Headnote:

This article presents a brief review of Khat; a macro analysis of its roles in the Republic of Somaliland; briefer sketches of divergences of roles in other Somali heartland territories and Kenya concluding with a speculative section on what might be desirable (for Somalis) ways forward. All of these topics are bedevilled by limited prior research, the special pleading strands in much writing, the difficulty in knowing of or securing much of what is known and written and the intensely emotional context of most discourse. The last is not inherently a bad thing - Khat matters. Half of urban household absolute poverty, of farmer cash income and of female instituted divorces are not matters particularly appropriate for mild, disassociated academic curiosity. However, emotion leading to a rush to unanalysed action, and to inventing 'symbolic truths', which have meaning but not analytical veridicality, can be the enemy of, just as much as the catalyst toward, the possible.

"Jees, there's drugs out there, They're all spaced out". USA Marine, Mogadishu, 1992

"Accursed are the khat bearers For they are the enemies of Allah", Somali women's group leader, First Somaliland National, Reconstruction Conference, Hargeisa, 1998

"You do not understand. Khat is central to Somali culture. Guns, camels and khat, these define us"-- Guurti (elder), (Ibid.)

"Khat is the leading cash crop, import, source of tax revenue, personal consumption category and cause of urban household poverty in Somaliland. Without studying its dynamics neither macro nor household economics can be understood". Political economic analyst, (Ibid.)

Aspects & Images: Realities in Conflict

Each of the four speakers offers a torchbeam into some of the realities of Khat for Somalis socially, politically, economically and in respect of gender. Equally each is incomplete and carries a varying amount of unhelpful or inaccurate intellectual and emotional baggage.

Khat is ubiquitous among urban Somali males and to an almost equal degree among male agro pastoralists and pastoralists with physical access to supply. It does - like alcohol whose use is almost non existent by Somalis - result in conviviality, sometimes boisterousness and a certain analgesic disassociation from the pain of reality. It diverts time from production and income from basic consumption in ways ringing alarm bells in northwestern minds (including those of black US marines) and in female minds. But it has little in common with - say - crack cocaine in terms of degree of user impact or (perhaps because Khat is not criminalised in major producing and using countries) with organised crime as distinct from organised economic and political entities.

Khat is and has been a symbol - and to a degree reality - of what are perceived by Northwesterners as alien, violent, inscrutable, pastoral hordes 'without the lines' threatening law, order and the very existence of society (whether in the Horn in the late 1800s or the 1990s, north of the Roman Walls in Scotland or beyond the Great Wall in the Gobi rather earlier). That fear is objective and often valid (although more often than not the wall builders were the aggressors) but tends to distort, demonise, mythologise. The Mahdist cavalry, Zulu impis and Somali Klansmen who occasionally overwhelmed 'the thin red line' breaking the formidable squares which drained the life from Bonaparte's empire were valiant, persistent and reckless of their own lives. Perhaps they were crazed from an English perspective, but resistance to external domination, commitment to a new, reformed order (in the Mahdist case) and both religious and political faith were the intoxicants. Sometimes - as at Khartoum when the Mahdist forces overwhelmed Gordon's - there was a Jihad/Crusade element but even then the Mahdist Jihad was against the corrupt, colonial - but Muslim - regime of the Khaedive of Egypt not the indigenous 'Peoples of The Book' and it was Gordon's 'muscular Christianity' (easily equatable with the Queen Empress' 'self-evident' universal right to rule over 'lesser breeds without the law') which initiated the Crescent-Cross confrontation, real as that has become especially in the Sudan.

'Afro pessimism' like 'orientalism' is in large part Northwestern centrist, selfjustifying, export racism and assuaging domestic fears (for example, the urban wastelands of the USA and the UK inner cities) by subliminally blaming them on those 'out there'. The choice of transmuted symbols for example, Khat for crack and Aideed's militias for black urban groups are only too suggestive.

Khat is a mind-altering drug. Mind altering drugs (especially arrack and hashish albeit not tobacco) are condemned by The Messenger in The Holy Koran. Khat's ubiquitous use in the deeply Islamic Somali societies is anomalous. The social ills the women condemn - diversion of time from earning and of resources from women and children, household quarrels and spousal abuse - are ones The Messenger condemned and related directly to alcohol and drug use. The distinction between use and abuse (which has niches in Islamic discourse) is not very relevant to the urban Somali male chewing away half his time and all his income so his household endures in absolute poverty and his wife is despair secures a divorce on grounds of nonsupport (quite approved and common under Sharia law as perceived and practised among Somalis).

But the elder is also correct. Guns (self and communal protection and respect), camels (income, mobility and reserve store of value) and khat (male bonding and temporary suspension of too painful realities) are central to male Somali social self-definition. Male because women do not tend (much less own) camels, carry guns or chew Khat. Somewhat ironically Khat and guns (not camels) are now most ubiquitous in urban areas where they are far more corrosive loose canons (literally in the case of 'technicals') than in their pastoral nomadic historic context. That the same elder accepted ascriptive (ability) naming of 'young elders' and the case for an elected House of Assembly of men (or theoretically men and women) with skills more linked to modern economics and technology than those of most guurti - and would not dream of riding to a workshop on camelback brandishing an AK44! - suggests a flexibility and pragmatism of outlook apparently not applying to Khat use.

The political economist's focus on macro, state, external account, household and poverty economic aspects of Khat- the combined Somali analogue to tobacco/alcohol economic production, trade, consumption sectors in the Northwest - also grasps a seminal reality. It is parallel to/overlapping with the woman's concerns even if its apparently more detached, clinical formulation is apparently (and in some cases really) rather removed from the passionately expressed forms of much Somali (and for that matter outside) discourse on/controversy about Khat.

