From: aldis@peg.pegasus.oz.au
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Date: 14 Dec 92 21:27 EST
Subject: Somalia: Qat Supply Restored
Nf-ID: #N:peg:225100153:000:3843
Nf-From: peg.pegasus.oz.au!aldis    Dec 14 21:27:00 1992


This article has been reproduced for distribution on this network
with the kind permission of Australian Associated Press. 
Reproduction in any other form is subject to normal copyright
requirements. 

                         * * * * *

SUPPLY OF QAT RESTORED TO SOMALIA

By Alistair Lyon of Reuters
MOGADISHU, Dec 14 Reuter _ Perhaps only one thing could annoy a
Somali more than confiscating his gun -- interrupting his supply
of qat, a leaf chewed for its mildly narcotic high.

Yet that was the dread prospect qat habitues faced when US-led
forces stormed into Mogadishu on Wednesday to protect UN food
convoys trying to save Somalia from famine.

The US military, which takes a dim view of drugs, banned all but
relief and military flights from Somali airspace for a couple of
days after the intervention.

Qat, normally imported from neighbouring Kenya, virtually
disappeared from the market and prices immediately soared.

Abdi, a small-scale entrepreneur, said the crisis eased on
Friday when the Americans allowed private planes to fly into an
airstrip known as Kilometre 50 because of its distance from
Mogadishu.

"One plane came on Friday, five on Saturday and then 10 on
Sunday," he said, picking tender leaves from a small bunch of qat
and transferring them lovingly to his mouth.

"The price used to be as little as 10,000 shillings ($A3). Now
it is 25,000 to 35,000 shillings ($A7 to $A10.18)," he lamented.

Qat, widely chewed across the Horn of Africa and over the Red
Sea in Yemen, is a mild stimulant which in normal times provides
a pleasant way to while away a sleepy afternoon in conversation
with friends.

It can also cause insomnia and, not inappropriately for a
country gripped by starvation, loss of appetite.

In the trauma of civil war, it is often blamed for the nervous
instability displayed by Somalia's teenage gunmen.

A US military spokesman denied that the US Marines had any
ambition to stamp out Somalia's national pastime.

"We are not trying to affect the qat trade one way or the
other," Lieutenant Colonel Fred Peck told reporters yesterday.
"It's contraband to us and we may have taken a few pieces of it
from a few people ... but we won't be a drug enforcement
administration. We are not the police force of Mogadishu."

Emboldened by the presence of US and French troops, a few
policemen, and even policewomen, have ventured onto Mogadishu's
mean streets, wearing blue berets and anything from T-shirts and
camouflage trousers to thongs and khaki raincoats.

Armed with freshly-cut switches, they occasionally lay into the
curious crowds milling around the patrols and checkpoints of the
Western troops who have made the gunmen vanish.

But the war on drugs is unlikely to be high on the priority list
of the capital's renascent police force.

Former Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre made a fruitless stab
at banning qat, but trade in the bitter-tasting leaf is one of
his shattered country's few economic activities.

A weekend quarrel over a handful of qat degenerated into a
shoot-out in the market of the famine-stricken inland town of
Baidoa, still at the mercy of clan gangs and looters.

"I think the Americans should have kept qat out of the country
for a bit longer," grumbled Ross O'Sullivan of the British
charity Save the Children Fund.

"These kids would soon have got desperate enough to hand in
their guns for a bunch of leaves."


                         * * * * *

Australian Associated Press (AAP) is a news wire service
specialising in the provision of general news articles for print,
radio and television media.  Address: GPO Box 3888, SYDNEY  2001,
AUSTRALIA.  Phone: +61 2 236 8800.  Fax: +61 2 236 8839.


Disclaimer:  I am not an employee or associate of Australian
Associated Press.  I just think they provide a reasonable news
service.

Aldis Ozols
Sydney, Australia
Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.folklore.urban