The Khat Controversy. Stimulating the Debate on Drugs, by David Anderson, Susan Beckerleg, Degol Hailu & Alex Klein, Oxford: Berg, 2007, pp. 254, £19.99 (pb). ISBN 9871845202514; Kenyan Khat: The Social Life of a Stimulant, by Neil Carrier, Leiden: Brill, 2007, pp. 270, €85 (pb). ISBN 9004156593. Reviewed by Chris Allen, co-editor of ROAPE in the 1990s. © 2009, Chris Allen
Almost a decade ago this journal published a special issue on drugs and drug ‘control’ in Africa. At the time it was one of the very few general sources on this theme, and soon after one of these – the reports of the Paris OGD (Observatoire Generale de Drogue) – ceased publication. Now we have two books on just one drug, khat (‘miraa’ in Kenya), each copiously referenced and a tribute to the work of younger researchers. Like the special issue, each explores a large range of issues – well expressed in Carrier's phrase ‘the social life of a stimulant’ – from the pharmacology of the drug itself, through its production, its social, cultural and economic impact, to political and social issues arising from its use. Here we re-enter the area of control and its justification, both in Africa and elsewhere, since khat has become a global commodity, minor, but widespread; a few minutes on the Internet will yield several sites offering bundles of khat, albeit at rather high prices.
The two studies differ in scope and style, Anderson et al. covering the Horn and East Africa from a variety of social science and anthropological perspectives, providing us, in its own words, with the ‘first analytical study of the chain of production, distribution and transnational consumption of khat’. Carrier's absurdly costly book is almost wholly about Kenya, and at root a piece of cultural ethnography. However, both are part of a larger study, the ESRC funded ‘Cultures of Consumption’ project headed by Prof. Frank Trentmann, and they do integrate neatly. This is just as well, for Carrier's book is substantially empirical in content, often reading like well-ordered (and entertaining) field notes, and avoiding much analytical digression, even in the introduction and conclusion. The one chapter that does not fit this pattern, on ‘Miraa (khat) and the War on Drugs’, is more of an opinion piece, well founded and argued, but less scholarly in conception. What Carrier does do very well is to flesh out the lines of analysis and argument in the other study, often with vivid and insightful examples. Each study needs the other to work best, as the discussions of the cultural context of khat consumption, and of the role of trust in its trade demonstrate: Carrier's accounts are essential to grounding and assessing the many references to these themes in Anderson et al.
Khat consists of leafy twigs from bushes and mature trees of Catha edulis, available in a great variety of qualities and styles, and consumed by chewing the leaves, tips and bark of the twig, which releases the alkaloids cathinone and cathine (plus others), promoting euphoria and alertness – and an urge to talk to others. It is used as part of many rituals, to aid and enhance social interaction, to stay awake and alert, or simply to ease physical labour (by, for example, farmers). It occurs wild quite widely, but is cultivated mainly in Ethiopia and Kenya, and consumed mainly by Yemenis, Ethiopians, Somalis, Kenyans and other East Africans, both at home and abroad. Somalis are perhaps the best known expatriate consumers, and the focus of much of the less sympathetic literature on khat.
While Carrier concentrates on the Nyambene hills north of Mount Kenya and various subgroups of Meru involved in the world of ‘miraa’, Anderson et al. provide half a dozen area studies from the Horn and East Africa, and several chapters on responses to khat use in Britain and the US. However, the two studies have a similar focus and a similar account of khat. Unlike most cash crops with an export market, production is a local initiative providing a range of modest incomes rather than promoting concentration of wealth. As a result, and because demand and price tend to fluctuate upwards, it has displaced externally-imposed cash crops like coffee, notably in Ethiopia and the Nyambenes. In both areas the trade is controlled by local actors, although what defines ‘local’ depends on the final market – it is Meru who distribute miraa through Kenya, but Somalis who fly it to Britain and then sell it. The market, too, is ‘local’: few non-Africans or non-Yemenis chew, whether we are talking of Minnesota or Manchester. When it occurs, it tends to be a fad – it is, after all, too much like hard work; if drinking a pint of beer involved two and half hours of steady labour, there would be very few breweries in Britain. The trade is relatively easy to enter, provides good earnings where risk is reduced by high levels of trust, and shows an impressive degree of organisation, necessary if your product is as perishable as an orchid. Carrier is best on these aspects, although I would like to have seen more discussion from him of ‘trust’ from an anthropological standpoint.