With khat/ as with much else in the Horn and the Yemen one is in the realm of oral history and ascriptive self-definition by myth or fable (in the technical socioanthropological as well as the colloquial sense). The plant originated either in the Oromian/Somali/Tigrean/Eritrean Highlands or those of Yemen. So did the Queen of Sheba, and one or more strands of the Somali peoples and arguably the initial conquering elites both of the Great Lakes Kingdoms and of Yorubaland). All of this oral history - and its partial written and iconographic supporting evidential fragments - has elements both of hard descriptive veridicality and of hard ascriptive self-definition (which when acted on has its own veridicality) as well as a certain vague romanticism when both verdicalities have become largely lost or transmuted beyond easy disentanglement. The Puntland myth is illustrative. Puntland existed from Pharaonic to early Medieval times. Egyptian (and to a lesser extent GraecoRoman) iconographic and pictorial evidence places it on the Upper Nile with a commercial link (at times by canal) to the present Sudanese Red Sea Coast, perhaps near Suakin. It has somehow migrated (in the hands of a conquering group's elders?) to Somaliland which incongruously uses a stylised Nile boat ('Moses in the bulrushes') picture as one of its symbols and to that most artificial (historically, physically and economically) of would-be Somalian statelets the Bosaso - Galcayo Puntland Republic.

Objectively Khat.

is the leaf of a bush grown predominantly in the Northeastern Highlands of the Horn with an extension around Mount Kenya and possible small pockets in the Northern Yemen highlands; with considerable uniformity but varying taste and potency - one which most users agree apparently depends on attitude, levelness or otherwise of fields, rainfall levels and distribution and presence or absence of cool nights and months. Hargeisa - Boramo Khat is considered somewhat inferior. (Too low? Too flat? Too few cool nights and, especially, days?);
has (like alcohol, tobacco, coca leaves) primarily analgesic properties; acting as
a screen against care, tension and pain whether physical or - especially -social, economic and political by reducing and altering consciousness;
creating a perception (by users and to a lesser degree observes of conviviality (Khat is a social not a solitary drug), insight and warm relaxed happiness; followed by,
a gradual descent into sleepiness and subsequent hangover;
with mild physical and rather stronger social and psychological addiction; and
a fuzzy line between occasional, recreational, episodic use and habitual, lifedefining, time and resource engrossing use (or addiction). But,
very little hard evidence of serious direct (as opposed to resource misallocation) damage to the health of the user or his associates and household (albeit in the latter case allocation away from food, health services, clothing and productive household interpersonal as well as earning time can have major negative consequences).

Khat is a overwhelmingly a Somali drug in use, trade and - with the exception of Kenya - growing. (Kenya's growing zone is near Nairobi not in its Northwestern Somali heartland zone.) The main using communities are the 17.5 to 20 million Somalis in their home base zone of Northwest Kenya, Region 5 of Ethiopia, southern Djibouti, Somaliland and Somalia and the 5 million in the inner (East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula) and outer diaspora. Almost all adult males have used Khat, a large majority chew it at least recreationally and occasionally, a majority of urban male Somali are habitual users. For Somalis - and for no other peoples with marginal exceptions in the Yemen and Eastern Sudan - Khat is the drug of choice neither flowing from nor lending to the consumption of 'hard' drugs, marijuana/hashish nor alcohol albeit paralleled by cigarette smoking. In this context (as in those of camels and guns) Somali means adult, male Somali. In the Arabian Peninsula hashish which like alcohol seems rather more associated with random and mob violence than Khat- is the historic drug of choice and the one (together with opium whose focal and entry point was in Iran and date arrack or raki alcohol) condemned root and branch by The Messenger in the Holy Koran and in the polity he brought into being.

Khat production totals perhaps $900 million at wholesale prices almost all in Ethiopia ($500 million), Kenya ($300 million) and Somaliland ($50 million). Ethiopia uses perhaps half its output exporting the remainder to Somaliland, Djibouti, London, Yemen and Somalia. Kenyan Somalis use perhaps a fifth of output with the balance exported to Somalia and London. Somaliland is a user/importer (about one quarter domestically produced), Djibouti and the diaspora (to the extent Khat is available) are importers and users.

The only sustained, intense effort to eradicate khat use in the Somali heartland was in the 1970s and 1980s by Sad Barre focusing (successfully) on production in Somaliland and (much less so beyond driving out of sight) consumption throughout the then United Republic. Because the production suppression was only in Somaliland (next to none is produced in Somalia) and was earlier and more effective, Somalilanders associate Khat suppression with oppressive, colonial (from Mogadishu) rule. British and - a fortiori- French and Italian colonial efforts to control or abolish Khat use fairly quickly retreated to 'don't look, don't see, don't tell'.

This article presents a brief review of Khat, a macro analysis of its roles in the Republic of Somaliland; briefer sketches of divergences of roles in other Somali heartland territories and Kenya concluding with a speculative section on what might be desirable (for Somalis) ways forward. All of these topics are bedevilled by limited prior research, the special pleading strands in much writing, the difficulty in knowing of or securing much of what is known and written and the intensely emotional context of most discourse. The last is not inherently a bad thing - Khat matters. Half of urban household absolute poverty, of farmer cash income and of female instituted divorces are not matters particularly appropriate for mild, disassociated academic curiosity. However, emotion leading to a rush to unanalysed action, and to inventing 'symbolic truths', which have meaning but not analytical veridicality, can be the enemy of, just as much as the catalyst toward, the possible.

