Hindu Kush

Hindu Kush
ActiveCannabis last recorded here in 2022
Snow peaks above terraced fields in Nari District, Kunar
⛶
Location	Afghanistan,Pakistan
Coordinates	35.86, 70.85
Country	Afghanistan,Pakistan
Provinces/States	Badakhshan Province,Takhar Province,Baghlan Province,Parwan Province,Bamyan Province,Panjshir Province,Kapisa Province,Laghman Province,Kunar Province,Nuristan Province,Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Elevation	Up to 7,706 m
Area	51,000 km²
Climate	Mountain; summer monsoon on the southern slopes, winter and spring rain to the north and west, arid inner valleys
Growing history
Dated accessions	2015–2022
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Hindu Kush is the landrace cannabis growing region of the Hindu Kush, the south-western range of the great mountain system of middle and southern Asia, which lies partly in Afghanistan and partly in Pakistan. It holds the Chitral growing area, in the Pakistani part of the range, where Nigel Allan counted the making of hashish from cannabis among the sources of rural income in 1991, and where The Real Seed Company has collected seed in the Yarkhun Valley since 2015, "personally collected at source in Yarkhun Valley, Chitral, Hindu Kush". The growing region is drawn on the districts of the range in both countries.

Extent

The Panjshir Valley, in the Afghan part of the range

Erwin Grötzbach, writing in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, places the eastern end of the range at the Baroghil Pass (3,804 m) and the valleys of the Yarkhun, Mastuj and Chitral rivers, which separate it from the Karakoram and the Hindu Raj. On the north the valley of the Kokcha divides it from the mountains of northern Badakhshan, and the valley of the Panj from the Pamir. To the west it runs into the highlands of central Afghanistan, where the Shibar Pass and the gorge of the Darra-ye Shekari mark its limit. He divides the range into a western part, from the Shibar to the Khawak Pass; a central part, from the Khawak to the Dorah Pass; an eastern part, from the Dorah to the Baroghil, on whose main ridge the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan runs; and the Khwaja Mohammed range, which reaches north from the Khawak into Badakhshan. He gives the range an area of about 55,000 km², some 10,000 km² of it in Pakistan. Its highest point is Tirich Mir (7,706 m), on a side ridge in Chitral. The Chitral river drains the eastern Hindu Kush in the north and a spur of the Hindu Raj on the south and east.

The border of the growing region follows whole districts. In Pakistan it takes in Upper and Lower Chitral; in Afghanistan, the provinces of Nuristan, Panjshir and Kunar, and the mountain districts of Badakhshan south of the Kokcha and the Panj, of Takhar (Warsaj and Farkhar), Baghlan (Andarab, Khost wa Fereng, Khinjan, Dih Salah and Puli Hisar), Parwan (Salang and the Ghorband valley), Bamyan (Shibar), Kapisa (Nijrab, Alasay and Tagab) and Laghman (Alingar, Alishing, Dawlat Shah and Mihtarlam). Wakhan district is cut at the Baroghil Pass. The districts add up to about 71,500 km², more than Grötzbach's figure for the range; the map line leaves out ground above 4,000 m, bare or sparse ground, snow and ice, and open water, and encloses about 47,400 km².

Climate and farming

The Hindu Kush lies where the climate of western Asia, with rain in winter and spring, gives way to the summer monsoon of southern Asia. The southern side, in Nuristan and south Chitral, is on the edge of the monsoon and carries forest: oak and wild olive from about 1,300 to 2,300 m, and conifers above that to about 3,300 m. The northern and north-western slopes are drier, with sparse juniper woods, and the inner valleys lie in a rain shadow with desert vegetation. Glaciers on the high peaks feed the Chitral–Kunar, the Kokcha and the Panj, which still carry much water in the dry autumn.

