What’s Unsaid | How profit is preventing peace in Yemen

Irwin Loy:

Today on What’s Unsaid: How profit is preventing peace in Yemen.

Hisham Al-Omeisy:

It's hard to convince these people to end the war because as soon as you end the war, and you bring back the government, they no longer have a role to play.

Loy:

This is What’s Unsaid, a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable truths at the heart of the world’s conflicts and disasters. My name is Irwin Loy.

War is business. Big business. And not just for arms dealers. In Yemen, a war that escalated in 2015 has created a new group of multi-millionaires. And that offers little incentive for these new warlords to come to the negotiating table. If resolving the conflict shuts down their path to riches, why end the war? Today, millions of Yemenis rely on aid for food, medicine, and other basic needs. 

This is What’s Unsaid. My name is Irwin Loy, staff editor at The New Humanitarian. In today’s episode: How profit is preventing peace in Yemen.

When the Arab Spring spread across the Middle East in 2011, Yemenis also took to the streets. Hisham Al-Omeisy was one of them. But he left Yemen, like so many others over more than eight years of war. He now lives in Washington D.C. where he is a conflict analyst who advises international groups and institutions that work in Yemen. Hisham, welcome.

Al-Omeisy:

Thank you for having me, Irwin.

Loy:

Critics warn that peace talks between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis – two of the major parties to the war – won’t get very far if they don’t factor in the warlords who run the many factions and militias that have emerged during the conflict. What’s standing in the way of winning over these warlords? 

Al-Omeisy:

One of the main impediments is the lack of incentives to forgo arms, but also forgo the riches that they've been making for the past few years. These are people that are now gone from rags to riches, riding on a wave of popular discontent to the government, where they promised that if they assumed power, they would make a difference, they would institute change. But in fact, what they did was basically line up their pockets. And there are many ways and mechanisms that have been instituted in place where they now, for instance, are in control of taxation, in control of checkpoints, in control of points of entry imports and exports to the country. These are parallel mechanisms that they've created, where they make from 5%, to 20%, to at some points 50% of whatever goes through the country. And they add that cost basically to goods, to oil and gas coming into the country, to providing basic services, and electricity, and to [be] sold at three times the cost that it was before the war. And of course, when you have such mechanisms in place, such warlords, they become private profiteers from the conflict. And it's hard to convince these people to end the war because as soon as you end the war, and you bring back the government, they no longer have a role to play. They no longer are in control of these institutions. And that power vacuum, you completely marginalize them. So they lacked that incentive. You're not giving them much in a way of forgoing their current status. 

Loy:

How many people are we talking about when it comes to people who are getting so rich off the conflict that they don't want it to end? 

Al-Omeisy:

In the beginning there were about a handful, but then they became tens. Then they became hundreds. And now we're talking about thousands. Because [of] the current status quo, the country is so fractured, so many dominions – areas of influence or areas of control across the nation – that each area has its own warlord or multiple warlords, if we're being realistic. 

Loy:

Is this something that is talked about openly in Yemen? 

Al-Omeisy:

Not necessarily, no. Because now everybody has a vested interest. And basically, this mechanism, this parallel system continuing, political leaders take a piece of the cake as well. They've created this huge network of patronage, where they even have journalists, activists, traditional leaders on the payroll. It's almost like the mafia. Everybody is in on it. And it's the average Yemeni Joe that pays the price.  

Loy:

Now, we've seen versions of this in some of our reporting elsewhere, from Cameroon to Colombia. Different issues, these are places where there's also an economy of opportunism stoked by armed groups that makes war more profitable than peace. For Yemen, where did these armed groups and these new millionaire warlords come from? How did this all begin?  

