"Pre-Soviet" Afghani Question

[zamalito]

Yep mine are from the first batch, too. I think the newer ones are a bit smaller and faster. The ones I have are like indicas that get overwhelmingly large with wide branches and flower long like a sativa. They're also one of the few indicas that has a long window for harvesting and the longer you let them go the better

 

[zamalito]

I never understood why they called them citral and taskenti when they are actually chitral (pronounced chetral) and tashkenti (pronounced tashkinti).

 

[Tripco]

The big question is, if there gonna be any biger Cannabis plantation in Afghanstan within few years. Hash brings much less money than heroin does. Hi-ho, poppy we go!
On American support to freedom fighters in Afghanistan in the '80's:
According to legend, G 13 is an US laboratory product (i say legend, 'cos a very few people knows exact origins of this strain). Why did an government who tries to destroy Cannabis all over the world (supposing it were true) created such super plant? Maybe to improve afghani stock and production?
P.S. I remember Reeferman had Tajikistani indica in stock. What happened to that one?

 

[zamalito]

I don't know he had a tajik x headstash for $35 but it sold out.

 

[Reign of Terror]

taskenti is supposed to be a high yielding and a very hashish ibl landrace

 

[tiedye420]

Im watching you raco ! L.O.L.
I have a story for you all. This is the "real deal" truth of the matter as to why "pre-soviet" is so desirous. Once again I have to clean up after my countrymen....
There was a war, the soviet union wanted afganistan. At the time Hashish was afghanistan's major export. Aside from the countryside being destroyed and villages ravaged, farmers leaving the fields to fight.Ect .ECt. ECt. There was a deeper plot involved. Oliver north was trading guns for hashish- hell I smoked some of that hash.
It was the last time i ever saw black afghani hash too.
So anyways- america decided opium was a better cash crop for fighting wars(viet nam-laos & priors -see movie "Air America") and the CIA of course went in and converted any farmers that lived to opium farmers- convincing them it was more lucrative and easier to grow.
The soviet invasion degraded the entire country, let alone the heirloom strains.
The CIA changed the farmers way of thinking, and a lot of genetic material was lost in that war.I too am a "keeper of pre soviet afghani".
and getting ready to toke some up now. He he he...
tiedye (P.S.raco those DC look sweet as usual)

 

[tiedye420]

BTW after america helped afghanistan, now thier major export is.. Come on can't you guess? yes that's right.
afghanistans major export is heroin now......Good lookin out? I dont think so.
Convert them to suppliers for our pharmecutical companies?
By george I think we got it!
later boys
tiedye on a rant

 

[zamalito]

I agree with you 100% and the mujahidin selecting for smaller lower plants fits in with this pakistani secret service was the go between. Do any of you guys remember the scandal with pakistan's Bank of Credit and Commerce International (bcci)? basically the bank colapsed under the weight of it's own corruption causing major economic fallout in pakistan. These guyse were doing insanely huge amounts of money laundering from the gund and drug trade. Pakistan has always been our proxy used to manipulate afghanistan. Pakistan established the taliban with money we gave them, started the mujahidin and osama with money we gave them etc. During the soviet afghan war we had to hide our involvement so the soviets would sink more and more resources into trying to conquer afghanistan thinkig the would win. We were actually using contacts in the russian military to buy guns from russia and give them to pakistan to give to the mujahidin to fight the russians so the russians wouldn't see m16s and american rpg's in the hands of the mujahidin and keep sinking more resources and scratching their heads wondering why these guys have so many guns. Also heroin addiction was rampant among soviet soldiers in the theater. Another thing is we didn't want the afghans to win per se we just wanted the war to be a blood bath and deplete soviet resources. This is why we have been so hated in afghanistan afghan blood was cheap to us we didn't mind a million afghans dying as long as 250,000 soviets died and it costs the soviets all this money meanwhile us helping the soviets didn't cost us a thing because it was funded through the gun and drug trade. And through heroin addiction we figured out a way to have soviet soldiers partially fund our war against them. The cia does many things without budget approval from congress the way they do this is by selling guns and drugs.