Khat: A Background Perspective

Khat is the green (literally browny green) leaf of a shrub which takes five years to reach maturity then bearing fully for perhaps 10. It is capital intensive (because of time between planting and full output), water intensive and land intensive (because at least in Somaliland - one to two hectares water field with channels need to be kept fallow to collect water for each hectare of Khat). Khat leaves are chewed green and totally unprocessed - 24 to 48 hours from plant to mouth is the 'shelf life' for effective ease. The requisite amount for full effect (over a 3 to 8 hour chewing, tea drinking and conversing session) is two bunches (branches) which in Somaliland cost about $5 nominally one day's full time labour albeit that equation seems as subject to caveat as the daily minimum wage/one quart bottle of beer equation in Tanzania.

Khat has been used by virtually all male Somalis over 15. Indeed it is - like weapons and camels - to a substantial degree a manhood symbol. Use by Somali women is unusual (and recent) and fairly widely disapproved (whether because it would challenge machismo or because sisters disapprove is less than clear). In Somaliland, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and London most Somali males are frequent though not necessarily habitual (over 3 times a week) - users. Elsewhere logistic problems limit consumption. Non-Somali use of Khat is unusual to non-existent (perhaps with some exceptions in North Yemen and Eastern Sudan).

In practice Khat production, trade and use is not criminalised in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti, the Sudans and Yemen. It is (with uneven enforcement) in most of the Arabian peninsula and (nominally?) Tanzania. It is not in the UK (presumably by an oversight in controlled drug list compilation) but is elsewhere in Western Europe and North America.

Khat use is mildly debilitating - primarily via hangovers albeit in some cases by spending so much on Khat as to eat inadequately and fail to secure necessary medical services. It is very mildly hallucinatory and after an initial period of exhilaration (perhaps more perceived by the user and his fellows than present in objective reality) is moderately depressive. It is less likely than alcohol or hashish to lead to violent conduct during the exhilaration phase albeit more likely to do so than the use of coca leaves, ganja or tobacco ('tobacco rage' flows from forced non-smoking, for example, on airlines or in bars, not from smoking).

Khat - like all other widely used drugs - induces a reduction of stress and of psychological (and related physical) pain by distancing the user from a hostile world. It does so to a lesser degree than hard drugs (and probably than marijuana/hashish) for example, amiable, increasingly rapid conversation and mildly rose tinted relaxing observation of nothing in particular not near or total unconsciousness are its hallmarks. Like all depressants and consciousness restructuring substances it makes physical reactions slower and less predictably appropriate.

Khat - unlike coca leaves and marijuana - has few potentially positive gains. Coca leaves do increase endurance and ability to remain active in the face of cold, hunger and tiredness. Marijuana does have substantial pain relieving properties and may be the most suitable analgesic for certain conditions. Detailed research and especially clinical trials are patchy to non-existent precisely because of crimininalisation. Khat/ has no such special endurance enhancing or pain reducing properties. All it has - in common with alcohol, tobacco, coca leaves, marijuana and 'mild' synthetic drugs is an ability to reduce tension and allow temporary respite from the cares of an hostile environment. That is not necessarily a bad thing if the relief is not purchased at the cost of masking reality for the K,att user and making those dependent on him (rarely her) substantially worse. For that reason it is rather difficult to make out a robust case against occasional, recreational use of Khat/ so long as its use does not lead to household deprivation and discord. Khat does reduce alertness. Its use with alcohol would, for that reason, be a particularly lethal combination. Luckily it is also a particularly uncommon one - non-Somalis rarely use Khat and Somalis very rarely use alcohol.

There is no strong direct medical/health impact case against Khat. Association with mouth cancer and circulatory disease are probable but not very strong. In this it resembles marijuana and coca leaves. Even the professional medical practitioners among khan's ardent Somali enemies do not base their case on health grounds. In addition, the medical risks from adulteration are low. Khat is not processed, has a short 'shelf' life (dried Khat tea is a UK health food shop eccentricity) and is not subject to biological variations leading to poisonous varieties. Again this is rather like coca leaves and marijuana (albeit adulteration and, perhaps, rogue strains are more possible) and very unlike cocaine, heroin, opium and synthetic (soft or hard) drugs.

There is a health case but an indirect one. Khat expenditure reduces the amount available for all other spending - including on health services. In particular it reduces male transfers to females responsible for taking children to and paying their bills at health service access points (public or private). In a poor country in which most cash income in most households initially accrues to males and there are gender divided budget payment obligations, this is by no means a minor criticism.

The basic cases against Khat l are socio-economic, household welfare/interpersonal relations and macro economic. In the Somali homelands it is the largest single consumption item (for many households even category that is, exceeding food). It literally eats up the money to feed children, wears out the resources to cloth them and their mothers and chews up ability to finance health care. As a result it creates intrahousehold tensions along gender lines often erupting into spouse abuse and divorce. At territorial level it is by far the largest import category in Somaliland and Somaliland and probably also Djibouti and Region 5 (Somali Region) of Ethiopia.

On the productivity/output side Khat can be equally debilitating. Because a 'good' Khat session takes 3 to 8 hours, costs a full day's wages or more and is followed by a hangover it does reduce productivity. On the face of it a daily user's productivity would be 60 per cent below that of a non or non working day recreational user (50 per cent on time devoted to chewing, 10 per cent on a one fifth loss in productivity the other half day because of hangover).

