Talk:Qila Abdullah

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Page scope

Qila Abdullah treats Qila Abdullah District, in north-western Balochistan on the border with Afghanistan, as a cannabis growing area: the crops of bhang destroyed at Dobandi, Gulistan Karez and Sagai in 2025 and the district's campaign of October 2026. The town of Qila Abdullah and the district as an administrative unit are separate subjects; a page on the town would take the title Qila Abdullah (city).

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why Qila Abdullah is a growing area

• Press reports of 2025 describe cannabis crops destroyed at places in Dobandi tehsil (NNI, 27 September 2025), at Gulistan Karez and Sagai (Balochistan Pulse, 4 November 2025, 310 acres in two days) and in the district as a whole (Express Urdu, 5 November 2025, 600 acres of bhang).
• In October 2026 the excise department scheduled a campaign against bhang in Dobandi, Gulistan and Qila Abdullah and reported destroying standing crops in the district (Daily Askar, 19 October 2026).
• The status is Active, on the reports of 2025 and 2026. Destroying a crop does not mean that growing has ended, and no source says it has.

The figures

• The figures are not added together on the page. Some count other crops with cannabis: the 40 acres of 1 November 2025 are "charas, bhang and opium" crops together, and the deputy commissioner's 2,000 acres (Jang, 15 November 2025; Nawa-i-Waqt carried the same figure) are opium poppy and bhang together.
• The 2,054 acres in the Balochistan Pulse report are the province-wide total of the drive, not a figure for the district. The further 650 acres in the Express Urdu report are "in Balochistan", with no district named.
• The reports of early November 2025 overlap in time, and none says whether its figure includes another's.

Extent and border

• The map border is approximate. It is drawn on Qila Abdullah District as mapped in OpenStreetMap (relation 16634541, "Qilla Abdullah District"): the Gulistan, Qila Abdullah and Dobandi tehsils. Chaman, which OpenStreetMap maps as a separate district, is not included: the one report of a crop destroyed there (August 2025) gives no place or area.
• The map line keeps the land of the district below 4,000 m (SRTM elevation) that ESA WorldCover 2021 does not map as bare or sparse vegetation, permanent snow and ice, or open water; pockets inside the line are filled, pieces less than about 5 km apart are joined and the edge is smoothed. Strips narrower than 3 km between the line and the border with Afghanistan, where the area meets Kandahar, are joined to the area, and the line meets Pishin edge to edge. About 615 km² of the district's 2,788 km² remain, in four pieces, and the infobox area is rounded from that line.
• The town of Gulistan lies inside the line. Gulistan Karez, Sagai and the places in Dobandi named in the reports could not be placed on a map. The drug factories at Nurak Sulaiman Khel made ice and charas; they are not fields.
• The point in the infobox is the town of Qila Abdullah, not a field.

Sources

• Spelling. The reports write قلعہ عبداللہ, Qila Abdullah, the name used in the article's prose. The district's official spelling is Killa Abdullah, and the link to the district page uses it.
• The Urdu press. The English titles in the references are translations. Bhang means the crop, cannabis. The headline of the NNI report of 27 September 2025 opens with a stray letter, which the reference leaves out.
• Balochistan Pulse (4 November 2025) is in English and gives its figures on the authority of "official sources" and a departmental spokesman.
• The Express Urdu report of 5 November 2025 was carried in the same terms by Benaqab TV.
• In the Quetta-Pishin district gazetteer of 1907, Gulistan and Qila Abdullah are villages of the Pishin tahsil (pp. 310, 315). In 1894 the extra assistant commissioner at Pishin told the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission that hemp was not cultivated in his sub-division; that testimony is on the Pishin page.