I just read that the WorldWatch Institute in Washington, D.C., says 75 countries have experienced “the highest ecological distortions” on the planet; a major loss in fresh water supplies caused by using up and destroying these resources. Yemen ranked second-worst for having lost 40 percent of its renewable fresh water in a 10-year period.
Experts may debate how much water Yemen has lost, but what I took away from recent reporting on Yemen’s prosperous qat farmers is that qat farming, which is fast taking over land once devoted to food production, requires much more intensive irrigation.
In some countries of the world, qat is illegal because their governments think it is a health risk.
Qat may be illegal elsewhere but in Yemen it’s considered en essential social tradition and a good business investment. So qat’s opponents in Yemen have the more difficult task of persuading the nation that the hazard is to its national security, its ability to compete in a world economy that functions beyond the realm of this tribal culture.
I’m no scientist but qat may be a relatively benign leaf. It hasn’t been proven dangerous as a recreational stimulant. The risks of qat consumption are occurring on an economic scale in Yemen.
I have limited experience with qat. I chewed it long ago with some students behind the school where my wife and I taught in the highlands of Ethiopia.
Most men and an increasing number of women and students in Yemen spend the afternoon chewing qat (Reuters image)
The small shrub that bears the leaves that contain the amphetamine grew wild in Ethiopia’s southeastern mountains and they called it tchat. A couple of 9th-graders, both named Mohammed, lived with us in our house behind Dejazmach Wolde Gabriel Aba Seitan secondary school.
Every time exams rolled around, the Mohammeds would invite friends over to stay up all night cramming for one of our exams. Qat was their stimulant of choice and maybe not a bad one at that: You could harvest it wild, they said, because it is native to Ethiopia, and like with No-Doze, an over-the-counter pill I used for the same purpose when I was in a U.S. university prepping for an art history final, my eyes stayed wide open all night while my brain grew exhausted.
It had to be a fun study hall for these boys in Ethiopia: the pop songs and ballads of Tilahun Gesesse rattled the walls of our house and there was lots of giggling in their study room. It apparently didn’t do any damage: they all passed their exams with flying colors.
I was a few years older than the students, and brought with me habits from my college years in the western world: smoking cigarettes and pipes and drinking bourbon and 3.2 percent beer on the weekends. Every culture chooses their stimulants and their sedatives.
So, I chewed their qat. I judged the experience remarkable on only two grounds: I followed Mohammed’s advice and rolled the leaves in sugar, but the bitter taste of the qat was still overwhelming; and Courtney, my wife, found very unattractive the green stains on my teeth, gums and lips.
It appears that with qat it takes a long time to reach euphoria. In Yemen, and among the Arab merchants in our Ethiopian town, it took all afternoon to get there.
Some compare qat to marijuana, which has been a controversial topic for generations in the United States. It is now legal for medical purposes in 16 U.S. states. However, stronger arguments have effectively been made against the possession, sale and use of stronger drugs such as cocaine and heroin; those convicted now constitute a high percentage of Americans in prison today. The case is still made, however, that strong enforcement of America’s drug law creates more problems than it solves: the argument is that when the U.S. government made whiskey and beer illegal in the 1930s, the enforcement of those laws inspired the creation of organized crime in the United States.
Many of the leaders of organized crime in the United States were first-generation immigrants from Sicily, where the term for clan-based crime syndicates was mafia.
The Sicilian term for a crime syndicate has transcended its national origins: I have seen the word mafia used in the Yemeni media to describe powerful Yemenis working in the qat industry.
Yemenis opposed to qat have a list of reasons to oppose the qat tradition: the crop takes too much water, uses too much farmland, and chewers who become smokers can get cancer of the gums.
The argument for moderation in chewing qat that made the most sense to me is the concern that the popularity of qat threatens the entire nation a economic level. If it is true that most Yemenis work half a day, pick up a bundle of leaves in their local qat market and spend the rest of the day chewing, Yemen succeeds only half of the time. Can a social occasion observed daily among the families and tribes of Yemen undermine a national economy? If it is true that qat chewing is at the center of a Yemen’s social traditions, is poverty to remain the custom?
Click here for David Arnold’s in depth report “Yemen’s Hunger for Qat Could Create National Thirst” on VOANews.com
David Arnold
David Arnold coordinates the Syria Witness project at Middle East Voices and reports on Middle East and North Africa affairs for both Voice of America and MEV. The Syria Witness project publishes on-the-ground citizen reporting, giving Syrians the opportunity to offer to a global audience their first-person narratives of life on the streets of their war-torn country.
هيكل بافنع
November 9, 2011
Your statement that “every culture chooses their stimulants and their sedatives” frames the issue perfectly. Having grown up in Singapore, I personally find qat benign & of very little effect – I get much more of a perk-up from double espressos. In Yemen, alcoholism, drugs & other substance abuse as well as a multitude of other “recreational” activities common in Singapore & other countries are blissfully absent. In its place, people use qat. Relatively speaking, the effects are much less harmful than alcohol & drugs abuse.