'In a poor country waste is a sin' quoted then President Mwalimu Nyerere. He was in fact talking of state corporation and ministry waste, but his are very apt for a non-essential, at best amenity product which can eat up 25 per cent to 30 per cent of a poor territory's household production and import capacity, reduce overall and household productivity significantly, exacerbate household and gender tensions in ways frequently leading to violence and marital breakup and dump many households into absolute poverty. That is an ethical/normative case against Khat except for an occasional, recreational, marginal proportion of income use. The exception is not the norm in Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti or the largely Somali regions of Ethiopia and of Kenya. This case is rather like the female 'temperance' (that is, prohibition of the Demon Alcohol) society case of the 19th century in the UK and USA - the man literally drank up the household income and the children and women went hungry in rags.

Somaliland figures are starkly illustrative. The absolute poverty line budget for a household ' is of the order of $1,250 a year. The cost of consuming Khait habitually (say 300 days a year) is $1,500 a year. The average household income is of the order of perhaps $1,500 excluding and $2,500 including remittances. $1, 250 is less than $1,500 and $2,750 is in excess of $2,500 even abstracting from the fact that over 50 per cent of households have less than $1,000 earned and $1,500 total (including remittances) income.

Khat in the Macro, Politico & Socio-economic Dynamics of Somaliland

Somaliland has rather more and more readily to hand macro economic estimates than Djibouti or Somalia. The Somali Regions of Ethiopia and Kenya do not have separate territorial account estimates. Therefore macro analyses is focused here on the Republic of Somaliland with later notes on divergences in other Somali core states. Khat matters at macro level because it is the largest item in:
personal consumption at about 25 per cent;
commerce and associated services at up to 20 per cent;
crop production at about 50 per cent;
imports on the order of 30 per cent;
tax revenue contributing perhaps 25 per cent of central government revenue.

However to describe Somaliland as a Khat economy is misleading in macro political economic as well as structural terms.

There is no state-druglord clash (or/and collusion) with occult powers beyond government control and deeply corrupting the state as in Colombia, Mexico, Peru let alone druglord ruled enclaves with or without formal state approval as in Myanmar,

Afghanistan, Laos and Thailand. This is partly because Khat importation, trade and production are not illegal so neither the 'need' nor opportunity for a Khat based political cartel exist. Khat is the main line of business of upper and middle income agro pastoralists, of some large merchants and of Khat kafes (as it is usually consumed communally with liberal associated milk tea drinking). However, except for their key product these farmers, merchants and restaurateurs are not readily distinguishable from grain growers, general traders or non Khat eating houses.

Structurally klatt accounts for at most a sixth of GDP and under a tenth of GNP. Further the commercial value added half of this total could - were Khat to vanish peacefully (for example, by changed social perceptions) - fairly readily handle different products. The $50 million agro pastoral income would, however, be difficult to replace as it is hard to see how any presently accessible substitute crop could yield over half as much farm income.

Khat as a macro economic factor is therefore probably most analogous to the tobacco/alcohol sectors in Northwestern economies. Large, influential, hard for some to convert out of but not the keystone of the economic arch. The picture is more analogous to a European economy with a large tobacco-alcohol sector including significant consumption, production and international trade than to Colombia or Burma.

However, the macro productivity bill - albeit not the direct health burden -is relatively higher. An habitual urban khat chewer spends up to half his potential working time chewing. If 20 per cent of the labour force are habitual users (say 200,000, as plausible an estimate, as any) then the purely quantitative output loss is 10 per cent. In addition Khat - like alcohol -reduces the quality of work during and after (hangover) euphoria so that it is arguable that lost productions is of the order of $100 million a year.

Direct health costs are lower. There are preliminary research results from WHO relating habitual khan/ use (abuse if one accepts the possibility of recreational use of Khat, as most non-Muslims would of alcohol) to somewhat higher incidence of oral cancer and of circulatory disease but, on the face of it, constituting less of a health threat than alcohol abuse or cigarette use.

At socio economic and household poverty - as well as at gender - levels the impact of Khat is greater. This is not because of any broad contribution to violence. Large Khat consignments are accompanied by armed guards (albeit in Somaliland not by brandishing of weapons which would attract negative police attention whatever was being guarded). But then so do movements of money in Europe. It is perfectly reasonable to argue that as Khat costs about $5 a day (a two bunch habit) and most users are not well off it must lead to illegal funding. As large scale crime and indeed theft backed by violence in general, is rare in Somaliland the probable forms are burglary and robbery. This conclusion is tentative because even opponents of khat use in Hargeisa do not assert that it has led to high levels of crime to finance purchases.

However, in respect to household consumption overall and to its interpersonal distribution one is on more clearly visible ground in urban and, probably, agro pastoral areas. Habitual Khat use costs $1,500 a year. Even half would be enough to tip most households into absolute poverty, quite apart from income loss through a lesser number of hours worked and at a lower rate of productivity. Non-productive consumption of $250 million plus out of $950 million is not marginal.

The chief losers are women and children with food, clothing, housing (for example, rate of building or repairing a war destroyed or damaged) home and medical services less available because transfers from male Khat users to the domestic budgets of women (responsible for food, children and house maintenance) are attenuated or wiped out. That pattern clearly does exist in Hargeisa and probably in the HargeisaBoramo agro pastoral zone (although it is less evident in household surveys of the latter - perhaps because both khat! and off farm income chewed up by it escaped coverage?).

Pastoralist households - especially those which are usually well away from urban areas and main trade routes clearly consume less khalt if only because it cannot be available in the 24 to 48 hour post picking time window. Their use must be episodic which would imply something more like the urban recreational user than the 'addict'. That may imply that urbanisation and modernisation (especially in respect to faster movement of goods) have transformed Khat use from a widespread but relatively benign form of quasi conspicuous consumption to a much more socially corrosive poverty and intra household conflict engendering one.

