Easily accessible fields of wild Chu hemp cover vast expanses of the Moyunkum Desert. In the past century, as chronicled by old-timers, local government planted Indian hemp in some areas. The purpose was to stop the advancing sands to save pasture lands. But within decades, the effort boomeranged with no longer manageable expansion of wild hemp which drew drug dealers from the farthest parts of the country.

There have been many attempts in the past to get rid of the Chu hemp, including the use of herbicides to destroy plantations. But the only visible result was the irreparable contamination of the surrounding habitat. The hemp continued to grow, threatening to spread to inhabiting areas. The plants survived even after state inspectors set fires and ploughed up the whole area.

In 1992 the joint-stock company “Asia” undertook to put an end to hemp by way of reprocessing it for industrial use. The project was approved by government. But it turned out soon that the project was not worth the money and effort spent and technically unfeasible. An American company also showed a great interest in similar projects and presented a business proposal highly profitable for Kazakhstan. The joint enterprise was fiercely obstructed by local police and authorities. For them hemp fields of the Chu valley have been the source of illegal income. “We spent many days paying visit after visit to local departments of the Interior Ministry and the Committee of National Security, driving home our concept of cultivating these fields to turn them to economic profit. All our arguments were lost on them. Finally they confiscated our first harvest of hemp saying that we were intending to produce hashish from hemp leaves. We had to abandon the project. I have every reason to believe that top placed police officials have links to drug dealers. They can’t put up with the thought that the Chu hemp is slipping away from their grip” recalls Sagyn Tokumbayev, one of the project managers.

A new ray of hope for anti-drug campaigners and environmentalists beamed up when on January 11 of last year, the government issued a special decree on Chu valley which opened the way for Kazakh–German cooperation in reprocessing the Chu hemp for industrial purposes. FESA International, a Kazakh company, sealed a partnership with Germany’s “Treuhand AG” from Berlin to implement a joint project of construction of hemp reprocessing plant. The construction of the joint enterprise “FESA Textile” began in April this year and will be completed in December 2005. It was calculated that the project demands 7,5 billion tenge of total investment.

If everything goes on as planned, the plant will produce 1750 tons of hemp oil annually. What is more important for Kazakhstan, the industrially reprocessed hemp is expected to be an excellent substitute for cotton. In Kazakhstan with its scarce water resources, cotton production has become an unprofitable business. Due to its low quality, Kazakh cotton is unmarketable and is largely consumed domestically. The Kazakh-German enterprise promises also to produce hemp-based textile products, heat-resistant insulation materials, fiber plates, perfumery and pharmaceutical products.

According to Serik Kulmanov, general director of FESA Textile, $54 million is supposed to be invested at the initial stage of the construction of the plant. The joint project was dubbed as a “revolutionary breakthrough” by officials in combating drug dealing. The new enterprise should create 300 workplaces for the unemployed of the region.

Wild hemp stretches over 138,000 hectares of the Moyunkum, enough to produce 145,000 tons of marijuana annually. According to independent data nearly 50% of the youth in the Chu is addicted to home-produced drugs. “Unemployed young people are bored to death not knowing how to idle away the time. Whenever they get together they eat spoonfuls of half-fried hemp mixing it with cooking oil or smoke it rolling it into a shape of a cigarette. The first time I smoked the hemp I had a sensation of floating in the air like a cloud. Then I was overcome by nausea. I dragged myself home somehow. Next morning my mother looked at me reproachfully but didn’t say a word. I felt awfully ashamed and from that day I cut hemp-using friends out of my life” says a former drug addict from the Chu region.

Some time ago, officials considered the possibility of legalizing some kinds of “soft narcotics”. But it is hard to tell exactly which drugs can be categorized as soft ones. Some experts believe that nasybai, a kind of a chewing tobacco popular among villagers, has the same intoxicating effect as a soft drug. In recent years, young Kazakhs are increasingly taking to nasybai, normally used by old people.

The construction of the hemp reprocessing plant can bring Kazakhstan not only economic and social gains. It can also help the country to reaffirm its commitment to combat drug use in the eyes of the international community. Despite all its undeniable pluses, the Kazakh-German project is only a part of the solution of the drug problem. To reach a decisive victory over drugs, Kazakhstan has to start with uprooting unemployment among the youth and corruption at the highest level of the governing bodies.