Zhob
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| Zhob | |
|---|---|
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Pakistan |
| Province/State | Balochistan |
| Coordinates | 31.21, 68.59 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 24,500 km² |
| Terrain | Uplands of north-eastern Balochistan; approximately Zhob and Qila Saifullah districts |
| Growing history | |
| Earlier names | political department of Zhob |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Zhob is a landrace cannabis growing area in north-eastern Balochistan, Pakistan, drawn on Zhob District and Qila Saifullah District. In 1977 the Government of Pakistan began fact-finding studies at Qila Saifullah, then in the political department of Zhob, to establish how far cannabis was cultivated there; a fact-finding mission found cannabis fields being harvested, and others burned at its approach.[1] In November 2025, according to Express Urdu, the deputy commissioner of Qila Saifullah said that the district administration had drawn up a list of landowners involved in cannabis cultivation and sent their names to the Home Department.[2]
Reports of cultivation
The district gazetteer of 1907 records that, before the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, the only control on ganja, charas and bhang in Zhob had been the annual auction of the right to sell them at shops the political agent sanctioned, and that the local cultivation of the hemp plant was stopped throughout the province in 1896. By 1905 the district's eleven licensed shops were supplied from the Punjab and Sind.[3]: 257
In 1977 the government's fact-finding studies at Qila Saifullah set out to determine the extent of cultivation and the patterns and consequences of addiction to cannabis resin. The mission visited Qila Saifullah, where cultivation had first been detected. The local chiefs said they were prepared to ensure that no cannabis would be planted in the area the following year, but would give no information on the villages or on the history of cultivation. The mission went on to the villages of Dera Qassam and Navi, on the main road from Khanowzai and Kafartoi. In the hamlet of Kangh Kafartoi it found the owner of a field harvesting seven acres of cannabis in three fields; he said he had planted it for the first time to repay his debts. At Shagi about two acres had already been harvested and the ashes of burned crops lay in two fields. Nobody in the village could be questioned, and word of the mission spread so fast that plantations were seen burning on the hillsides that night.[1]
Going on towards Loralai, the mission found three acres of cannabis in seven small fields in a village of seven houses, where part of the crop was being harvested and the rest had been burned the day before. That night fires were again seen in several places, and the next day a delegation of chiefs asked the mission to stop the operation "in the interests of tribal peace".[1]
According to Express Urdu, Sagar Kumar, the deputy commissioner of Qila Saifullah, said in November 2025 that the district administration had prepared a list of the landowners involved in bhang (cannabis) cultivation and formally sent their names to the Home Department. He said it had also recommended that those involved be included in the Fourth Schedule, after which strict monitoring of them and legal action would be possible.[2]
Growing practice
Zaidi, Ashraf and Afridi, writing of Baluchistan in 1982, write that cannabis was commonly planted in apple orchards, so that a farmer took two crops from the same field. The harvest began in the middle of October. Only the female plants were gathered, the males having been taken from the fields earlier, and they were dried partly in the shade and partly in the sun. When the leaves were brittle they were stripped from the stems, and the flowering and seed-bearing parts were separated on the threshing floor or on a large coarse sheet. The produce was rubbed over two grades of cloth or gauze, the finer first. The finest powder was graded first quality and sold at about Rs 400 a kilogram and the second and third at about Rs 250 and Rs 150; all three were later made into charas, moulded into rectangular slabs of 200 to 250 grams.[1] The same authors report that cannabis was said to grow wild in the north of the province.[1]
Trade and use
In 1904–05 the district consumed 2 maunds 25 seers of charas and 2 maunds 7 seers of bhang; no ganja was sold, and the revenue from the drugs came to Rs 2,200.[3]: 258 The gazetteer found opium, the hemp drugs and liquor used chiefly by the Indian population of Fort Sandeman, now the town of Zhob, and of other parts of the district, with a small quantity of charas used by Kandaharis who grew melons at Fort Sandeman and Hindubagh, now Muslim Bagh. It states that the indigenous population did not use them.[3]: 259
Charas also came through the district in the Powindah trade with Afghanistan, part of a transit trade between Afghanistan and India that used the Gomal, Zao and other passes. An estimate the gazetteer quotes from the gazetteer of Dera Ismail Khan puts the charas in that trade at Rs 1,00,000 a year, and it names Bokhara among the places it came from.[3]: 199–200 The 1982 account calls Zhob, on the main road of the province, an important inter-provincial and international route of illicit trafficking.[1]
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References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Zaidi, S. M. H.; Ashraf, S. M.; Afridi, A. A. (1982). "Programme development of drug abuse control in Baluchistan, Pakistan". Bulletin on Narcotics (1). United Nations: 23–26.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Sardar Hameed Khan (22 November 2025). "بھنگ کے کاشت کاروں کے گرد گھیرا تنگ، ملوث زمینداروں کی فہرست تیار" [Net tightens on cannabis growers as list of landowners involved is drawn up]. Express Urdu (in اردو). Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Minchin, C. F., ed. (1907). Baluchistan District Gazetteer Series, Vol. I: Zhob District. Bombay: Bombay Education Society's Press – via Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics.