Chewing qat, defecting to South Yemen

This is my favorite symbol of the Southern Secessionist Movement in Yemen and a totem picture of mine:  young secessionists sitting under a graffiti of the South Yemen flag, chewing qat.

Lebanon’s Daily Star today kindly sent me two more images, showing Yemeni soldiers defecting to the South, in similar poses, chewing qat.  

Would it be a better world if all the world chewed qat?  

We wouldn’t get much done, and Aldous Huxley correctly pointed out that those who do nothing at least do no harm: a message that 20th Century million-killers -- doers, one and all -- and those they burned, maimed, twisted on racks ’til sinews gave way, split all ends up, buried alive, did all manner of evil to,  

could have profited from.

And se

 Chewing qat; plotting secession in  South Yemen

For Dylan Thomas, And Death Shall Have do Dominion, 

from which fragments are taken. . .

Eating qat; plotting secession in South Yemen

The Guardian reported yesterday that the secessionists in South Yemen are finally growing assertive, willing to fight.  That's good.


A year ago this was the state of things in  Lahj governorate, a center of Southern agitation:

Deaths of protesters have sparked clashes, easily ignited in a heavily armed society where many civilians carry arms and state control is weak. The unrest often targets northerners, and northern-owned businesses have been set aflame.

* * *

"If things carry on as they are there will be a massacre," said Aref Said Awadh. "A lot of the young are ready to die."

An image of the good folks of Lahj governorate:

The Southern Movement, perhaps calledAl Hirak Al Jounoubi, is now preparing to move.  It has been linked with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,  but Salah Al Shanfara, leader of  Al Hirak Al Jounoubi, rebuffed the charge and told the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat: "We have no ties to Al Qaeda and totally reject such talk."


There are in fact young Jihadist activists in the South who form at least temporary alliances with al Qaeda.  The Guardian, in a magnificent bit of journalism, portrays them in moving, sobering, and chilling detail.

Kinda amazing where Che shows up.  He musta been quiet a a guy.

After reading the articles in the Guardian, I felt kinda like "there but for the Grace of God . . . ."


But the South also has a long history of British rule, and many yearn for the the stability and freedom that the British the Rule of Law gave.  Not so long ago the South also has a Marxist government, and whatever one may think of communism's economic policies, there is a strong pull toward gender equality, which Muslim countries desperately need.


We could be linking up with those Southern Liberals.

"In the 80s women and men here reached greater equality than many parts of Europe," said Raqiya Homeidan, 66, an outspoken defender of women's rights and the first woman in the Arabian Peninsula to become a practising lawyer

Instead, we are bombing them with our drones, propping up the dictator Saleh,  and making new enemies along the way.

Here are South Yemen men, sitting under a graffiti flag of the Democratic Republic of South Yemen, willing to fight, as soon as the qat runs out:

Looks god to me.