I read about the possibility of pharmaceutical production and I don't think that it's gonna take off. There's less money in it for the cartels that are in complete and utter control in afghanistan without their help we would have absolutely no control in the country. Also legal production would probably mean a better deal for the farmers which isn't likely. Here's a story that came out 3 days ago that shows how bad it is in afghanistan now:

 

[zamalito]

Oops sorry here's the link to the story:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/04/17/MNGHAIA5B31.DTL

I've seen photos of the hash bricks that say freedom of afghanistan and various mujahidin logos that you refer to. Those were actually commercial black afghan hash. Though I've never smoked anything but the black aghjan commercial myself the fine presoviet hash was actually brown and turned translucent deep red when a thin piece was held up to the light like good outdoor bubble hash. Opium isn't that much more profitable of a crop it takes about 4-5 heads to make 1 gram of opium which will make about .1 grams or less of morphine which will make about .9-.8 grams of heroin though the farmers don't sell anything but raw opium and get very little for it unless they carry it all the way to market which few of them do. And even then they probably make very little. Poppies do require much less nutrient though and are much easier to grow and process. I'm sure you guys know that growing a crop and processing it into a good yield of decent quality hash isn't easy and not something you can just take up and do without any experience even if someone tells you how. Many of the presoviet hash farmers did so because of a religious obligation. Those that had families growing hashish for many generations because of promises made by their ancestors to the hashish babas seem to have disappeared many of the opium farmers don't necesarily have a family history of farming and are just trying to feed their families. Many of them feel that opium/heroin is a poison and hate the thought of using their children to help them tend and harvest the fields but have to out of necessity.

 

[indicalover]

In reference to Tashkenti being landrace. It is a hybrid of landrace indicas. I read that from the breeder called Charlie on cannabis world.

 

[zamalito]

Do any of you guys remember the battle of kandahar from the early part of the us invasion of afghanistan? Mullah Omar was holed up in kandahar surrounded by the us army. Omar said he would surrender but only to northern alliance General Shirzai. He and general shirzai went way back as shirzai was given control of the opium smuggling under the taliban and had provided the taliban with many of their arms in return. Anyway the us agrees to omars terms. General Shirzai of course uses his army to provide a safe path for the taliban to escape. Noone reprimanded shirzai for giving omar safe passage out of kandahar. In fact whenever the president of afghanistan meets with shirzai literally he kisses shirzai's feet. Shirzai is appointed to a powerful interior govt position. The funny thing is his army is fully outfitted with m16's and us army fatigues. His office has all of these posters with anti narcotics slogans in english on the outside and inside. Now the taliban controls an important part of the border for smugglers and provides safe passage accross the border for the smugglers that provide them with money weapons and protection. Karzai the president of afghanistan also has a long personal and family history of smuggling. at this point it would be easier to stop cocaine production in all of the andes than stop heroin production in afghanistan. The vacuum of power after the fall of the taliban allowed the already powerful opium cartels to completely seize control of the country. These guys could take huge casualties if we were to ever decide to fight them. Also interesting to note after 9/11 when we gave mullah omar the ultimatum to give up bin laden he had bin laden in a prison for several months and had been asking the us to bomb the prison similar to when we sent cruise missiles at the al queda training camps. Osama had been causing the taliban problems for quite a while by publicly criticizing them and demanding guest of honor style treatment. So omar figured at that point we wanted bin laden (WRONG!) and put him in the prison awaiting a cruise missile to kill him. Omar was scared to death after our ultimatum because he knew that if he directly gave us bin laden it would mean certain death for him and the taliban from the hardline islamic population (yes even more hardline than the taliban) and he knew if he didn't it would mean american invasion. He also knew if we wanted osama we would've blown up the prison he was in. So he offered to give up osama to a neutral islamic country like saudi arabia. We refused saying we could just go in and get him (though that obviously wasn't our intention). The only thing the war in afghanistan accomplished is establishing the heroin trade as something that cannot be removed at any cost and giving warlords and cartels complete control of the country. Though it is legal for a woman to not wear a burka in public noone does for fear of being showered with battery acid. The govt recently sentenced a man to death for switching from islam to christianity. Though the man was pardoned the law was not changed by the courts and someone can still be sentenced to death for renouncing islam. So things haven't changed.

 

[Raco]

SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND

SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND

"Many of the presoviet hash farmers did so because of a religious obligation. Those that had families growing hashish for many generations because of promises made by their ancestors to the hashish babas seem to have disappeared"

Good point zamalito!
I think that there are strains(such as DC and others) that have been very well behaved culturally and 30 years later,much of the natural purity still remains.
And most probably,those heirloom seeds were given to westerners by members of a line of proud farmers.

tiedye420,
really good to see you here!!

indicalover,
If I don´t remember bad,the commercial release has some Northern Lights in it.But I could be wrong....I have to ask Charlie (kaiki @ CBG)..the other day he sent me a few buds of Taskenti F6 that was phenomenal jejej!!but I´d swear that I´ve heard of f8´s lolol
Also the hybrids he made such as "la mula",which is Uzbek x Wolfman´s C99/Haze#4,are awesome,ant that includes "mulillas"(mula f2)
I have seeds of both f1 and f2 and I´m going to plant them asap
My friend Chaman has grown "la mula" in the tropics...and he´s literally drooling!!