Al-Omeisy:

You have to look back at the history of Yemen. Yemen is the second most armed country in the world in the past, and it's even more so now. I mean, I got my first gun when I was a teen. In my late teens, I was given an AK-47 as a gift. There's an armed culture in Yemen. So everybody's armed to the teeth. And in some tribes, they used to pride themselves in having actually artillery and heavy weapons as well. So we were armed to begin with. A tribal Sheik in the past had his own mini standing army. He had his entourage, but he has also tribal forces as well, who are armed to the teeth. Because of the government or the state failing, they now by virtue of creating resistance groups, militias, parties, and factions, they also had access to heavy weaponry that range from armored trucks to tanks. But now we have something more dangerous than that. We have drones. And now we also have missiles and ballistic missiles as well.  

Loy:

Can you briefly outline the sort of the origins of the conflict? You know, there are more factions now. It's more complicated than it was when the conflict began. Can you outline the main players and explain how they've sort of multiplied over the last few years? 

Al-Omeisy: 

The conflict did not start by the war itself. We had nepotism, we had corruption, we had mismanagement of the state of affairs, we had very little in the way of democracy in the country in the past. But all of this came to a boiling point during what was known as the Arab Spring, or the youth revolution in Yemen, where people took to the streets demanding change, demanding an end to the corruption. A lot of people took to the streets because they wanted to change the status quo. It wasn't targeted against a single individual. It was a group of people, it was those elites that basically controlled all the state resources, and they were distributing them to their own entourage and their own network of patronage. 

When people talk about the conflict in Yemen, they say the roots were in 2011. The roots of the conflict lie in the 2011 revolution. Others, they say, no it goes back to the 1994 war between the North and the South, or the way the unification happened in 1990. It wasn't the greatest match, but it was inevitable. The thing is, we kept passing the buck without addressing the roots of the conflict. So on that backdrop, people got to a point where they're completely fed up, and they wanted change. One of those groups that was marginalized was the Houthis. While the state fought against the Houthi’s in six wars from 2004 all the way to 2010, the government always crushed them, but never went in and rehabilitated or provided reconstruction, or kind of integrated them back into the society, which led to six consecutive wars. And later on, the Houthis themselves became the very monsters they fought, which was in their eyes, the government. So the country is fractured, and you have all these multiple factions of multiple parties. But the UN process is not keeping up with that. Only two factions are invited to the table, which is basically the Yemeni Government – what remains of it – and the Houthis. But all these other factions are not incorporated or invited to the table.

Loy:

You have all these different factions. Can we talk a little bit more about the specifics about how they make their money? 

Al-Omeisy:

There are multiple examples that we can cite. For instance, they would shut down the main generator, and these warlords would buy their own private generators, and they would lease electricity to people in neighborhoods in certain districts. and they would sell that electricity at three times the cost. Quite often, these same very warlords are the government be it in Houthi-controlled areas or other parts of the country. So they have a vested interest in not getting the national electricity grid back online, and letting it die out so that their own companies would thrive in providing electricity. Another example, would be basically, when importing oil and gas, for instance, from abroad, they would add a premium. They would add sometimes up to 50% to the price and selling it back to Yemenis, to the public. When goods are traveling from ports like Hodeidah or Aden, they get taxed at the port, but then they added levies to it, because they have to pass through multiple checkpoints where they, again, they pay from 1 to 5%. And when they hit the market, they add additional levies. For instance, there's the system where it's called “aiding the warfront”. So if you have a shop, a small shop, there's an additional 5 to 20% that you have to add to the cost of the goods because you pay that to state coffers in what is called supporting the war fund.  

Loy:

What happens if you refuse to pay it?

Al-Omeisy:

They shut you down and they confiscate your stuff. 

Loy:

I'm wondering what this looks like for everyday people who aren't profiting from the war economy. What's it like for your friends and family who are still in Yemen? 

Al-Omeisy:

They're struggling. This is one of the reasons why there's almost 82% of the population that are in need of aid. With a complete halt of economic activity inside the country, they have no sources of income. And with this steep increase in prices, they cannot afford it, and hence they fall into poverty. This is one of the reasons why over the past eight years, the UN keeps needing more and more funding to support that population, that 80%. 