Khat Kontroversy: The Gender Gap

In Somaliland khat is very much a gendered issue. Very few men - including however a growing a minority of younger, more educated mosque Sheikhs and Khadis condemn its use, at most treating it as an unwise indulgence damaging to income earning and opening gaping holes in purse and pocket. Women -especially but not only women's group leaders, female health professionals and female employers however, condemn kha/ use root and branch and demand that something be done to deter and reduce it. The women's case is multifaceted:

1) The Holy Koran condemns the use of drugs and of alcohol. Why are alcohol and drugs other than khat nominatively condemned and effectively socially prescribed but Khat is not merely tolerated but often seen as a symbol of full manhood? This evocation of The Holy Koran is not usually purely functional or rhetorical. Somali culture is rooted in Islam even if its contextual evolution means that Islam in the Somali context is rarely 'puritanical', chauvinist or theocratic. Therefore in many cases the women are saying quite simply that their faith and its leaders should protect them, their children and their society against the perceived evil of Khat but are failing in their duty. The woman at the First National Somaliland Reconstruction Conference in Hargeisa in 1998 who said (in Somali), 'Accursed are the khat bearers for they are the enemies of Allah' was perfectly sincere and perfectly serious.

2) Khat is perceived as a massive drain in resources (of money and of time) and as corrosive of productivity when working at both household and macro levels. Since it appears to eat up over a quarter of all Somaliland personal consumption, to use up as much as a half of habitual users working hours and to result in hangovers the next morning this is a very valid point. Khat does take the food out of children's mouths and the cloth off women's backs. While there appears to be no statistical study, khat! is perceived to be the largest cause of non support, abandonment and spouse abuse (consequent on arguments over the husband being a 'bad provider') leading to the high incidence of female instituted divorces in Somalia/Somaliland.

3) Khat is condemned as causing both general moral decay (failure to meet household, blood group and wider social obligations because the time and funds to discharge them have been - quite literally - chewed up) and, in particular, crime and violence. The later strand of this argument appears to turn on criminal activities (in Somaliland usually theft) to fund use with consequential violence against those resisting and household violence resulting from arguments over the absence of money and spouse.

This analysis of the Somaliland women's case - feminist in the universal sense albeit not in terms of some northwestern variants because it seeks to save men, especially boy children and youths, from themselves and their Khat culture and to preserve marriage bonds/households - is not inaccurate but does not give an adequate representation of its passion and emotional depth. Somaliland women do not discuss Khat in an abstract intellectual way but condemn its use root and branch with great vehemence and eloquence.

The use of khat by Somali women is unusual - until recently it was virtually unknown and perceived as seriously deviant behaviour. To what extent this is a male cultural norm (Khat like guns and camels is a symbol of manhood and/or machismo) and to what extent a female one based on the damage Khat does to households and to interpersonal and intergender relations is unclear. Interestingly and perhaps significantly the female opposition to Khat use is as fierce in the diaspora (including women from locations such as California where Khat use is virtually impossible for logistical reasons) as at home. The diaspora advocates cite the growth of a culture of smoker exclusion (not least in California) as a precedent and a guide as to how to proceed. When pressed they usually agree criminalisation without prior change of social norms will not work (again as exemplified in respect to marijuana, cocaine and designer drugs in California).

Somaliland women are less clear on what is to be done than on what is to be condemned and why:

1) Most see no practicable way to eradicate Khat use by law because the very context that supports male Khat use means the all male Houses of Elders and of Assembly would not pass legislation to that end nor would it be enforceable if they did. (That Said Barre did seek to ban Khat production and use and to enforce that law by violently repressive action in Somaliland probably is a significant element in the nonadvocacy of criminalisation as a way forward);

2) The overwhelming view is that kl/at! use should be made socially unacceptable and the khat! user an outcast from household and civil society. How is not uniformly nor really coherently formulated. Somaliland women are well aware that while they are free to organise and to express their views and are listened to, men in general now condescend to them rather than take their priorities seriously;

3) The belief that Islam should be their foundation and bulwark to eliminate Khat use (a view with which a growing minority of Islamic leaders agree) does not as yet appear to have led to coherent strategies for reaching out to and forming alliances with Islamic scholars, teachers and clergy;

4) The case for not hiring Khat users (or at any rate habitual ones) because of low productivity and high absenteeism is, to date, operationally effective only in respect to the small minority of men hired by female headed enterprises. There does not seem to have been any coherent educational outreach campaign to convince male employers that the Khat user is a 'bad boy' as an employee;

5) The perception (not uniform) that Khat growers and petty distributors -unlike importers and big merchants - are victims of the system rather than architects leads to some sympathy with their 'withdrawal' problems if Khat use collapses. However, to date (perhaps because no rapid fall in use appears plausible over a foreseeable time perspective) this has not led to coherent elucidation of how they could be enabled to earn adequate alternative incomes.

Somalia: The Sinews of War & the Launderette Links

The pervasiveness and characteristics of khat! use in Somalia are relatively similar to those in Somaliland. However, that generalisation is subject to exceptions.

Because Khat is the largest single component in commerce and of cash flow streams which tend to be concentrated in a few hands, access to khan! revenues and successful militia mobilisation, equipping and maintenance are closely interwoven. Khat is a sinew of war in Somalia (as it is not in Somaliland). Initially businessmen channelled khat revenues to warlords (that is, wartime leaders who displace Peacelord elders and merchants in wartime but, as in the Roman Republic, are supposed to relinquish their powers on the outbreak of peace) to gain protection and space to engage in 'primitive accumulation'. Neither bribery nor coercion adequately describes this relationship - it was (is) symbiotic usually with the warlord as the dominant partner.

