For Imam Yahya, one of Yemen’s last kings, qat was a delight that he praised in poems. For his adversary, the revolutionary al-Zubayri, the plant was the “devil in the shape of a tree«”. Still today the views on qat greatly diverge. For some, qat farming is the perpetuum mobile of Yemen’s rural economy and qat chewing an age-old social pursuit. For others, qat is the main inhibitor of human and economic development in Yemen and is to blame for poverty and corruption and the depletion of Yemen’s water resources. With Yemen’s 2011 “Youth Revolution,” a decade of half-hearted qat policies and missed opportunities has come to an end − a decade, however, that has succeeded in lifting the veil of silence that was cast over qat in media and politics after President Ali Abdullah Salih came to power in 1978. With the forecast depletion of Yemen’s oil and gas reserves within the next decade, the economic importance of qat will further increase and will bring about an important shift in the balance of power.