Loy:

To me this sounds similar to something we heard from a woman named Anhar Rashad. She's a single mother who works as a tax collector in the city of Aden. She spoke to reporters at The New Humanitarian earlier this year. She said even with her salary and her husband's monthly death benefit, she struggles to provide food for herself and her son. “If we go to sleep with a full stomach, I say to myself, good, we survived another day”, she told us. Over the years, we've heard lots of warnings about Yemen being on the verge of famine. How has this economy of war played into this?

Al-Omeisy:

They have exponentially exacerbated it. I remember reading [about] Yemen the headlines, we were always on the brink of something. On the brink of state failure, on the brink of famine, on the brink of starvation, on the brink of something or the other. But we were always there. What she said is absolutely true about a lot of families in Yemen. Even if you get a salary, you've already lost that purchasing power. Your salary means nothing now because the prices on some goods have already quadrupled. So you cannot afford to buy things. And quite ironic if you walk into places like Sana’a, and you see these supermarkets and the goods are there. But the thing is, it's a small minority of the population, a very small minority of the population that can afford it. And even though some people are still going to work to be able to afford the bare minimum, one meal a day. And this is why, even you see a lot of people who are actually employed in the morning they go to their jobs, and in the evening, they stand in line to get aid. Be it flour, be it bread, be it water. And there are long lines of people waiting for aid.  

Loy:

Now you spoke also about the rising cost of aid. So what about the role of aid, and international aid in particular? If warlords can tax food and aid shipments, does aid get where it needs to go?

Al-Omeisy:

There's a dilemma. While the international organizations do recognize that some of their aid is being diverted, they're thinking it's better than not having aid being delivered to those areas that are in need. So even if they lose 15 to 20 to 30% of that aid, they're still thinking at least 70% is getting to where it needs to get. While it raises some moral questions, we're forced to be pragmatic in a place like Yemen where there's a lack of government, there's a lack of state control. People make do with what they have. I remember talking to some colleagues in some aid organizations, and they said, while the alternative of not paying, or alternative of basically not giving a blind eye to the aid that is being diverted, is basically that village or the other village starving to death. So if it means giving a blind eye to certain things, toeing the line, it's fine. Because we're still helping some people at least.

Loy:

Where do you come down on that? 

Al-Omeisy:

I don't think it's helpful, quite honestly. I mean, this is one of the reasons why the US government, a couple of years ago, stopped the aid because Houthis were plundering the aid doing all those things. So the US government basically stopped aid for a little while. It's a balancing act. That got to a point where the Houthis are being exceedingly emboldened by this, they're thinking “No matter what we do, the aid is going to be delivered. We will beef up support to our fighting front.”

We're lying to ourselves, if we're thinking that aid goes to Houthi families or other groups’ families No, they don't. They're giving it to fighters to supplement their support to the logistical lines, and that, well indirectly, basically aids in the continuation of the conflict itself. 

Loy:

So how do you begin to fix all of this? 

Al-Omeisy:

What we need is a national comprehensive holistic approach. In Yemen, we've been pumping a lot of aid, but we need a more structured aid. A better job at rehabilitating the infrastructure, reinvigorating the economy, creating more jobs, so that Yemenis can stand on their own feet. And when we provide funding, we provide funding for sustainable development projects. 

The humanitarian response plan only addresses immediate and emergency needs. And even at that it's only been 30% funded, and we're almost close to the end of the year. There is less interest in throwing money into Yemen. And this is one of the things we said at the beginning of the conflict is that if we keep asking for aid - aid without actually structuring it in a manner where basically we will forego aid - we become more independent. We'd be in a much better shape than we are today. We really need to start asking the hard questions, and investing and addressing those complexities. We cannot just keep saying it's too complex for now. Let's just provide food for now and we'll deal with this next year. 