Consumption patterns are central to both books. The meaning of consumption, and thus its means and impact depend on the cultural context, whether we are considering a gift of miraa to Meru elders, an evening of chewing among old friends in Mombasa, or a session in a cafe in Southall for casually employed Somali refugees. Its use is thus defined and contained by those contexts, which impart meanings having to do with identity, conviviality and the (re)assertion of culture, rather than addiction and victimhood. Thus khat is not best seen as a weak version of a ‘dangerous drug’, but as more akin to alcohol – widely used in culturally defined contexts but open to abuse, and whose damaging effects worsen the conditions that led to abuse, rather than causing them.
In the drug issue of the journal in 1999, the editorial argued that:
The international agencies concerned with drugs focus largely on ‘enforcement’ aspects – the control, detection and punishment of those who produce, trade and consume drugs. Their perspective tends to subsume all drug production and use under one narrow ‘trafficking’ model that has low standards of evidence; that is far more concerned with the interests of final consumer countries than those of Africans or African governments; and whose conception of enforcement is akin to that of the American ‘War on Drugs’. These perspectives interact with a picture of the nature of African societies, economies and political systems that is at best crude or naive, reminiscent of the worst international reporting of African crises and disasters.
The volume by Anderson et al. presents itself as a case critique of such repressive/punitive responses to khat, whether in Africa or elsewhere, arguing that it is essentially self-policing, and that seeing it as a threat, and especially banning it (as in the US, but not Britain) is to risk its criminalisation with a rise in prices and the creation of the very features that were used to justify the ban. Their argument, as the similar plea from Carrier, is well made, but might have been strengthened by more comparative material – indeed there is a general thinness of comparative argument in both volumes. One product that suggests itself is the other ‘drug’ grown by Africans – cannabis, produced in Morocco for centuries and for the EU market since 1980, with Morocco now the main supplier to Europe. It has similarities historically with khat (production, cultural context of consumption, extent of use, shift to cash crop status, etc.), but now might best be seen as representing the future that Anderson et al. fear awaits khat: expansion of external markets, loss of control by Africans of distribution and marketing, demonisation as a ‘dangerous drug’ and criminalisation.
As it is, what these studies show is that so far at least, Khat is unlike other ‘drugs’ (even alcohol and tobacco). It is bulky to distribute (much more so than cannabis), it decays in a few days due to the instability of cathinone, has limited consumer pools, is controlled largely by nationals of producer areas, and does not generate exceptional or criminal incomes (with the possible exception of Somalia). Hence it is neither linked to criminal activities such as money laundering, nor – despite US paranoia – to ‘terrorism’. Nor in any sense is it a ‘conflict drug’ akin to ‘conflict diamonds’ or the Congo's mineral resources, or cocaine.
If one were to offer a more direct contemporary comparison than that with cannabis it would not be with tobacco or alcohol, salutary though such parallels may be. It would be with betel nut chewing, another laborious activity based around a product that still remains substantially in local hands, which relies on the slow and modest release of alkaloids, and which has remarkably similar physical effects, as well as cultural embeddedness. Thus the Wikipaedia entry (lacking in supportive citations, not that these are unavailable), reads: ‘(the nuts) can be chewed for their effects as a mildly euphoric stimulant, attributed to the presence of relatively high levels of psychoactive alkaloids and terpeneols. Chewing it increases the capacity to work, also causes a hot sensation in the body, heightened alertness and sweating. It should be noted effect of chewing few betel nuts is milder than drinking a cup of coffee.’ Now that is a real threat to world peace.