wove ropes, wove carpets, then they had no idea that hemp contained narcotic substances. Hemp was an advantageous material for our ancestors, as ropes and carpets made from hemp were particularly durable.”

An alternative version says that the “culprit” of such hemp abundance was the Russian general Gerasim Kolpakovsky, the conqueror of the Kokand Khanate, the military governor of the Semirechensk region, who repeatedly served as the Turkestan governor-general during the absence of Konstantin Kaufman. Allegedly, in order to combat desertification, Kolpakovsky brought Indian hemp to the valley, a significant part of which was occupied by the Moyynkum sands.

Be that as it may, for the time being, hemp grew and did not bother anyone. Moreover, in the USSR in 1956-1960, an average of about 430 thousand hectares were occupied by its crops - we are mostly talking about the “harmless” hemp that was used in industry. The first bans on its cultivation date back to the 1960s. In particular, such a ban was spelled out in the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1960, and then appeared in the criminal legislation of other republics. In 1961, the USSR ratified the UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs, according to which hemp was outlawed, and its crops—both “right” and “wrong”—began to be destroyed everywhere. But by that time, the shadow drug market in the country had already fully taken shape.

At the same time, speaking specifically about the Chui Valley, attempts were made to cultivate local plants in order to reduce the content of psychotropic drugs in hemp. However, they did not give the desired effect. After the collapse of the USSR, measures were repeatedly announced in Kazakhstan related to the creation of industrial production that would process “chuyka”, for example, into harmless ropes. In 2003, it was announced that the Industrial and Innovative Development Program of Kazakhstan for 2004-2006 included a project for a complex hemp processing plant. Investments in it were to amount to $54 million, which were allocated by the German company Treu-Hampf AG, Investment Fund of Kazakhstan JSC, Development Bank of Kazakhstan JSC and the EBRD. The first stone of the enterprise was even laid, but the plant never appeared. In 2010, the start of construction of another enterprise was announced - on the basis of Xeloria LLP. But the completion of the work, as well as the closure of the project, has not yet been announced.

Detention of a hemp harvester in the Chui Valley Photo: Damir Otegen / Voxpopuli.kz

While the authorities are racking their brains over the question of what to do with the Chui “grass,” the law enforcement agencies of Kazakhstan annually mobilize for the operational and preventive operation “Koknar”, which, as a rule, lasts throughout the summer period, that is, when the collection season begins in the valley and harvesting. Both adults and children are involved in the drug business. The pickers, among whom you can find citizens of almost all CIS countries, go into the hemp bushes for days and even weeks. The volume of their production is impressive - during the season, the criminal chronicle of the republic is replete with reports of the seizure of 700 or 900 kilograms of cannabis from one or another collector. If the trend towards a reduction in the area under crops continues, then in 10-15 years these figures will already look fantastic.

Anasha dries up slowly