Fergana Valley
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| Fergana Valley | |
|---|---|
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 40.27, 71.84 |
| Country | Kyrgyzstan,Uzbekistan,Tajikistan |
| Provinces/States | Osh Region,Batken Region,Andijan Region,Namangan Region,Fergana Region,Sughd Region |
| Area | 74,000 km² |
| Growing history | |
| Dated news reports | 2010–2026 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
The Fergana Valley growing region covers the Fergana Valley, the basin of the upper Syr Darya shared by Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, with the mountains along its southern side. Cannabis grows wild there and is sown on household plots and farm land. Kyrgyzstan's state commission for drug control proposed to the United Nations that the wild hemp thickets of the Chu, Fergana and Ketmen-Tyube valleys and of the Issyk-Kul basin, which it called the raw material of hashish use, be mapped and destroyed; a UN mapping project began in December 1996.[1] The region's growing areas are Osh and Sughd.
Geography
The region is drawn on whole provinces and districts. In Kyrgyzstan it takes in Osh Region, the city of Osh and Batken Region; in Uzbekistan, Andijan, Namangan and Fergana regions; in Tajikistan, the districts and towns of Sughd Region north of the Turkestan Range, from Isfara in the east to Zafarobod in the west. It covers about 74,000 km². The Kyrgyz districts on the northern and north-eastern side of the valley, in Jalal-Abad Region, belong to the Jalal-Abad growing area of the Tian Shan growing region.
Herbarium sheets document the plant in the valley and its foothills. G. K. Verner gathered one near Kokand in May 1910 and noted that it was very common everywhere: Verner s.n., Kokand (1910).[2] T. N. Uljanova collected it at the village of Gorky in Isfara district, at 1,150 metres, on 15 July 1969.[3] Botanists of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences took a sheet on sandy soil at the Akbarobod monument in Fergana Region in 2022.[4]
History
The naturalist Alexei Fedchenko, in the account of his journey through the Kokand Khanate published in 1875, describes a night on the road to Shakhimardan. At the village of Obikhana the riders sent ahead to prepare the night's lodging were found asleep after smoking nasha, which Fedchenko wrote that most of the local people smoked. It was made from the flowers of hemp and the small leaves around them, rubbed with water and dried into lumps, and was put into the tobacco of a water pipe.[5]
A. T. Akmatova of Osh State University, working from the archive of the Osh oblast police for the mid-1980s, writes that anasha made from wild hemp was the drug in 94 per cent of drug crimes, and names Uzgen, Suzak and Kara-Suu among the districts where its raw material was mainly gathered.[6]: 28
Surveys by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 1998 and 1999 found 15.8 hectares of wild growth and cultivation in Osh oblast. In Tajikistan the surveys found 3.2 hectares in all, 95 per cent of it in Leninabad (now Sughd), and most Tajik cultivation was only a few plants for the grower's own use.[7] A paper of 2000 by Martha Brill Olcott and Natalia Udalova wrote that the cannabis season in the Osh, Jalal-Abad and Chu oblasts of Kyrgyzstan ran from 30 April to 30 May.[8]
Cultivation
Reports since 2000 describe cannabis grown in the region's parts of all three countries. In Tajikistan the police found 3,792 plants near the settlement of Jomi in Zafarobod district in September 2008, grown by two men from Spitamen and Jirgatol districts,[9] and in October 2015 about 20 plants sown among maize in a yard in Jabbor Rasulov district.[10] In Kyrgyzstan border guards found 6.5 hectares of cannabis crops near the village of Andarkhan in Leilek district in September 2020,[11] and in September 2026 a resident of Kyzyl-Kiya was found growing cannabis on his own plot.[12]
On the Uzbek side the cases are on household plots and small pieces of land. In May 2025 police found a man in Tashlak district of Fergana Region growing 118 cannabis plants and 103 opium poppies in his backyard.[13] In July 2026 the state security service and the interior ministry reported 839 plants on a man's second household plot in Chartak district of Namangan Region and 10 on a plot in Kurgantepa district of Andijan Region.[14] In September 2026 the manager of a farm in Oltinko'l district of Andijan Region was found with 520 plants on 200 square metres.[15]
Eradication
All three countries run operations against the plant. In Kyrgyzstan, for the Kara-Kuurai raid against wild cannabis in July 2024, the interior ministry gave 6.5 hectares and 6 tonnes for Osh Region and 22.5 hectares and 7 tonnes for Batken Region.[16] In Tajikistan the Kuknor operation runs every year in two stages, from 20 May to 31 August and from 1 September to 30 November.[17] In the first stage of 2015 the operational teams in Sughd Region recorded 108 sites of wild cannabis and burned 2,075,242 plants.[18] In the second stage of Uzbekistan's Qoradori operation, in September 2026, helicopter flights were made over every region and 70 kilograms of plants grown in households were destroyed.[15]
Growing Areas
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
See also
References
- ↑ Зеличенко, А. (14 August 2003). "История афганской наркоэкспансии 1990-х". Lib.ru (in русский). Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ "Specimen MW0818717: Cannabis sativa L." Moscow Digital Herbarium. Moscow State University. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence 1898923949: Cannabis sativa var. spontanea Vavilov". GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence 4899550281: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- ↑ Fedchenko, A.P. (1875). "Путешествие в Туркестан". Известия Императорского общества любителей естествознания, антропологии и этнографии (in русский). XI (7). St Petersburg: 99–100 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Akmatova, A.T. (2024). "Правовая политика Советской Киргизии в сфере социальной безопасности (на опыте борьбы с распространением наркомании)". Вестник Ошского государственного университета. Право (in русский) (1(4)): 18–31. doi:10.52754/16948661_2024_1(4)_4.
- ↑ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Regional Office for Central Asia (April 2008). Illicit drug trends in Central Asia (PDF) (Report). Paris Pact Initiative. p. 23.
- ↑ Olcott, M.B.; Udalova, N. (March 2000). Drug trafficking on the Great Silk Road: the security environment in Central Asia (Report). Carnegie Endowment Working Papers. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. p. 9.
- ↑ Давлатзода, М. (12 September 2008). "В Зафарабадском районе обнаружено более 3 тысяч кустов конопли". Ховар (in русский). Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ "Житель Дж.Расулова подозревается в том, что выращивал на своем огороде коноплю". Avesta.tj (in русский). 5 October 2015. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ Мокренко, А. (11 September 2020). "Более 7 тонн конопли сожгли на юге Кыргызстана". 24.kg (in русский). Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ "На участке у жителя Кызыл-Кии обнаружили наркосодержащее растение". Turmush (in русский). 24 September 2026. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ "Massive anti-drug raid: arrests made in one day". Zamin.uz. 24 May 2025. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ "В Узбекистане разоблачили серийных плантаторов каннабиса". Podrobno.uz (in русский). 6 July 2026. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Control through helicopters: 70 kg of narcotic plants destroyed". Zamon.uz. 16 September 2026. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- ↑ "Сотрудники СБНОН сожгли более 85 тонн конопли (фото)". Kaktus.media (in русский). 12 July 2024. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- ↑ "В РТ в ходе операции "Кукнор" изъяты 150 тысяч кустов конопли". Sputnik Таджикистан (in русский). 31 May 2016. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ "В Согдийской области подвели итоги первого этапа операции «Кукнор-2015»". Avesta.tj (in русский). 21 September 2015. Retrieved 19 October 2026.