Banning the Sale of ‘Qat’; Will Shabwa Succeed in What the Rest of Yemen's Governorates Failed to Achieve?
At a time when the number of qat users is increasing in Yemen, some local authorities are making efforts to reduce its use, due to their inability to take any decisive decision to prevent its trading or consumption completely.
On July 3, 2021, the Services and Improvement Committee of Shabwa Governorate (east) decided to ban the sale of qat inside the city of Ataq, the capital of the governorate, with a fine imposed on violators.
The committee called on citizens to report cases of qat selling inside the city “by any means.”
Qat is considered a stimulant plant that contains alkaloid cathinone, which is said to cause excitement, loss of appetite, and euphoria. Among communities from the areas where the plant is native, qat chewing has a history as a social custom dating back thousands of years.
Qat is used by Yemenis and a number of citizens of African countries, including Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. The World Health Organization (WHO) listed it in 1973 as a narcotic plant and later as a drug of abuse that can produce psychological dependence, a classification that most Yemenis would see as “inaccurate.”
Many Challenges
This local measure comes in the context of reducing the circle of qat trafficking and its use by citizens, a decision that faces many challenges, including its widespread addiction among citizens, where 80 percent of men and 60 percent of women use qat, according to opinion polls carried by Reuters.
Among these challenges is also that qat, starting with its cultivation, care, harvest, marketing and tax collection, is a source of income for millions of citizens in a country where economic opportunities for citizens are considered scarce or almost non-existent.
According to the World Bank, 1 in 7 Yemenis is engaged in the production and distribution of qat, making it the largest source of income in the countryside and the second largest source of jobs in the country after the agricultural and herding sectors, outnumbering the public sector itself.
However, the Shabwa governorate, in which the local authority is headed by the governor, Muhammad Saleh bin Udayo, seeks in its latest decision to reduce the harm of qat and reduce the cycle of its use, and is trying to be a model for the rest of the Yemeni govornorates.
This decision came after a period in which the governorate witnessed the implementation of modern projects in roads, bridges, electricity, health, education and sports, the most prominent of which was the opening of the Qena oil and commercial port project in the coastal strip in the Rudum district of Shabwa, on January 13, 2021, and the opening of “Late Nasser Al-Khelaifi Stadium” on September 6, 2020, which is the first sports stadium in the governorate.
Shabwa is one of the most important governorates that consume qat but do not grow it. A statistic issued by the National Assembly for Confronting Qat Damage stated that the arable land in Yemen is 2.6 million hectares, of which this plant accounts for more than 50 percent.
According to statistics, the number of qat trees reached 40 million, which consumes 65 percent of the pure groundwater, and the remaining percentage is directed to drinking, cooking, washing and irrigating other crops.
Qat is the main reason for the decline in water supplies, and according to Reuters, it is expected that Sana’a will become the first city in the world without water, due to the large amounts of qat consumed.
The production of one bag of qat, which is consumed in one day, requires hundreds of liters of water, and the reason is also due to the large areas in which qat is grown, which exceeds 50 percent of the total agricultural areas.
It is noteworthy that most of the official statistics related to qat-use date back to the pre-war period in Yemen, about 10 years ago, because state institutions have witnessed paralysis in most of their sectors due to the effects of the war and are no longer able to carry out their tasks normally.
Network of Interests
Although the transfer of qat markets abroad, and the prohibition of its sale inside the city of Ataq, was welcomed by many, others doubted the success of this step, as it failed in several governorates in prior.
Measures to reduce the use and trafficking of qat began as early as 1972, when then-Prime Minister Mohsin Al-Aini prohibited government employees from chewing the plant during working hours, and prohibited its cultivation on lands belonging to government religious bodies.
But Al-Aini received death threats from tribesmen and owners of qat plantations around Sana'a, and some argue that his dismissal from office 3 months after this measure was the result of his campaign, in a country where qat represents a source of wealth for the political establishment and the network of interests associated with it.
