RADA'A: CLASHES ON WATER FOR QAT CULTIVATION

By: Mahmoud Assamiee

RADA'A, May 13 (Saba)- Rada'a, the biggest area of Al-Beidha'a governorate as it contains six districts, witnesses clashes on water every now and then for irrigating qat trees, Yemenis chew their young leafs believing that they give them energy.

Located east of Yemen's central Dhamar province, it has vast flatlands like those in Dhamar used to be for cultivating vegetables. But with qat expansion in Rada'a, unfortunately, these fields have been changed to qat making the province famous of qat producing.

Supplying by water has become a real challenge for Rada'i people, especially for those in countryside. Wars for water in this violent and big province, could become a governorate in the future, are always erupting between villages or locals of one village on water.

Only few months ago a war has erupted between Wadi Thah and Al-Mas'oud tribes over a well to irrigate qat. According to Dhan Al-Rada,i, an eyewitness from a village overlooking these tribes, 11 persons have been killed; six from Al-Mas'oud and five from Wadi Thah.

In Azzan village, where tensions are still between villagers and people from Rada'a city, a well has been closed after clashes erupted between them in the past. People from the city used to come to Azan to get water from the well and then people of Azan stopped them fearing of running out of water.

As a result, clashes erupted between the two parties on water. Both of the villages were using water for irrigating qat. Farmers are making good business from qat as they supply most of southern governorates with the plant as they do not produce the plant.

The clashes have been stopped after reaching the agreement that the people from the city not to come to Azzan for water and that people of Azzan are banned to use the water for irrigating qat but only for drink and home use.

The previous well where clashes have been occurred for its water has been closed and instead, another one near to it has been dug. Around the new one, you can see people, some armed, monitoring it and threatening of killing anyone from Rada'a city trying to approach it and also threatening killing anyone from their own village using the water for irrigating qat.

Near to Sabah district, war is flaring up nowadays between Al-Riyashia and Qa's villages on water for irrigating qat.

General Manager of National Water and Sanitation Authority Fahd Abdul-Aziz said the drought is threatening the whole governorate. Water resources are being depleted and the annual raining level is deteriorating. The whole governorate suffers from water scarcity and depends only on rain which has become few recently.

The worse is that Al-Beidha'a basin is only 70 meter deep and 800 meter deep in Rada'a comparing to other basins 1400 meter. " The situation is going to be a disaster, people are deepening wells to more than 40 meter every year which is extremely above international regulations that allow only deepening wells no more than 120 c.m annually," said Abdul-Aziz.

According to Abdul-Aziz, there are 4702 wells dug illegally in Rada'a alone with annual increase of wells number of 200. The monthly production of water is 98,000 cubic meter.

Although he admitted that there are clashes over water in rural areas, he affirmed that the problem has been fixed inside the city. He said that security in Rada'a is week and cannot control clashes and that problems of water will continue until the security is enforced or people get enough water.

He made it clear that all these clashes between tribes are happening because of water for irrigating qat. He said the people need of water in Rada'a is only five percent and that 95 percent of water goes for irrigating qat which its cultivation is expanding fearfully.

He said that water problem has been relatively fixed in the city after the National Water and Sanitation Authority requalified 14 wells inside the city after it has witnessed sharp scarcity during the second half of 2009. But the problem is still huge in Al-Beidha'a city and Muqairs district.

According to Abdul-Aziz, these two areas are suffering the sharpest water crisis across the governorate because of rain scarcity and the deepness of water which does not exceed 40 meters deep. For this deepness of water basin in these areas, the ground water has been depleted.

Because of this short deepness in the basin of these areas, Al-Beidha'a can be considered the worse and without ground water.

Ineffective qat programs

Although there are several anti qat programs adopted by the World Bank and Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation and new two qat centers adopted by GTZ and Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, no practical work has been carried out yet.

General Manager of National Qat Center Dr. Jamal Al-Salemi said the center will work on educating people on dangers of qat and encourage framers to uproot the tree from agricultural lands.

"It is difficult to tell people stop growing qat over day and night," he said. "Doing this needs gradual steps and the establishment of qat center is the first one on this for this end."

According to Al-Salemi, the center has started its work in Dhamar, Haraz , Manakha and Bani Matar to uproot qat with cooperation of farmers who wanted to do this. The center gave them almonds trees to replace qat.

Over measures to be taken to stop qat expansion in several places and especially in Rada'a, he said the most important measure of Monday meeting on qat is stop qat cultivation in private and public agricultural lands.

But most of those officials in the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation who attended the meeting affirmed that it is difficult to stop qat agriculture and that it will be difficult to convince people to abandon the cultivation. They agree that fighting qat still needs long time.

Minister of Water and Environment Abdul-Rahman Al-Iryani said Yemen is located in a very dry region and that 40 percent of water resources have been depleted. He said climate, geography, population growth and mismanagement are the main reason of water depletion. He also said that qat cultivation is consuming the greatest part of water.

He also talked about clashes on water in mountainous areas for water in the past and these clashes left many people dead and injured.

Solutions

General Manager of National Water and Sanitation Authority in Rada'a said there are measures to stop random digging for water and this measures needs cooperation from security to carry out them. He also believes that one of the solutions is to stop qat growing and this requires coordinating efforts between the ministries of water and agriculture to convince people to abandon expansion in qat cultivation.

However Minister Al-Iryani talked about different solution that is arguing people to descend from mountains and go to live in valleys. Recycling water and importing qat from Ethiopia are other solutions argued by Al-Eryani.

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