The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Morocco’s ‘liquid gold’ enriches Berber women Posted: 17 Nov 2012 06:52 AM PST  Nuts and kernels of the Argan tree are collected in a basket at a women's cooperative where labour intensive argan oil is manufactured in Sidi Kaouki in the Essaouira province, on October 29, 2012. – AFP pic Sometimes known as "liquid gold" or "miracle oil" for its rich cosmetic, culinary and medicinal properties, the exclusively Moroccan export has caused a sensation in the West, where it is touted as a unique hair care and anti-ageing skin potion. The rolling countryside between Essaouira and Agadir, resort towns better known for their Atlantic surf, is covered with argan trees, and distinguished by the bizarre sight of goats perched in their branches munching away on the pulp of the nut. Another striking feature of the landscape is the profusion of cooperatives that employ Berber women to produce the oil, from the tree to the bottle, and sell it as far afield as Canada and Japan, sharing the profits. Indigenous, non-Arab Berber people make up a large portion of the local population. Zahra Knabo, who runs the Ajddigue cooperative, one of the very first, says there are now 137 of them, and hails the "evolution" they have brought to the region's Berber women who suffer from widespread illiteracy, poor health care and stifling social mores. "In this rural area, women would traditionally herd the animals and gather wood from the forest. They were the first to wake up and the last to go to bed," says Knabo. "Now most of the women working in the cooperative have money in their pockets. Some have completely financed their houses. They've been able to get electricity, televisions and fridges," she says. When it opened in 1996, Ajddigue had 16 employees and produced 200 litres of oil monthly. But around 60 women now work there, Knabo says, and monthly production has risen to 1,000 litres, with an annual turnover last year of four million dirhams (RM1.41 million). Reflecting argan oil's growing popularity in the cosmetics industry, the group's two biggest clients are French and Italian, while the nearby Kaouki cooperative says its main customer, a British firm, started buying the oil in 2009. Scientific proof of the oil's unique healing properties is elusive, but leading aromatherapists argue that, with its richness in fatty acids, antioxidants and vitamin E, it is a highly effective treatment for damaged skin and dry hair. The economic crisis has taken its toll on demand this year, with both cooperatives seeing their big European clients cutting by half their orders of the luxury commodity, which sells for between 250 and 400 dirhams a litre. Competition from the growing number of producers has, meanwhile, left smaller associations like the Tawount cooperative, which opened in July and employs 15 Berber women, struggling to sell their products. REAPING THE REWARD Colourfully dressed women sit on the Tawount shop floor, cracking open the nuts and sorting them into baskets, with stone grinding tools used to crush the kernel and extract the oil, as they lack the machines that others use to do so. Argan products range from cooking and cosmetic oil, to hand cream, honey and "amlou" – a sweet, nutty paste made with almonds – while the pulp is used as nutritious animal feed, and the shells burned as fuel for cooking. Karima, a 28-year-old assistant at Tawount, remains optimistic that business will pick up. But she is adamant about the cooperatives benefiting the marginalised women of the area, who she says were often unable to reap the rewards of their labours. "Before, they worked at home roasting and crushing the nuts and giving the oil to their husbands to sell. Now, by working together, they are able to earn money for themselves, to support their children and their families." Another threat to the Berber groups' success is now making itself felt, according to Ajddigue's Knabo and others familiar with the market, from companies "disguised" as cooperatives looking to cash in on the trend. In the heart of Essaouira's medina, Khadija, 21, runs a small shop selling bottles of the golden liquid on behalf of five women producer groups, one of many argan oil outlets in the historic port city targeting the tourist trade. "Unfortunately, a lot of false cooperatives have been set up recently, working with businesses in Casablanca. They lie about their activities" to get the official certificate of approval, she charges. "We need the state to stop giving certificates to these false cooperatives. There are dozens of them in the region of Essaouira, and they are undercutting our business." But the argan oil boom is in its relative infancy and hopes remain high. Its positive impact on the environment has also been hailed as a success story, spurring conservation work to reverse the over-exploitation of the endemic tree, now found only in southern Morocco and parts of Algeria. The cooperatives have carried out reforestation projects backed by the government, and EU support, that also encourage the Berber women to appreciate the importance of the tree for future generations. UNESCO, which designated 26,000 square kilometres of the argan region a "biosphere reserve" in 1998, has highlighted the tree's function as a buffer against desertification, as well as its rich yields for the local community. – AFP/Relaxnews |
