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For Yemenis, the mild narcotic qat is as much a part of the social fabric as an after-dinner drink in the West and, as with brandies, connoisseurs want only the best. But the trees that produce the most sought-after leaves now lie in a war zone.

Mohammed Ahmed Ghanem runs a stall selling qat in the upscale Kuwait Market in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital. Prices for an afternoon’s worth of the stimulant leaves can run anywhere between $2 and $100 depending on quality. But the very best, known as Shami, is no longer available, Ghanem says ruefully.

The escalation since August of the Yemeni government’s long-running conflict with Shiite rebels in the mountains of the far north means that growers can no longer get their produce to market in Sanaa.

Shami is one of a number of organic varieties of qat now being cultivated with a view to satisfying the leisured elite of what is one of the world’s poorest countries.

“If I didn’t use qat, I’d be cut off from all my friends and relatives,” one well-to-do user said as he lounged on cushions in a Sanaa salon, his cheeks bulging with a wadful of leaves. Qat is entirely legal in Yemen, but like many better-off users he did not want his name used in print.

In neighboring Saudi Arabia, as in the United States and some European countries, the drug is banned. And even in Yemen, the authorities have tried — with limited success — to restrict its use in government offices.

“I know all about the economic and social costs but I can’t live without it,” he said. Every day, he knocks off work around noon to head to the Kuwait Market to buy his day’s supply. It is the bitter juice of the leaves that users extract through prolonged mastication, so it is important that they be as fresh as possible.

He then changes out of his Western-style suit into traditional Yemeni cloak, belt and dagger and heads down to the salon. “It’s the best moment of the day.”

A group of tribesmen arrives in the salon. Over several hours of qat chewing they discuss a vendetta with a rival tribe over the death of a clansman at the hands of a jumpy policeman at a routine checkpoint. In the end they decide not to take the law into their own hands but to leave it to the courts.

For Yemeni men, the qat session is an opportunity to cement social ties, to debate issues of the day, to put the world to rights. But increasing numbers of women and even teenagers indulge in the habit, too.

Sales of qat in Yemen are estimated to run to $800 million a year, a huge sum in a country ranked by the United Nations as 138th in the world for human development, with gross domestic product per head of less than $1,000.

In Yemen’s towns and cities, qat is, with tobacco, the biggest single item of household expenditure.

Its attraction for farmers is not difficult to understand. According to the Agriculture Ministry, qat, which can produce four harvests a year from a good tree, can earn $12,500 a hectare, three times the revenue of any other crop.

“It takes five years to get a harvest from a fruit tree and just a few months for a qat tree,” said Hani Saleh, another retailer of the drug in Kuwait Market.

Cultivation of the shrub-like tree takes up around a third of all cultivated land in Yemen. And, although mountainous Yemen has more reserves of water than some of its Arabian peninsula neighbors, irrigating the crop takes a massive toll on the country’s aquifers. A recent study found that 85 percent of the country’s wells are used for qat cultivation.

Agence France-Presse