Lebanon destroys 55,000 dunums of hashish in Bekaa eradication drive
Judicial Police commander Brig. Samir Sobh said on 3 August 2002 that Lebanese forces had destroyed more than 50,000 dunums of hashish fields in an 11-day joint operation with Syrian forces in Baalbek-Hermel. About 53,000 dunums were uprooted in the Bekaa and 2,000 in the North, with some 5,000 cleared daily.
Judicial Police commander Brigadier Samir Sobh said on Saturday 3 August 2002
that more than 50,000 dunums of hashish fields had been destroyed in the second
phase of Lebanon’s cannabis eradication campaign, then in its eleventh day.[1][2]Anti-Drug Bureau officers, Internal Security Forces soldiers, the
Lebanese Army and Syrian security forces in Lebanon carried out the operation
together across the Baalbek-Hermel fields.[1]
Sobh reported about 53,000 dunums destroyed in the Bekaa and 2,000 in the
North (5,500 hectares combined), with about 5,000 dunums uprooted daily and no
security incidents so far.[1]The bureau added 300 tractors and 200 workers
to speed up the work after the campaign’s cost passed 200 million Lebanese
pounds.[1]
The drive had begun on 22 July with a government target of 60,000 dunums in
the Bekaa and 450 in the North, using paid local labourers and more than 200
rented trucks a day rather than the chemical spraying the planners had
rejected.[3]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Whether the campaign reached its 60,000-dunum target, or when the second phase ended, is not reported in the opened sources.
The reports name no arrests or charges from the eradication operation.
The detailed breakdown (about 53,000 dunums in the Bekaa and 2,000 in the North) sums to more than the headline figure of over 50,000; this report uses the headline figure.
Only one contemporary press account of this phase could be opened; the launch-phase scope and first-phase results are not covered in the opened source.
No arrests or clashes during this phase were reported in the opened source.
The original archived news pages could not be reopened during consolidation; the earlier evidence is preserved without a new full verification.
Lebanese forces eradicated 255 dunams of cannabis across Baalbek-Hermel from January to 10 November 2026, ending with an operation in Jerd Marjhine. The crop remains unlawful because parliament's 2020 medical-cannabis law still lacks implementing decrees.
Lebanon's army said on 1 November 2026 that one of its units had destroyed a marijuana crop covering about 9,700 square meters in the Zarzir and Ainata areas of Baalbek. The statement gave no plant count or weight, named no suspects and reported no arrests.
The Lebanese Army said it destroyed about 180 dunums of cannabis and seized about 60 tonnes of the crop at Jabab al-Hamr near Hermel on 26 October 2026. A next-day newsletter roundup confirmed the figures and noted a related arrest in Brital.
An army unit destroyed about 60 dunums of cultivated kif cannabis at al-Kanisa, Baalbek, on 10 October 2026. Seventeen Syrian workers without legal papers were detained with harvest equipment in their possession, and the investigation runs under the competent judiciary.
