The Politics of Qat

How one plant explains Yemen's dysfunction.

BY PEER GATTER | FEBRUARY 18, 2013

Leisure time without qat is unthinkable for most Yemenis today: a lonely, miserable, boring experience, something to be dreaded. Here, residents of the fishing town of al-Luhayya on the Tihama coastal plain pass a communal afternoon chewing.

Peer Gatter/The Politics of Qat

 

Peer Gatter is a political scientist and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies scholar who served as an advisor to Yemen's Ministry of Planning and Water during the 2000s for the U.N. Development Program and the World Bank. In 2002, he organized Yemen's "First National Conference on Qat." He is the author of Politics of Qat -- The Role of a Drug in Ruling Yemen.