Did You Know that ..
According to Tom Friedman,
(cultivation of qat) a mild hallucinogenic leaf drug … consumes 40 percent of Yemen’s water supply each year.
That is a big number. It might be ok if Yemen had adequate water supplies. But it may be the first country in the world to run out of water. Here is a link to Tom’s profile of Yemen in NYT. It’s worth a look.
According to Tom, Yemen may be headed for instability. How could it avoid this fate? Tom suggests that better governance is the answer. I think he is right, but not specific enough.Working on rule of law projects in Sana will not change how Yemen is really governed — locally. The US experience in Afghanistan provides a good and sobering case study of how that works.