However, more recently some of the larger merchants - notably Osman Ato with his $100 million plus annual turnover, airline and two airports (one for general commerce and one for khat) - have decided that their interests lie in a return to relative stability, commercial security and absence of risk of personal violence. As a result they have moved toward leaders who are similarly inclined - for example, Mahdi Mohammed, himself by origin a merchant - and hired their own militias, bought their own technicals to increase their politico military leverage.

The injection of direct merchant money - largely from k/hat!- in Somalia (unlike Somaliland where merchants paid militiamen to demobilise and lent money to the territorial government) has radically altered historic politico military balances for the worse. Historically Councils of Elders (sub klan or sub klan coalition) decided on war, appointed Warlord's with plenipotentiary powers in respect to war for its duration, raised young men to fight and levies (especially but not only from merchants) to feed and to equip them. The Warlords powers (like those of their analogues under the Roman Republic) ended with the war. Peace negotiations were for Peacelords (senior elders) who had the power to cut off supplies and withdraw fighting men if Warlords sought to prolong fighting for their own ends.

The 1991 to date Warlords have in general (Mahdi Mohammed is a probable exception as are some more territorially limited leaders) achieved non-accountability. They recruit militia equip and pay directly and finance their operations by direct levies on merchants (including even external transnational corporations - for example, Dole and the Mafia in respect of bananas). Their Councils of Elders therefore cannot hold them to account, are largely excluded from peace negotiations (with the enthusiastic backing of the UN and of Egypt) and have no check on Warlord/militia personal interest in continued violence. Khat via Osman Ato and via UNOSOM naivete (both in backing or involving and in criticising or attacking) made and sustained General Aideed when his own Council of Elders if in control would have negotiated a peace agreement with Mahdi Mohammed and sent Aideed back to his herds (or abroad).

True, the evil was the new financing arrangements leading to the collapse of Warlord accountability, not the source of the cash flow per se. But initially (say 1991-1994) the only adequate flows did derive from the Khat trade.

Ironically international agencies - global, multilateral, bilateral and NGO -have become agents for laundering/converting Khat proceeds. They need Somali shillings to meet local expenses. It is convenient to draw these from local merchants paying up at the end of the month in Nairobi in USA $ with a commission for the exchange services and interest on drawings. The transactions at this level are perfectly normal and neither illegal nor unethical. The difficulty is that the Somali shillings paid are in large part the proceeds of Khat sales which need to be converted into hard currency available in Kenya to meet leaf purchase, transport and 'facilitation' ('mafuta') costs. An uncharitable observer could well describe the agency contracts as kh,tt money launderettes. The situation in Somaliland is rather different. With an open market for Somaliland shillings in Djibouti, specialised remittance houses who make shillings available in Hargeisa within 24/48 hours on the basis of payments in Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Djibouti, Jeddah, Aden, London, New York or many other major cities and the degree of domestic security to make importing - holding - distributing notes, safe there is no need to use merchants (of k,att or anything else). In principal the Central Bank's accounts (and internal transfer system) could be used, but in practice its artificial Somaliland Shilling 1,500 to USA$1 (versus the real market rate of 4,000) precludes that channel.

Thus Somali culture and preferences mean that Somalia is either first or second in global Khat consumption (Ethiopia joint 1 - 2, Somaliland 3, Kenya/Djibouti 4 - 5) at perhaps $350 - 500 million fob ($425 - 625 million retail) and Khat flights from Kenya and, secondarily Ethiopia, ubiquitous. The greater instability and violence (official, quasi official and purely private) mean the trade is more heavily armed and prone to violence than in Somaliland and Ethiopia. In turn the k/att cashflows have increased instability and reduced the potential for negotiated peace by enabling Warlords to escape from their traditional accountability to Peacelords (elders and merchants) while international humanitarian support and peace promoters have played major roles in converting/laundering Khat shillings into clean $ and to making Warlords central to the negotiating process while virtually excluding Peacelords. In these respects Khat's political and military roles are more central and more malevolent in Somalia than in Somaliland and Ethiopia.

The Other Homelands: Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya

Ethiopia is the world's largest producer of Khat (of the order of $400 to $500 million at wholesale/fob prices) with perhaps a third exported to Djibouti and Somaliland (and peripherally to Yemen and to Europe) and the bulk consumed in Region 5 (the Somali Region) and by the Somali community in Addis Ababa. Production and trade are both in Somali hands. The export, business probably focuses on 'transnational family firms' with blood, lineage or sub-klan links among the members in both countries. Export is partly by air but also by fast vehicle across the frontier near Baramo. Both are facilitated because khat is not criminalised nor is its production and commercialisation restricted (except by faxes intended to raise revenue not to choke off use).

Djibouti is probably the worlds 4th or 5th largest user (after Ethiopia, Somalia, Somaliland and perhaps Kenya) at perhaps $50 to $75 million. Apparently all is imported - dominantly by air - from Ethiopia. (Some hill areas could produce Khat but are within the Afar/Danakil not the Isa/Somali zone). The results are widely perceived to be/noted as non-attendance at work in the afternoon (especially but not only in government offices) and relatively low ('hangover' corroded) productivity when at work. While there are somewhat loose legal sanctions on khat in Djibouti these appear to represent a formal vestige of the French colonial heritage and/or a bow to the international 'secular jihad' against drugs and to have little relation with reality.

