Almost all the nations of the world invest in human development, especially in young people, as they realize that youth are the basis of development and the pillars of progress and advancement. Therefore, priority is given to building their competences, and providing them with skills, knowledge and scientific qualification so that they can enter into the midst of life with all strength and competence. Not only that, but governments employ and mobilize their capabilities and resources in order to create generations capable to effectively contribute to development and progress of their countries. There is no doubt that those peoples realize that the members of this segment are the present and future of life as well as the real superstructure of society and the builders of its infrastructure.
This comes from the realization of peoples at all times and places, that whenever this group is correct and disciplined in its behavior, thinking and actions, the society will be free from defects and deviations.
Nonetheless, what would happen if this segment was sick, anxious, without guidance, ambition, or creative abilities? And what would happen if this fragment were ill with addiction, unemployment and inactivity? What would happen if thy escaped from society's oversight and evaluation? What would happen if society did not realize the importance of this segment in the first place?
Despite the significance of this social group and the seriousness of its positive or negative role in the features of life, the present and the future, we find that some developing countries do not care about it at all, and Yemen among these parts of the world where youth remain a wasted segment deprived of their dreams, capacity building or care, especially during the last ten years.
The youth segment has gone through radical transformations in the last ten years, in which the war had the upper hand, as the conflict led to the tearing of the social fabric apart, isolation of the youth from their disciplined social context, and made them live in desperate, disjointed and their dreams are disintegrated as well as their projects, until they became aimless and lost without any plans.
In view of this painful reality, young people have resorted to a parallel world through which they try to vent their brokenness in any way and at any cost, without taking into account the destructive consequences, which make most of them mutants without a goal and without real social value. The war has made them miserable bodies that strive and move, but they lack value and the ability to create and contribute to building a just and upright society.
The youth segment has gone through radical transformations in the last ten years, in which the war had the upper hand, as the conflict led to the tearing of the social fabric apart, isolation of the youth from their disciplined social context, and made them live in desperate, disjointed and their dreams are disintegrated as well as their projects, until they became aimless and lost without any plans.
This is the unfortunate reality of the generation of war, which has become a generation of loss, wandering, obliteration and illiteracy. The war has produced an unemployed generation without features and without an identity, a disjointed group that has lost its compass in form and content.
Moreover, the years of war exacerbated this dilemma and doubled its pace, as it left behind a generation addicted to Qat and stimulants that greatly exacerbate the severity of misdirection. It is obvious that they frantically resorted to Qat in a compensatory form for moments of loss, especially as it gives them moments of temporary euphoria and moments that temporarily bring them out of their hideous reality into an imaginary reality devoid of pain.
In fat, Qat plant has grown exaggerated in these years, and young people have become among its big consumers, in the absence of the role of parents, and in the lack of the role of cultural development, training and rehabilitation institutions. Qat addiction was not widespread in this terrifying degree before, as young people used to invest their time in joining institutes, schools, clubs... etc., but the war closed all those horizons, and opened the wide doors of wandering and despair in front of them.
It is noticeable that the consumption of Qat is no longer confined to young people only, but includes a wide range of teenagers who have become addicted to this plant in a more insane way. It is noted that this addiction is not limited to temporary moments of time, but rather takes more than 70% of the actual time of the day, and most of the chewers may consume more than 90% of their time. This is something that calls for pity for this generation, and fear from it as well.
There is massive and systematic damage that young people are subjected to in view of the absence of their parents - often illiterate - and the concerned authorities as well. It was noted that the consumption of Qat has been dramatically raising among aimless youth which means behavioral and moral devastation, a waste of human wealth, and the destruction of the entire future; in addition to the fact that most of them chew Qat along with hallucinogenic pills or with a mixture of energy drink mixtures that sometimes make them out of their minds or push some of them to commit crime and join criminals.
Further, what is even worse is that, most parents know about their children being addicted to Qat and realize its consequences. However, some parents even encourage their children to chew, and some uneducated fathers buy Qat for their sons without awareness of its harmful effects, and the consequent imbalances in the behavior of these children, and in their health as well.
Qat chewing may be part of the Yemeni traditions but if some parents used to consume it since a long time ago to help them work if they were working, however, the present generation chew Qat to get rid of any work or obligations they have or to get rid of the free time that surrounds them. And since they do not work while consuming Qat, they turned into a depleted and ineffective force in society. Rather, they have become a paralyzed and idle force, withdrawing into themselves to gossip and fantasies with which they delude themselves that they are in a disciplined social context.
Furthermore, if most adult Qat users are blamed of wasting time and energy with it in order to flee from the miserable reality, and spend hours of backbiting, gossip in their setting rooms, but the youth group has become double adductors to Qat and energy drinks, especially with the availability of social media in which they spend their time without control or monitoring of the family.
