{"id":302,"date":"2007-04-08T09:54:28","date_gmt":"2007-04-08T08:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2007\/04\/08\/qat_habit_might_ruin_sanaa"},"modified":"2007-04-08T09:54:28","modified_gmt":"2007-04-08T08:54:28","slug":"qat_habit_might_ruin_sanaa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2007\/04\/08\/qat_habit_might_ruin_sanaa","title":{"rendered":"Qat habit might ruin Sana&#8217;a"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title = \"BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Yemen's khat habit soaks up water\" href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/programmes\/from_our_own_correspondent\/6530453.stm\">BBC NEWS &#8211; From Our Own Correspondent: Yemen&#8217;s khat habit soaks up water<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is a BBC report about the qat (or khat) habit, which uses 40% of Yemen&#8217;s scarce water supply and is growing, the result of which is that there is not enough water for the country&#8217;s capital city, Sana&#8217;a.  The water and environment minister now proposes a programme of voluntary resettlement of Yemenis from the capital to the coastal region, where solar energy could be used to desalinate water.<\/p>\n<p>A few years ago I remember a butcher&#8217;s shop near where I lived in Croydon, run by a Somali who invited other Somalis round to chew qat, and they were pretty miserable people.  The shop was always on the rocks (largely as a result of being in a part of town where there were few Muslims, I suspect), and eventually foundered when meat supplies crashed during the foot and mouth crisis.  As for Yemen, there must be a reason why they don&#8217;t all live on the coast; heat, perhaps, or malaria?  Perhaps the threat of having to move there might shake them out of their stupor, but if the government chews (as this water minister does), what hope is there?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BBC NEWS &#8211; From Our Own Correspondent: Yemen&#8217;s khat habit soaks up water This is a BBC report about the qat (or khat) habit, which uses 40% of Yemen&#8217;s scarce water supply and is&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-muslim_world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-4S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}