Khatt& the realities of Somalis: historic, social, household, political & economic

Reginald Herbold Greenhas 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 khattvia 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 Emergencies (COPE) Conference held in Hargeisa, Somaliland 20/24 October 1998, are the starting points for this sketch. The proposals on reduction of khatt’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 khatt(unless spelled cat).