Smuggling opium and charas in the stomachs of camels (1941)
More actions
| Author | E. S. Farbrother |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Composed | Received for publication 25 January 1941 |
| Published | June 1941 |
| Publisher | Manager of Publications, Delhi, for the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research |
| Place | Delhi |
| Total pages | 2 |
| Volume | Indian Journal of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry vol. XI, part II |
|---|---|
| Pages | pp. 105–106 (the whole article) |
| Plates | none |
| Preparations | hashish and charas, named as the same resin product under Egyptian and Indian usage; opium as the co-trafficked drug |
| Uses documented | None; the article documents trafficking and its detection, not consumption |
| Digital facsimile | View on the Internet Archive |
|---|---|
| Original held at | National Library of Scotland, India Papers (item 75257130); Digital Library of India scan on the Internet Archive |
Smuggling opium and charas in the stomachs of camels is a two-page notice by E. S. Farbrother, Director of Veterinary Services, Bombay, published in June 1941 in the Indian Journal of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry.[1] It describes a case of October 1939 in which hashish and opium were carried into Egypt inside live camels driven across Sinai for the meat markets of the Nile valley. Its detail is anatomical as well as procedural: the notice sets out how the containers were made to stay in the rumen and what carrying them did to the animal.
The notice stands at three removes from the events it reports. Farbrother wrote from an extract published in the Excise Supplement of the Bombay Police Gazette of 1 August 1940. That extract reproduced part of the Annual Report for 1939 of the Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau at Cairo.[1] As an enforcement document passed between two colonial administrations, it is evidence of how the Egyptian and Indian drug bureaucracies described interdiction to each other as much as a record of the smuggling itself. Its praise of the Sinai police is quoted from the bureau's report and belongs to that register.
A terminology note: the article uses the Indian term charas in its title and the Egyptian term hashish in its account of the seizure, for the same resin product.
The article and its sources
Farbrother was Director of Veterinary Services in Bombay. He submitted the notice for publication on 25 January 1941.[1] It appeared among the original articles of volume XI, part II of the journal, which the Manager of Publications issued at Delhi for the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research.[1]
The account is not Farbrother's own. He reprints and comments on the extract carried by the Excise Supplement of the Bombay Police Gazette of 1 August 1940, which came in turn from the Cairo bureau's annual report for 1939. Neither of those documents is reproduced in full here, so this article rests on the notice alone.[1]
The 1939 case
Between 30,000 and 35,000 camels were driven into Egypt each year from the east for the meat markets of the Nile valley. In October 1939 information reached Rafa that narcotics were to be run through Sinai inside camels driven ostensibly for those markets. It was passed to El Arish and Kantara, where men driving camels across Sinai were arrested.[1]
Nine camels were put under suspicion at Kantara and three more were held at El Arish. One ground for suspicion was commercial: the owners refused ten Egyptian pounds for an animal the report valued at three.[1]
One camel held at El Arish was slaughtered. In its rumen were 27 containers with conical ends, each 15 cm long and 4 cm across. The remaining animals were then slaughtered as well. From 18 camels the authorities recovered 17.770 kilos of hashish and 62.593 kilos of opium, which the report valued at about 2,200 Egyptian pounds.[1]
Method of concealment
The report described the method closely. Each container weighed about 250 g. They were weighted inside with lead so that a ruminating camel could not bring them back up. They were also made too large to pass out of the rumen into the other stomachs. They lodged in the water sacks at the sides of the rumen. Zinc was used in place of tin. The containers were soldered shut so that neither the heat nor the acids of the stomach reached the drugs. They were forced down the throat in the manner of a ball given to a horse.[1]
The report held that the rumen has little of the digestive function of the other stomachs, so the containers might lie there for weeks without upsetting the animal. It expected a camel loaded in this way to lose condition and die in the end. The run from Khan Younis to the country west of Kantara took six or seven days.[1]
Detection and the response
Identifying the loaded animals was difficult because so many camels were arriving at Kantara from the east at that time.[1] The nine camels released at Kantara were rounded up again. Every one was found to be carrying narcotics in containers of the same kind.[1]
The numbers passing the quarantine stations were too large for informers to remain the main method of detection. The report stated that steps were being taken to equip each station with X-ray or similar apparatus and to submit a proportion of the camels to it as a routine measure.[1] Farbrother closed on the point that interested him as a veterinary officer, calling the case an example of the use of science in the perpetration of crime as well as in its detection.[1]
The document as evidence
The notice reports a single case at second hand. Every figure in it is the Cairo bureau's. It carries no evidence about cultivation, preparation or consumption. It names no variety. What it documents is a trafficking route into Egypt from the east, the quantities seized on one occasion, a concealment method described closely enough to be tested against veterinary anatomy and the screening technology an enforcement agency proposed in 1939.[1]
The Egyptian end of that route belongs to a wider history of hashish prohibition and smuggling, which the Egypt article summarises.