Yemen threatens to chew itself to death over thirst for narcotic qat plant

The Guardian
February 26, 2010
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/26/yemen-qat-water-drought

By Hugh Macleod
Wadi Dahr, Yemen

There’s something a bit different about the three brothers Rafik proudly leading us around their field of lanky green trees, grown from the rich and rare soils of Wadi Dahr.

From high on the scorched brown rock face that surrounds the valley, half an hour’s drive northwest from Sanaa, the fertile carpet of vegetation below appears truly as a minor miracle of nature.

For like most of Yemen, these northern mountains are a dry and barren land. Sanaa’s water basin, of which Wadi Dahr forms a part, is emptying out at a staggering rate: four times as much water is taken out of the basin as goes in each year, meaning Sanaa, the fastest growing capital in the world at 7 percent, will also be the first to run out of economically viable water supplies.

Most experts predict the city will dry up by 2017, exactly the same year the World Bank says Yemen will cease earning income from its oil, which currently accounts for three quarters of the state budget.

As one of the most water poor nations on earth, Yemenis suffer appalling health indicators. The majority, like our driver today, are malnourished, raised on a staple of bread and tea which stunt early growth, and from which most never recover.

A meeting of Yemen’s Gulf Arab neighbours today in Riyadh is expected to make pledges of development assistance to the failing state.
Yet the UN’s own appeal for $177 million in humanitarian aid for Yemen this year is at last count only 0.4 percent funded, leading the World Food Programme (WFP) earlier this month to cut back rations for around one million Yemenis. A recent WFP survey found that one out of every three Yemenis - 7.5 million people - suffer chronic hunger.

Once a vibrant farming economy, Yemen today imports up to 80 percent of its food needs. The residents of Rawda, one of six districts that make up the sprawling suburbs of Sanaa known as Beni al Harith, know why.

“In the 1970s this was all covered with trees. We used to grow the most delicious grapes in the republic. Now they come from outside,” says Abdel Latif al Oulofi, a community leader. On the edge of the field behind him the wind whips up the dusty soil into a small cyclone.
“In the 1980s the population was 5,000. Until 1975 we had just one school. Now there are more than 80 schools and more than 100,000 people. We know of 1,500 illegal wells, most of them now dry. People have been drilling with oil rigs, going down 600 meters to try and find water. But the wells are so polluted we have to rely on trucks,” says Oulofi. “Rawda means paradise. It was very beautiful. Now it’s like hell.”

As we leave his once paradise Oulofi promises us a meeting later in the afternoon with Rawda’s sheikh, or tribal leader, who will be discussing water issues with local families.

From the view over Wadi Dahr, however, little explanation for Yemen’s water woes is needed. For the rows and rows of green trees below do not bear the fruit and vegetables for which this country is crying out, but the bitter, mildly narcotic and extremely thirsty qat leaf, which three out of four Yemeni men chew for most of every afternoon and which consumes the lion’s share of the 90 percent of Yemen’s water that goes into agriculture.

“You know it’s ready to harvest when you see the top stalk has two buds,” says the youngest of the three Rafiks, 17-year-old Nabil Ali Rafik, pulling down the bendy trunk of a hamdani tree, one of Sanaa’s most popular qat varieties.
The driver has left us, hurrying back to Wadi Dahr’s market to buy his $5 plastic bag of leaves, which he will chew until our last journey, well past midnight.

Abdullah Ali Rafik, the eldest of the brothers, is explaining why they put soil on the qat leaves to stop them burning in the incessant sun and how they let the trees dry out, nearly to the point of death, before flooding the field, once or twice a month.
“It makes the taste better,” he says. So does the chemical powder applied a week before picking, even though it’s causing rising numbers of mouth and other cancers.

But what is it that’s so different about these three brothers?

They’re all certainly larger than the average Yemeni I meet in the streets of Sanaa. They’re not only tall – Abdullah is nearly six foot – but well built, strapping country folk who’ve outgrown their city cousins.

Earning from their qat over one million Yemeni rial last year, nearly $5,000 – princely sums in a country where nearly half the population earn less than $2 a day - the brothers can afford to eat well.

But there’s something else. It’s Thursday afternoon, first day of the weekend here and a time when most men, and a lot of women too, stuff their cheeks with the leaves the brothers Rafik grow, for the longest and most languid chew of the week.

So why are there no little green flecks around the teeth of Abdullah, Nabil and Ahmed? Why aren’t their faces puffed up and stretched around a ball of leaves? How are they speaking so clearly when most men at this time of day can only mumble?

“We never chew,” says Abdullah. “Our father does not allow us. He said qat corrupts the human. It is not good and he did not want his children growing up like that.”

We are late for the meeting with the Rawda sheikh. Weaving along the heavily potholed track leading out of Wadi Dahr, our driver looping green stalks into his swelling cheek, the phone rings. It’s Oulofi with bad news. The sheikh has been laid up in the local clinic, put on a drip and told to rest for the next two days. He won’t be able to discuss water with us or his community until at least next week. The reason for the sheikh’s sudden collapse?

Sunstroke and dehydration.