Farming in the range depends on irrigation where there is water for it. Rice is grown up to about 2,000 m, fruit (apricots, mulberries, apples and walnuts) up to 2,400 or 2,500 m, and wheat, barley and pulses up to the limit of cultivation at 3,200 to 3,400 m. In many villages farming does not make the household self-sufficient, and temporary or seasonal work outside the mountains, in Kabul, the oases of Qataghan and Peshawar, is common.

Cannabis

Chitral

In 1991 the making of hashish from cannabis, with the production of opium, was among the sources of rural income in Chitral. In Lotkuh, a valley of Chitral that Hafiz Ullah and Lal Badshah place in the eastern Hindu Kush, the plant is called bong; it is dried and fed to polo horses to keep them warm in winter. Under British rule Chitral lay on a route for charas from Central Asia into India. By 1926 a warehouse had been set up at Chitral to stop the smuggling of charas from Central Asia, and in 1928 charas was among the goods brought into Chitral from Badakhshan.

The Real Seed Company has sold seed from the Yarkhun Valley in Upper Chitral under the name Chitrali since 2015, for making charas, from a harvest of late September to early November.

Afghanistan

The cannabis surveys carried out by the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report cultivation by province, not by mountain range. They found commercial cultivation in Badakhshan, Takhar and Baghlan, three of the provinces whose mountain districts the growing region takes in, in each year from 2009 to 2011, and in Kapisa in 2011.^: 13: 13 Field reports had shown no significant cultivation in Nuristan, Kunar, Laghman, Panjshir and Parwan, and the surveys left them outside the area they covered for cannabis.^{: 13–14: 13} None of the surveys gives figures for the mountain districts themselves.

Herbarium and seed collections

Nikolai Vavilov collected seed in 1924 in Kafiristan, the present-day province of Nuristan, and at Chekhosarai, now Asadabad in Kunar, and plants were raised from it in Russia. In 1976 Ernest Small and Arthur Cronquist made the Chekhosarai sheet the lectotype of their Cannabis sativa subsp. indica var. kafiristanica, a variety they defined to include indigenous or well-established weedy and naturalised plants.^: 429 The sheets are Vavilov s.n., Kafiristan (1924) and Vavilov s.n., Chekhosarai (1924).

Arnold Scheibe collected Scheibe 82 (1935) in 1935 at Ischaghan-Serai, where the Pech river joins the Kunar. T. F. Hewer collected Hewer 1411 (1969) at Kamdesh in 1969; its label calls the plant "one of the commonest 'weeds'" there. The label of Podlech 12731 (1965), from Baharak in Badakhshan, says the plant was frequent on roadsides and in fields. None of these labels says the plant was cultivated.

Growing Areas

Growing Area	Province
Chitral	Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Accessions

Accession ID	Name	Collected	Area	Appellation
NPG-PAK-KHY-0020190001	Chitrali #2 General Population 2019	2019	Chitral
NPG-PAK-KHY-0020190002	Chitral (Passom) General Population 2019	2019	Chitral
NPG-PAK-KHY-0020190003	Chitral (Brep) General Population 2019	2019	Chitral
NPG-PAK-KHY-0020220001	Chitrali General Population 2022	2022	Chitral
RSC-AFG-PAN-0120220001	Panjshir General Population 2022	2022
RSC-PAK-GIL-0120220002	Yasin Valley General Population 2022	2022
RSC-PAK-KHY-0120150001	Chitrali General Population 2015	2015	Chitral	Yarkhun Valley (appellation)
RSC-PAK-KHY-0120180001	Chitrali General Population 2018	2018	Chitral	Yarkhun Valley (appellation)
RSC-PAK-KHY-0120190001	Chitrali General Population 2019	2019	Chitral	Yarkhun Valley (appellation)
RSC-PAK-KHY-0120210001	Chitrali General Population 2021	2021	Chitral	Yarkhun Valley (appellation)

Recent news

No news items are recorded for this growing region yet.

See also

• Charas
• Chitral
• Hindu Kush Himalaya
• Karakoram
• Eastern Afghanistan
• North-eastern Afghanistan