Issyk-Kul
More actions
| Issyk-Kul | |
|---|---|
| Yssyk-Kul | |
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Kyrgyzstan |
| Province/State | Issyk-Kul Region |
| Coordinates | 42.49, 78.39 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 42,000 km² |
| Terrain | Mountain valleys, foothills and fields round Lake Issyk-Kul; approximately Issyk-Kul Region, lake included |
| Climate | |
| Seasons | Cannabis is gathered for hashish in July, August and early September |
| Growing history | |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Issyk-Kul is a cannabis growing area in Kyrgyzstan, in Issyk-Kul Region round Lake Issyk-Kul. Cannabis grows wild there, and in the Karkyra valley villagers have made hashish from it by hand since the 1990s. Surveys by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 1998 and 1999 found more wild growth and cultivation of cannabis in Issyk-Kul, 2,444.2 hectares, than in any other Kyrgyz province, and noted that its cannabis had a higher THC content, which traffickers preferred.[1]
Geography
A regional report of the Dublin Group in 2012 wrote that cannabis grew wild over wide areas of Kyrgyzstan, especially in the Chui valley region and around Lake Issyk-Kul.[2]: 28 The sociologist Gulzat Botoeva studied a village in Tyup district, which she calls Toolu, where she did fieldwork in 2009 and 2010. Tyup lies away from the lake shore and higher in the mountains, in the Karkyra valley on the north-eastern side of the lake, bordering Kazakhstan to the north and China to the east, about an hour by car from Karakol, the regional centre. Botoeva writes that the area is known throughout Kyrgyzstan for its wild cannabis, which gives more and stronger hashish than in other regions, and that the Karkyra valley was officially listed in 1999 as a place with large fields of wild cannabis.[3]: 3–5
The plant grows wild in the fields of the Karkyra valley and on land left uncultivated.[3]: 154 A young man of the village, quoted by Botoeva, said that kendir comes up on land that has been sown with wheat for some years and then left, and on old mountain fields and the sites of old sheep barns, "around fifty to a hundred hectares on this mountain, on that mountain". In a year when there was too little seed to sow the fields, he said, there was more cannabis that year.[3]: 189
Surveys and estimates
The UNODC surveys of 1998 and 1999 found 2,444.2 hectares in Issyk-Kul, against 333.5 in Jalal-Abad, 93.9 in Talas, 87.4 in Chüy and 15.8 in Osh.[1] Botoeva, citing a report by Zelichenko of 2003, describes a UNODC-funded mapping of the late 1990s that found 8,322 hectares of wild cannabis in Kyrgyzstan, the largest area, 1,931.6 hectares, lying in three districts of Issyk-Kul Region: Jeti-Oguz, Tyup and Issyk-Kul districts. She writes that the region was officially recognised as the leading region of cannabis production in Kyrgyzstan in the 1990s and 2000s.[3]: 70
Later counts come from the eradication raids. In the raid Mak-2014 the regional police surveyed 19,883.1 hectares in Issyk-Kul Region, found cannabis on 4,083.3 of them and destroyed 44.8 tonnes.[4] In July 2015 the UNODC reported that more than 72 tonnes had been destroyed that year in the Ak-Suu and Tyup districts, "only a small part" of the 550 hectares of wild cannabis growing in the province.[5]
Hashish making
Botoeva traces local hashish making to the beginning of the 1990s. In Soviet times hashish and marijuana were made in the Karkyra mountains mostly by underground groups who came there for the purpose, and local people, apart from a few young people making it for their own use, took no part. After independence, former workers of the collective and state farms took it up beside their other work.[3]: 5–6 In Toolu no one cultivated cannabis: the hashish was made from wild plants, so it needed no outlay.[3]: 154 Making it is seasonal work, since the plants are ready only in July, August and the beginning of September.[3]: 147
Most of the makers in Toolu were young adults, mainly men, with a minority of women. Men rode out to the mountain fields in small groups; women made hashish in or near the village, on plots left uncultivated that year. The makers rubbed the upper leaves and seeds of the plants between their palms until a sticky substance formed, and gathered it together, moving from field to field in search of dense stands.[3]: 132–134 Botoeva describes this as an old, hand method that kept production small. Local middlemen and women collected the hashish for dealers from outside, and a young maker said that a matchbox of it had fetched 500 som every year, and 350 that season.[3]: 134–136, 154
Eradication
In Kyrgyzstan the police and local authorities run campaigns each year in the hashish season, called Kara-Kuurai, to find cannabis and make the owners of the fields destroy it.[3]: 76 In July 2010 the Issyk-Kul police formed brigades to destroy cannabis in every district and local government under an operation of that name.[6] The villager who described the fields to Botoeva said that the police had mapped the stands and mown two or three hectares in mid-August, in front of a television crew, while cannabis grew in many more places.[3]: 189 The UNODC supported the operation Poppy 2015 in the region.[5] In June 2026 the police of Ak-Suu district mowed and destroyed about 2.8 tonnes of wild cannabis in the mountain and foothill areas of the Karakol state farm and the Boz-Uchuk local government.[7]
Herbarium sheet
A herbarium sheet gathered by A. Regel near Karakol, Regel s.n., Karakol (1877), is the lectotype of Cannabis sativa var. asperrima, a name published by John McPartland and Ernest Small.[8]
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
No recent news items.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 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.
- ↑ Council of the European Union (23 May 2012). Regional report on Central Asia (Report). Note from the Italian regional chair of the Dublin Group. Brussels. Doc. 10291/12, CORDROGUE 39, ASIE 54.
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 Botoeva, G. (2016). The local drug economy: the case of hashish production in a post-Soviet Kyrgyz village (PhD thesis). Colchester: University of Essex.
- ↑ Кудрявцева, Т. (23 July 2014). "В Иссык-Кульской области за неделю уничтожено более 80 гектаров дикорастущей конопли". 24.kg (in русский). Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Regional Office for Central Asia (2015). "UNODC supports the eradication of wild cannabis in Kyrgyzstan". UNODC. Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- ↑ Высоцкий, С. (7 July 2010). "В Иссык-Кульской области Кыргызстана проводится операция по выявлению и уничтожению дикорастущей конопли и опиумного мака". 24.kg (in русский). Retrieved 13 October 2026.
- ↑ Айгыров, Т. (26 June 2026). "В Иссык-Кульской области уничтожили почти три тонны дикорастущей конопли". 24.kg (in русский). Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence 3115519399: Cannabis sativa var. asperrima (Regel) McPartl. & E.Small". GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 18 October 2026.