Talk:Zhob

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Page scope

Zhob treats Zhob and Qila Saifullah districts, in north-eastern Balochistan, as a cannabis growing area: the fields found there in 1977, the 2025 list of landowners involved in cultivation, the growing practice described for the province, and the hemp drugs in the district gazetteer of 1907. The town of Zhob (formerly Fort Sandeman), Zhob District as an administrative unit and the Zhob River are separate subjects; a page on the town would take the title Zhob (city).

Data verification

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

Discussion

Why Zhob is a growing area

• Zaidi, Ashraf and Afridi (Bulletin on Narcotics, 1982, no. 1, pp. 23–26) describe the fact-finding studies the Government of Pakistan began in 1977 at Qila Saifullah, "in the political department of Zhob", to determine the extent of cultivation. The mission found cannabis being harvested on seven acres in three fields at Kangh Kafartoi, about two acres harvested and two fields burned at Shagi, and visited Dera Qassam and Navi. It also found three acres in a village on the way to Loralai, which lies outside the area drawn here. The article gives the year the studies began (1977) but not a separate date for the visit.
• Express Urdu (22 November 2025; Daily Pakistan carried the same report the same day, crediting Express News) quotes the deputy commissioner of Qila Saifullah, Sagar Kumar: the district administration had drawn up a list of the landowners involved in cannabis (bhang) cultivation, sent it to the Home Department and recommended them for the Fourth Schedule. The report names no village and gives no area.
• The status is Active: the 2025 report describes cultivation in Qila Saifullah District since 2000. On the 1982 article alone the status would be Historical; the 2025 report changes that. A listing of growers and a call for action against them do not mean growing has ended, and no source says it has. The page names none of the landowners; the report itself names none.
• The district gazetteer of 1907 records that the local cultivation of the hemp plant was stopped throughout the province in 1896 (p. 257). It does not say where in Zhob hemp had been grown, so the page does not use it as evidence of growing in the area.

Extent and border

• The map border is approximate. It is drawn on Zhob District and Killa Saifullah District as mapped in OpenStreetMap (relations 16629149 and 16629721), merged into one shape of about 24,500 km². The infobox area is rounded from it.
• The 1977 studies were based at Qila Saifullah and the 2025 report concerns Qila Saifullah District. Zhob District is included because the 1982 article places Qila Saifullah in the political department of Zhob and calls the mission a "fact-finding mission to Zhob". Sherani District, separated from Zhob District in 2006, is not included: no source read names cultivation there.
• The villages the mission visited (Kangh Kafartoi, Shagi, Dera Qassam, Navi) could not be placed on a map. The article says only that Dera Qassam and Navi lie on the main road from Khanowzai and Kafartoi.
• Loralai, where the mission found a third village with cannabis, and Loralai District, where the district administration reviewed a survey of cannabis cultivation in September 2026, lie outside the border. The source speaks of each separately.
• The point in the infobox is a point inside the merged border near its centre, not a field.
• Spelling: the sources write Qila Saifullah, the name used in the article's prose. The district's official spelling is Killa Saifullah, and the link to the district page uses it.

Sources

• Zaidi, Ashraf and Afridi (1982). Read in full in the UNODC web edition of the Bulletin on Narcotics; authors, title, issue and pages (23–26) checked against the UNODC record. The web edition has no page breaks, so no page is given for each claim. The paragraph on growing practice and the prices of charas is written of Baluchistan as a whole and does not name a village; the page attributes it to the authors in those terms.
• Baluchistan District Gazetteer Series, Vol. I: Zhob District (1907). Read in the scan held by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics. The preface is signed by Major C. F. Minchin, Superintendent of District Gazetteers, Baluchistan, Quetta, December 1906; the material was collected by Rai Sahib Jamiat Rai. Used: pp. 199–200 (the Powindah trade, quoted from the Dera Ismail Khan gazetteer), 257–259 (the hemp drugs, consumption and consumers). The figures for consumption per thousand of the population on p. 259 are not legible in the scan's text and are not used.
• Express Urdu (2025). Read in Urdu; the English title is a translation. The byline is Sardar Hameed Khan. Bhang in the report means the crop, cannabis, not the drink of that name.

Sources not used

• In a travel narrative the gazetteer quotes in its history chapter, a host, Dost Mahomed, sends word that he has prepared Indian hemp for his guests to smoke (p. 33). Where and when this took place is not clear enough to use.
• A press report of cannabis destroyed in Qila Abdullah District in 2025 is not used: that district is not in the area.
• Reports of poppy cultivation in Killa Saifullah and Zhob (2025) concern opium, not cannabis.