Abou Ali’s business is flourishing. A hundred meters behind his two-story house in the Bekaa Valley lies a field of red-brown, crumbly earth. He has just planted the season’s crop. “You know the red soil is what gives our most famous hashish its name: Red Lebanese.”

Outside sits a black SUV with blacked-out windows and no license plates. Abou Ali, who did not want to give his full name, is 52 years old with cropped, gray hair, his T-shirt stretched over his bulging stomach. There is a handgun tucked into the waistband of his jeans.

As the war in Syria has escalated, claiming over 400,000 lives, Abou Ali has seen his business grow by 60%. With Lebanese security forces focused on internal threats, he has expanded cannabis production to 300 acres and hired 40 workers, “all Syrians.” After the harvest, they will process the spiky-leafed plant at 50 different locations spread around the valley. After sifting and drying the resin, he will have 1,000 kilos of hashish, earning him more than $3 million a year.

Though cultivating the plant is illegal, cannabis fields are a common sight in the Bekaa. They dot the fertile valley, wedged between fields of wheat and cherry trees. In four months' time, the plants will be ready to harvest, permeating the air with the smell of the sticky cannabis resin. The country is the third biggest hashish producer in the world, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.