Loy:

Can you give me an example of what's the first hard question that people in a position of power should be asking, then, to do something differently? 

Al-Omeisy:

Where should we develop those projects? Should we develop those projects in the South under the control of a Southern Transitional Council? Or should we develop those projects in the Houthi’s? Won't we be criticized that we're investing in Houthi-controlled areas' infrastructure? That's one of the hard questions because it had happened between certain discussions with certain aid organizations, and they said: okay, we already managed to get this pool of money to start doing projects in the South, the North is going to be angry. If we start doing it in the North, the South is going to be angry. So it's about prioritizing needs. 

The thing is, to address that question, we basically said, think in pragmatic terms, who has the highest and most immediate needs. We cannot address all the issues, but start prioritizing it. And prioritizing should be based on a mapping and an assessment process. A very solid mapping and an assessment process. 

Loy:

The question that keeps coming to my mind is, given how lucrative the conflict is, how relevant are the original reasons for the current conflict? 

Al-Omeisy:

Oh, God. I mean, that's a very good question, because there was a UN resolution, resolution 2216. One of the original reasons of the conflict was that for the Houthis, to basically pull out of the capital, and for the internationally recognized government to resume its position. Well, the government that has been hijacked by the Houthis, and resumed their offices in Sana’a. That is no longer relevant. The Saudis, a few months ago, went to Sana’a [to] negotiate signing a peace agreement, where it would legitimize the Houthis. So the Houthis, at least now, because everybody's being pragmatic, are no longer that renegade group that needs to be put down and kicked out of the capitol and kicked out of other parts of the country. They're seen as a group that we actually need to shake hands with, and hopefully create some sort of coalition government. So that original reason is completely out the door. 

One of the other things, for instance, was basically keeping Yemen united. Right now, there's more and more talk about some sort of independence in the South. People in the South, of course, they've been marginalized. There's been a lot of injustice, and I was one of the people that have been screaming at the top of my lungs, from back in the day, saying, “This is a time bomb, the way the southerners have been mistreated, the resources captured by northerners. It is a time bomb. It is a recipe for disaster”. I mean, you can crush a population for as long as you think you can, eventually they will rise up. And that's basically what happened, because of the power vacuum, because of the interplay in 2015. They now have power and they now are seeking secession and you cannot blame them. But the thing is, we're hoping some sort of reconciliation to keep the country from dividing not just into North and South, but into fiefdoms and dominions because that is what we have in our future in Yemen. The country is literally that fractured. You won't have two states, you'd have multiple states.

Loy:

Given all the problems you've just identified. Where does the first step, the intention to end the conflict, where does that have to come from? 

Al-Omeisy:

That has to come from local. But of course, I know that a lot of people thinking this is a proxy war, and it is to a degree. But the thing is that Yemenis own that decision. Warlords have to forgo the continuation of a conflict, as we said, because they have a vested interest in the continuation of the conflict. And you have a lot of officials who are living abroad lavishly on the payroll. But all of that goes back to the issue of having a very holistic, comprehensive approach, where we can derive some sort of a peace roadmap that is agreed upon initially, locally, regionally, and internationally. 

And this is easier said than done, I'll be honest, it’s easier said than done. This is one of the reasons why so far it has been extremely difficult to get that kind of document in place. We had a semblance of a document through the Riyadh agreement one and Riyadh agreement two, but even that, because there was a lack of political will, there was a lack of mechanisms of implementation, it fell apart. Any plan would have a chance of succeeding – and this based on our past experience – it needs a very well-thought-out mechanism of implementation that is realistic, on a timetable, well-funded. But without that, it's just ink on paper. It's just an opportunity for photo ops, and we've had many of those in Yemen in the past.  

Loy:

Is it possible to make peace as profitable as war in Yemen?