 

[zamalito]

Anyways back to afghan cannabis.

When vavilov visited afghanistan we mentioned how cannabis sativa l. was the only type under cultivation. However there were two subgroups of indica that he found growing wild. Cannabis indica var. afghanica and Cannabis indica var. kafiristanica . The afghanica variety produced dark grey mottled seeds and the kafiristanica produced very large grey colorless seeds (DEEP CHUNK!!!!! AHA) so is deep chunk actually predominantly Indica var kafiristanica as opposed to Indica var afghanica? One of the criterion for kafiristanica is small leaves however hybridization with sativa and a few decades under cultivation and irrigation could change this. A couple criteria for kafiristanica as opposed to aghanica is that kafiristanica has 5-7 leaflets as opposed to 5-9 and dry seeded kafiristanica flowers freely-shatter releasing the seeds I don't know if vavilov's afghanica samples shattered but typical indicas don't shatter. Freely shattering flowers is a wild trait as it allows seed to disperse further and more easily. Either way I think the deep chunk is as close to pure kafiristanica as we can find. I'm thinking the petrolia is more close to a very high quality good sample of standard vavilov afghanica or richard evan schultes indica. The deep chunk seeds are very much unlike any afghan seeds I have come across and I think they show exactly how unusual this sample is.

 

[zamalito]

I guess that explains why the newer release of tashkenti is smaller and faster. the ones that I grew outside could've gone to mid november at 35 N in full sun which is crazy for an indica I pulled mine late october because of rain and mold she was still damn fine and huge. I think with the inbreeding he's leaning towards smaller faster plants. I would love to get my hands on some of his pure uzbeks I guess if the tashkenti isn't pure then I only have one. Raco please please please keep me posted on anything you find out about this including what was used to breed it and what he selects for and differences among the generations. I wish it was more suited to high humidity. Hopefully I will have my hands on some senegalese and madagascar hash plants soon. I can't wait to try these hopefully they can handle more humidity but it is dry in senegal and parts of madagascar so I can't say for sure.

 

[Raco]

The DC clones easily IMO,and even cuttings of plants that have been flowering for 2 weeks or more(outdoors in ths case)can be rooted and re-vegged (pic 2)

 

[zamalito]

Raco,

Have you seeded any dc's. How easily do seeds pop out of dry seeded buds? Also I can't wait to see or try "la mula" when it comes out. As always nice pics.

 

[Raco]

hey zamalito,
back to the Taskenti:
The commercial release has some NL in it.What I know is that kaiki bought it @ Sensi,in the early 90´s and it was sensational.My guess is that it´s the NL5xNl2...
The pure Uzbeki has longer internodes and the buds are more like golf balls,and different than the NL ones.It also late for an indica.
The Uzbeki was crossed to a NL and line- bred for 4 generations.Then,one selected male from this f4 was used to pollinate a parallel line of Uzbeki,a very potent female with a great taste.
And from what I´ve gathered,the commercial release is a "F8"
It´s Uzbeki with a little NL in it.Taskenti is SOLD-OUT @ CBG,but retailers sure still have some.I heard that more seeds from CBG will be available within a few months

 

[Raco]

...and I´ve pollinated 4 DC girls so far.I pollinated early,because of the short flowering,so many of the seeds were pretty "hidden" within the dense buds,while they were much more visible in the lower,less dense buds(obviously more "brushed" with pollen).I don´t think that the seeds pop out easily....also I don´t think that the DC has freely-shattering inflorescences
Does the kafiristanica have those freely shattering tops??

 

[zamalito]

Yeah but the vavilov afghanica did too both of the wild afghani indica varieties vavilov came in contact with in the 1930 had freedly shattering flowers. Also this is wild in afghanistan so between the wind the altitude the low nutrient and the lack of water in the ground and air things may have been different. So I'm guesseing it is either envirnmentally caused or have a few decades of being domesticated with some hybridization of older cultivated hash sativas may have changed this. I'm just fascinated by these seeds because it is such an oddball type of seed it can say a lot about it's history. The seeds are definitely heavily evolved for an arid climate. Those big seeds trap a lot of moisture. I definitely think a lot of the cotyledons would rot if these were grown in a rainy environment without human asistance. I really think the history and pedigree of the deep chunk is really something special it may be the only real kafiristanica landrace dominant afghan heirloom strain in existance. I think I've seen quite a few afghan seeds but none like this. This could be the herb of Alexander the Great.

 

[Raco]

...originally grown on a Royal Kurgan....
p.s.:
I´ve noticed that the calyxes of some TomHill´s plants have "ridges"
The seeds of PTK and X-18,and even the Special Mix have a pronounced ridge too!!