In Kenya the production and use of Khat are formally unlawful and (somewhat paradoxically) importation is subject to a high rate of duty. The reality is quite different. Kenya is the world's number two khar producer (on the slopes of Mount Kenya and on hills near Nairobi) totalling perhaps $200 to $250 million fob. Of this on the order of 75 per cent is exported to Somalia (not Somaliland) by plane with secondary exports to Heathrow and up to 25 per cent consumed in Kenya largely, but not only, Somalis in the Northwest and Nairobi. The growers are Kenyan but the trade is controlled by a handful of Somali merchants. It is a violent trade with vicious turf wars over sources of supply. Its links with other aspects of organised crime in Kenya are not adequately researched. So long as the Khat is produced for export or sale to Somalis and the violence is largely among Somalis (and peripherally their growers) the police and officialdom turn a blind eye viewing it as a useful source of purchasing power for farmers, foreign exchange for Kenya and 'occult' income for blind eye turners and protectors.

The Khat Periphery

In Tanzania Khat is not widely consumed even among the Somali community -partly because of lack of ready access. It is apparently not grown in Tanzania (although it could be - and perhaps is on a small scale - in the Arusha-Moshi-Pare axis) and while travellers and small consignments by air from Addis Ababa or Nairobi clearly do come in there is little evidence of large scale trade. Tanzanian culture is on the whole hostile to drugs and while use of cannabis is not uncommon (even if illegal) largescale importation, trade and/or production does attract negative police and judicial attention.

Possibly the apparently less central role of Khat in the Tanzanian Somali community relates to the fact that they are probably the most integrated into the overall host community/nation of all diaspora communities. Since the late 1970s or early 1980s (parallel to the creeping disintegration of the URT but well before its 1990-91 collapse) increasing numbers have intermarried, held Tanzanian birth certificates, identity cards and travel documents and invested savings on the basis that Tanzania had become and would remain their territorial home. This evaluation has been paralleled by an increasing acceptance by Tanzanians of individual Somalis and Somali households as fellow Tanzanians - which they certainly did not as recently as the early 1970s.

Yemen is on the face of it the only country in which indigenous community consumption of Khat is significant. (There is an historical case that at least some present Somalis came from Yemen after the collapse of the Great Dam and the polityeconomy built around it at about the time of the Norman conquest of Anglo-Saxon England.) Whether there is local production as well as imports by air from Ethiopia is unclear as is the actual breadth and depth of non-Somali use.

Elsewhere in the Arabian Peninsula, three considerations pertain. Khat is the intoxicant of choice of the Somali communities but its use is restricted by the logistical difficulty of access and - in several cases - by very strong social, theological (for example, Wahabi) and government opposition to/intolerance of drug use. This anti drug stance flows from The Holy Koran. The specific drugs condemned by The Messenger (the Prophet Mohammed) were hashish/marijuana and opium but the general interpretation is that the condemnation is generic not specific. The drugs of choice of Arab communities are traditionally hashish/marijuana and opium with heroin, cocaine and synthetic designer drugs a relatively recent elite (and especially rich youth) development.

Outside the Somali homelands (Ethiopia - Djibouti - Kenya -Somalia -Somaliland), East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula Khat is not widely consumed by non-Somalis nor in many cases by them because of logistical and legal barriers to access. In North America logistical considerations make access to fresh Khat virtually impossible probably a more effective barrier than legal prohibitions, police and judicial enforcement, campaigns and draconic sentencing judging by experience with other drugs. In Europe substantial Somali use of Khat is apparently confined to the UK, Italy and the Netherlands. Each - especially the first two - has a substantial Somali diaspora presence. In the UK Khat (apparently by oversight) is not on any restricted drugs schedule and thus is - to date - legal and air transport links with Nairobi and Addis Ababa are good. In the Netherlands Khat is de facto perceived as analogous to marijuana with personal use and small scale trading decriminalised. Italy (or at any rate Rome) has, like the UK and the Netherlands, direct air links to Addis Ababa and Nairobi and a burgeoning drug culture perceived as a nearly uncontainable problem. That appears to result in little attention to an 'exotic' drug not significantly consumed by the mainstream Italian community.

What Might Be Done?

Khat is and is likely to remain overwhelmingly a problem and an issue for Somalis and especially Somalis in Somaliland, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Arabian Peninsula. It is most unlikely to become the drug of choice of any other community. Certainly it has not done so in the Arabian Peninsula (with a marginal exception in Yemen) or among non-Somali Ethiopians, Sudanese, Eritreans or East Africans where there is no logistical barrier. Presumably the reason is that Khat is relatively slow acting and not particularly strong. Further from its heartland Khat is largely unattainable for logistic reasons which could only be overcome via local production were a substantial market to exist. There is no reason for panic in, or additional criminalisation of use and petty trade by Northern countries out of fear of Khatomania among their majority populations. Nor as khat! is - relative to Northern incomes - probably both lower cost than other drugs where available (for example, UK) and has not led to a progression to heroin - cocaine -synthetic drugs among Somalis, can radical action to 'protect' Somalis be seen as particularly useful.

The core issues are in the Somali homelands and for Somalis. No overall answer (unless one advocates laissez faire on libertarian grounds) will be short term and criminalisation is likely to be counterproductive if attempted before a change in sociocultural context and, at most, marginally useful after such change has been substantial.

The case against Khat consumption at present levels by Somalis is primarily the negative impact on household poverty and intrahousehold relations with special burdens on women and children. In the case of Djibouti, Somalia and Somaliland (but not Ethiopia) a secondary case is the substantial net import bill.

The case for attention to restructuring applies to khat! growers (who, at present, have no equally economically attractive crop) and to petty retail operators. Tax revenue sources could readily be shifted to whatever goods replaced Khat in consumption, large merchants could alter their product base, withdrawal symptoms for ex-users are relatively marginal.

The possibility of opening the campaign by criminalisation of production, trade, and/ or use is negligible. Only under a dictatorship would it be possible - elected, predominately male assemblies of persons who are overwhelmingly Khat users would not pass such laws.