Al-Omeisy:

If we're talking about fiscally, financially, not really, for the warlords. For the people, yes, because they want control of the currency exchange rates. They want, basically, their purchasing power back to what it was. But unfortunately, it's not the common average Yemeni Joes that have the say, it's the warlords. And for the warlords peace is not as lucrative as conflict. Having said that, what you need is basically [to] create a bit of an incentive, but also in Yemeni, we say, carry this carrot in one hand and carry the stick on the other. 

Loy:

Now, you mentioned these average Joes in Yemen. You were one of them back in the day on the streets in 2011, protesting against the former regime. It's not the people of Yemen, who are profiting from the conflict today, obviously. So, I'm wondering, where has the power of the people gone since 2011?

Al-Omeisy:

It was hijacked. What we wanted is a change in the status quo. Yes, the regime, but you yourselves are part of that regime. The reasons we took to the streets was end up nepotism, end of corruption, better management of state affairs, better economic opportunities for everyone, respect for human rights. We wanted active citizenship, we wanted a truly democratic state. But all of that was completely ignored. And there was a repackaging of the regime. And, of course, back at the time, we said, this is a recipe for disaster. These factions or these traditional leaders and political leaders are going to fight it out again, amongst themselves. And they basically did. And we're paying the price for it. Not the warlords, not the political elite. They're living lavishly abroad. They're doing fine, even making more money now. It's average Yemenis, like myself, who are paying the price. 

Loy:

Before I let you go, The New Humanitarian is launching something new. We're calling it the Yemen Listening Project. And we're asking Yemenis to tell their story of the war, in their words by answering one question, which is: how has the war in Yemen impacted your life? I'm wondering if you could share your answer to that question, be our first participant in this new project. Can you share your own story? 

Al-Omeisy:

I would very much like to. I don't know if you have the time to listen to it. Basically, when the war happened, I took to the streets to help especially because I was in Sana’a and there were multiple airstrikes. I had to pull people from underneath the rubble. Multiple times, I had to rush my kids back from school to my home to bunker in our basement. And I spoke against the injustices. Not just from the Saudi-led coalition, the airstrikes, but also what was happening in my own city in Sana’a, in the capital. So much so that the powers that be were not happy with me being very vocal from inside the city, because I always tried to be very transparent and not just attacking one side or picking one side, but basically exposing everybody's wrongdoings. I was kidnapped and forcibly disappeared for a period of five months, a little bit over five months, kept in solitary confinement. And I came out of that a very different person. It takes its toll on you. But I also appreciated life after that. And I realized that I needed to do more. So while people usually walking out of that experience think you know what, this is not for me, I walk away from all of it. I have a whole lot of PTSD. I wanted to jump back into the fray because I've seen things, even during my detention, things that would make your hair go gray. So I decided to continue to fight. Because I know people have suffered far more worse experiences, and will suffer far more worse experiences down the line. And we need to put an end to it. We need to help the people inside the country. We’re talking about 13 million people. And when you're talking about 82% of those people are suffering, not just from the humanitarian crisis, but also from repression, injustices, massive human rights violations, we have to do something about that. We will be judged by future generations if we don't do anything. We need to break the silence.

Loy:

Hisham, thanks so much for joining us today. 

Al-Omeisy:

Thank you for having me, Irwin.

Loy:

That’s it for today’s episode with conflict analyst Hisham Al-Omeisy. The New Humanitarian dot org is one of the few international newsrooms that continuously covers the humanitarian situation in Yemen - and where you can read more on the Yemen Listening Project, or share your own story about the war in Yemen.

What are people afraid to talk about in today’s crises? What needs to be discussed openly? Let us know: send us an email: [email protected]. 

Subscribe to The New Humanitarian on your podcast app for more episodes of What’s Unsaid – about the open secrets and uncomfortable truths at the heart of the world’s conflicts and disasters. With new episodes every other week. Hosted by Ali Latifi, and me. 

This episode is produced and edited by Marthe van der Wolf, with sound engineering by Mark Nieto, and original music by Whitney Patterson. It’s hosted by me, Irwin Loy.