Abdullah Al-Faqih, a professor of political science at Sana'a University, commented to Reuters in regards of this matter, saying: “The reason for the failure of previous attempts to ban qat is that it collides with the political establishment, because many of its affiliates have interests in this profitable sector,” adding that they “are content with giving sermons but are reluctant to implement any measures.”
Perhaps this is the same reason that thwarted the government’s efforts taken by the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, which established, before the outbreak of the youth revolution in 2011, the “National Center for Reducing Qat Damage.”
The Center took charge of drawing up policies, plans and programs aimed at unifying and coordinating official and popular efforts to curb the cultivation and abuse of qat, and to replace it with the cultivation of Yemeni coffee, almonds and improved seeds, as well as providing loans to farmers and supporting agricultural machinery and equipment used in uprooting the qat tree.
However, researchers, interested parties, and pioneers of previous initiatives emphasized that the government cannot limit the phenomenon, except through international intervention that helps implement a comprehensive national plan that includes realistic alternatives in the fields of agriculture, labor, culture and entertainment.
The head of the National Assembly for Confronting Qat Damage, Adel Al-Shuja’a, had reduced the efforts of the Ministry of Agriculture to eradicate qat “at a time when the government was establishing meetings to eat it” in all state ministries and facilities, and allocated a budget for this from public money under the pretext of “instead of returning to work at noon.”
Popular Rejection
All measures aimed at reducing the cycle of qat consumption, whether by moving its markets outside the cities or preventing its consumption in government departments, have usually been met with strong objection by citizens.
This is mainly due to the fact that qat is a source of income for many, in the absence of alternatives, in addition to that “it has become a social phenomenon that has grown in a traditional environment that has been mixed with many rituals and is difficult to eradicate,” according to the words of Professor of Sociology at Sana’a University Fouad Al-Salahi in an interview with Al-Jazeera website.
In mid-May 2020, popular protests erupted after the decision of the governor of Ibb appointed by the Houthi group, Abdul-Wahed Salah, to allocate other places for qat markets outside the city, as part of the measures taken to confront the outbreak of the Coronavirus.
Citizens questioned these intentions, and Walid Al-Jamaa'i, one of the protesters, said: “For the Houthi authority, confronting Coronavirus is one of its last concerns; and it is evident in the fact that they do not even have any statistics of the virus’s cases and deaths or any efforts to confront it.”
He continued in an interview with Al-Estiklal: “What is happening comes within the actions of the Houthi group in excluding all sources of income, and when they moved the markets outside the city, they moved them to markets belonging to them, because the old markets in the city center do not lay under their control.”
In April 2020, the governor of Hadhramaut Governorate, Faraj Al-Bahsani, issued a decision banning the sale of qat in the governorate, permanently and irreversibly, imposing penalties on those who use it among the army and security men, and allocating financial rewards for those who report its promoters, “but the decision failed and did not last long, although it was issued in a decisive language,” in spite of the dismissal of 5 soldiers in Hadhramaut; due to their non-compliance with the issued decision.
Governor of Hadhramaut to the media and to the military and security leaders: “The decision to ban qat is final and irreversible.”
The second military region of the Yemeni government army said, in a statement posted on its Facebook page that “the leadership has taken a decision to permanently dismiss 5 soldiers, for violating the decision to prevent officers and army personnel from consuming qat while in duty.”
On May 17, 2016, widespread popular protests erupted in areas of Al-Dhale Governorate, and demonstrators burned tires, and blocked roads and streets, following the issuance of a decision by the local authority prohibiting the entry of qat into Aden.
The demonstrations also took place from the Sanah area, the most important source of qat for Aden Governorate. The participants demanded that the local authorities’ decision to impose restrictions on the use of qat in Aden in 2016 be canceled and allowed it to be consumed on Thursday and Friday; a decision that also failed.