Further the Barre regime's attempt to ban production and use - the former effective, the latter, despite serious effort and repressive actions, only very partially so - has made criminalisation even more of a non-starter especially in Somaliland. Khat criminalisation is - however irrationally -seen as part of dictatorial, repressive, occupying force rule.

Judging by the results (or general lack thereof as far as consumption reduction goes) of broad brush criminalisation globally the fact that is not practicable in the Somali homelands is perhaps no bad thing. It certainly would in the context of evasion, guns and hireable fighting men have grave relative consequences for security and create a role for organised crime in Somalia and Ethiopia while diversifying its already too wide ramifications in Somalia and Kenya.

But the question of how is not answered by pointing to 'No through road' or 'Bridge Out' signs. The starting points toward an approach include:
identifying the social evil to be overcome/reduced;
analysing which social actors and groups are opposed to continuation of that social evil;
working out ways to bring these actors and their groups into a working coalition;
concentrate on education aimed at changing social attitudes; and
identifying what measures (for example, barriers to employment, licensing of khat 'parlours') might reinforce attitudinal changes.

Until socio-cultural shifts gather momentum the government's main action should be to tax khat more effectively - at say 50 per cent of import and farm gate value with at least 90 per cent coverage - on the Gladstonian premise that socially controversial amenity goods should contribute substantially to revenue. In Somaliland that could mean up to $90 million a year revenue (versus a total from all domestic sources of perhaps $25 million today) which would cover universal services, demobilisation training and a work for food public infrastructure programme. A secondary action to the extent feasible given general present male approval of Khat use - would be an educational campaign focused on the costs to poor households of abuse defined as habitual use disproportionate to income.

That approach would have the value of putting public revenue flows and service delivery capacity on a firmer foundation. What it would not do is reduce expenditure on Khat. The experience with tobacco taxes is that increases - in the absence of attitude changes - raise tax revenue and reduce physical consumption (in itself of significant value in respect to tobacco but less so in respect to khat) but do not alter total expenditure significantly (a key cost of khat use). To pretend Khat can be taxed out or even down much is hypocritical or naive. Indeed it is dangerous. Very high rates - say 100 per cent - would create illegal (tax evading) trade protected by gunmen. To act in ways facilitating the emergence of intrinsically unlawful, unaccountable private armed forces is the very last thing any government in the Somali homelands should envisage doing.

Once khat consumption does show signs of sustained decline, selective household livelihood rehabilitation/restructuring support will be needed. The key group in Somaliland are middle to upper income (Khat is capital, land and water intensive relative to grain, milk or small stock) agro pastoralists in the Hargeisa-Boramo axis. They need information and demonstration to alter production mixes. To what is not clear - citrus or asparagus for Europe might be growable, but there is no present or likely air freight capacity to validate such production. This is a topic for research perhaps funded by countries and international organisations committed to reducing global drug production.

For the present the initiative toward action and the leadership of campaigns to change cultural values must fall on Somali women's organisations and those Islamic leaders who perceive Khat use as incompatible with the Holy Koran. They know the costs of Khat use; they know the normative social and theological arguments against it; they do receive a hearing - even if not a very open minded one - from most male Somali leaders (at least in Somaliland).

They might be well advised to seek studies from their sisters in the Diaspora (not least California) on how the anti tobacco crusade has achieved radical changes in social perceptions (including by smokers and employers) only subsequently reinforced by legal limitations and proscriptions. How relevant the campaigns' successes are is not self evident - the fear of death is relevant to tobacco but not to Khat (albeit the secondary smoke risks, while real, are of a level not usually passing alarm thresholds) and the mores of California are not those of Hargeisa. The limited use of employer sanctions against smoking outside the workplace - partly on productivity but largely on health insurance cost grounds - may indicate Somali womens' group hopes to use employment access barriers to khat users as a major tool have limited potential. This is especially true because health insurance by employers does not exist in Somaliland (or for that matter Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya or Somalia). However, again the contexts are divergent - smokers rarely quit work at noon to smoke away the afternoon and evening while Khat users often do so to chew away 3 to 12 hours.

Author Affiliation:

Reginald Herbold Green has been a student, advisor and practitioner of applied political economy in Africa for going on 40 years and in Somalia/Somaliland for over a decade. He is not an expert on drugs and came to significant interest in Khat via household poverty, gender and macro economic concerns. In that sense: I. Ahmed, and R. H. Green, 'The Heritage of State Collapse and War in Somalia and Somaliland: Governance Reconstitution. Local Level Effects, External, Interventions and Rehabilitation'. Paper for COPE (Complex Political Emergencies) Project and Presented at the COPE Workshop, University of Leeds 16/17 March 1998 (shorter version in Third World Quarterly, 1999) and R.H. Green, 'Toward a Macroeconomic Framework for Somaliland's Postwar Rehabilitation and Construction, Paper for Complex Political

Author Affiliation:

Emergencies (COPE) Conference held in Hargeisa, Somaliland 20/24 October 1998, are the starting points for this sketch. The proposals on reduction of Khat's economic drain and social economic household/gender relation negative impact are quite specifically focused on Somali homelands especially in Somaliland for which more data is to hand. However, it is also true that he doubts the value of criminalisation as a starting point for drug abuse reduction more generally noting the limited (or non and negative) results in Northern banned drug use and the major reductions in tobacco use and its acceptability spearheaded by activists achieving special social climate and normative changes only subsequently reinforced by legislation. He is, as it happens, a habitual pipe smoker and a low level recreational consumer of wine and other alcoholic beverages with no personal experience with khat (unless spelled cat).