| Latin America looks to Europe for drug fighting models Posted: 17 Nov 2012 06:18 AM PST  File photo shows a police officer standing guard over 210 bundles of drugs, including cocaine, in Colombia. Latin American countries are exploring relaxing penalties for personal use of narcotics, following examples such as Spain and Portugal that have channelled resources to prevention rather than clogging jails. – Reuters pic Until recently, most Latin American countries had zero-tolerance rules on drugs inspired by the United States. But now countries from Brazil to Guatemala are exploring relaxing penalties for personal use of narcotics, following examples such as Spain and Portugal that have channelled resources to prevention rather than clogging jails. Latin America is the top world producer of cocaine and marijuana, feeding the huge demand in the United States and Europe. Domestic drug use has risen and drug gang violence has caused carnage for decades from the Mexican-US border to the slums of Brazil. On Thursday, Uruguay's Congress moved a step closer to putting the state in charge of distributing legal marijuana. On the same day a leftist lawmaker in Mexico presented a bill to legalise production, sale and use of marijuana. While the Mexican bill is unlikely to pass, it reflects growing debate over how to fight drug use in a country where 60,000 people have died since 2006 in turf battles between drug traffickers and clashes between cartels and security forces. Even top world cocaine producer Colombia, a stalwart US partner in drug crop eradication campaigns and with one of the toughest anti-drug laws in Latin America, is hinting at change. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said on Thursday it was worth exploring the Portuguese model, one of the most liberal drug policies in the world. "The experience that you have had with drug consumption policies is very interesting to us. The entire world is looking for new ways to deal with the problem. I hope to learn more and more about the experience you have had," he said on a visit to Lisbon. Santos stopped in Portugal on his way to the Ibero-American summit in the Spanish city of Cadiz. Leaders there today called for analysing a shift toward regulating drug use rather than criminalising it. Portugal decriminalised all drug use in 2001 to combat a serious heroin problem that had caused an outbreak of HIV/Aids among drug users. The shift has been hailed as a success story as consumption levels dropped below the European average. "The positive evaluation of Portugal's model has taken away the fear in Latin America over reforms," said Martin Jelsma of the Transnational Institute, which advocates the liberalisation of drug laws in Latin America. Spain – where drug consumption soared in the 1980s after the end of the Franco dictatorship – has tried to fight high cocaine use by emphasizing treatment programmes for addicts and declining to prosecute possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use. Jelsma said cannabis initiatives such as Uruguay's have built on the experience in Catalonia and the Basque Country, in northern Spain, where the courts tolerate marijuana cultivation for personal use by members of social clubs. FRUSTRATION OVER FOUR COSTLY DECADES US elections on Nov. 6, when Colorado and the state of Washington legalised cannabis in defiance of federal laws, sharpened frustration among Latin American leaders. "While in our countries a peasant is persecuted and jailed for growing half a hectare... in those two US states now you can simply grow industrial amounts of marijuana and sell them with complete liberty. We cannot turn a blind eye to this huge imbalance," Mexican President Felipe Calderon told the Ibero-American summit today. Calderon, whose military crackdown on drug cartels set off an orgy of violence in Mexico, expressed fatigue with calling on the United States and Europe to curtail drug use, saying US drug consumers alone fuelled Mexico's drug war to the tune of US$20 billion a year. He said the legalisation of pot in Colorado and Washington marked a paradigm shift. "We have to ask what alternatives there are. Perhaps less money and less appetite would be generated if there was another way to regulate drugs," he said. Ibero-American Secretary-General Enrique Iglesias said there was consensus in Latin America that the so-called war on drugs was not working, and called for new approaches to the problem. Colombia, Peru and Bolivia produce the bulk of the world's cocaine. Mexico and Paraguay are the two biggest marijuana producers in the world, with the latter largely supplying its neighbours Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. The shift in Latin America thinking on drugs dates to a 2009 report by the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico who said that billions of dollars poured into four decades of US-led crop eradication efforts had merely pushed drug growing from one region to another. Calderon's speech in Cadiz was just the latest in a growing chorus of challenges to US drug policies. At a summit of American leaders in April, US President Barack Obama faced vocal doubts from his southern counterparts over anti-drug policies. Guatemalan President Otto Perez has openly proposed decriminalising certain drugs. Guatemala, Mexico's neighbour to the south, has been torn apart by drug violence and corruption by narcos has deeply penetrated government institutions. Ten years ago the United States might have reacted with alarm to the shift in Latin America. But Obama's administration has refrained from openly criticising changes in drug laws, partly because US attitudes are also in flux. NEW ROADS TO EUROPE Spain was long a gateway for South American cocaine into Europe, although experts suggest cocaine trafficking is now moving through southeastern and eastern Europe, along Balkan routes and into harbours in Latvia and Lithuania. The European drug monitoring agency EMCDDA said in its annual report cocaine seizures in Europe peaked at 120 tonnes in 2006 and had declined since to 61 tonnes in 2010. Spain remains the country that reports the highest number of cocaine seizures but they have also fallen there as authorities stepped up policing of the southern coast. Still, Spain is concerned over the potential for Latin American traffickers to set up European operations on its territory. In August, Spanish police arrested four members of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, one of world's biggest criminal organisations. One of them is a cousin of Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, the head of the cartel and Mexico's most wanted man. – Reuters |
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