Soft power strategy... Fabricated crises to accumulate money
English - Tuesday 30 May 2023 الساعة 10:04 am
Al-Mocha, NewsYemen, exclusive:
It swallowed the salaries of employees in its areas of influence, then turned to asking the government to pay them after it disavowed the Stockholm Agreement, which guaranteed employees the payment of their salaries through the tax and customs revenues of the port of Hodeidah, while its efforts continue to circumvent the wealth of the country that has embroiled it in wars and conflicts for the ninth year in a row, to finally reveal About its ambition to extract its share from the local oil.
The Houthi group seeks to acquire everything that can generate money for it. While it reaps billions of illegal taxes and levies it imposes on Yemenis in its areas of control, Iran's arm at the same time exploits its influence to swallow the private sector and replace it with personalities from its dynastic leaders, in addition to its repeated attempts Blackmailing regional parties and employing peace efforts in Yemen to reap more material gains.
Soft power
While investing in its military influence to build its own economy, the Houthi group is working to gain the tools of survival and the means of power that enable it to feed its camps and manage its political activity, relying to a large extent on accumulating money and amassing material gains.
In addition to its ambition to remain one of the most important centers of power in Yemen, the internal structure of Iran's arm consists of dynastic and sectarian personalities, while it relies on random, demagogic and corrupt models that seek to accumulate money and build their personal empires independently of the group.
In this context, the Yemeni writer and political analyst in strategic and military affairs, Dr. Ali al-Dahab, believes that al-Houthi is acting at the present time as the sole ruler in his areas of influence, as he acts politically, militarily, economically, intellectually, ideologically, and in the media, from one perspective, which is the perspective of the group that adopts its political approach. It is trying, in one way or another, to strengthen its existence by means of force, including soft powers, and money is one of its most important components.
Al-Dahab added, in the context of his speech to "Newsyemen": "Without money, the Houthi group cannot enhance its military capabilities, and it will not be able to manage its political program, and all of this is conducive to strengthening its authority and influence, while the Houthi group realizes that it is on the verge of a peace process, and it must To be, at the very least, the ruler of its spheres of influence.
In his opinion, on the other hand, there are corruption groups within the Houthi group, which are at the same time, "as he put it," a model of complete corruption.
He pointed out that "there is nepotism that seeks to accumulate money for its benefit based on sectarian, family, or even sectarian affiliations, which are blocs within the group that share wealth and power, and share the fruits of the state's fall into its grip."
On the other hand, al-Dhahab believes that the group will move in this direction with full force unless it finds someone to curb it, or unless the state is able to liberate itself from the restrictions imposed on it by Western countries that affect the political scene in Yemen, especially Britain, the United States and France.
Tributaries of war
At a time when the file of the Yemeni crisis has moved from a site of war to building peace, observers see that the Houthi group has shifted to accumulating money and searching for economic factors to supplement its war with factors of strength, taking advantage of the regional trend to establish peace and end the crisis in Yemen.
In this context, journalist Yaqoub al-Sami'i believes that the group's demands for the payment of employee salaries and its requirements for obtaining a share of local oil reflect the group's sense of power, or more precisely, its feeling that its opponents have completely abandoned the option of war.
Al-Sami'i indicated, in his interview with "Newsyemen", that "international mediators read the dominance of the economic dimension on the Houthis' recent requirements as a sign of the group's retreat from the military option and its openness to partnership with local opponents."
On the other hand, he believes that the evidence on the ground confirms that the economic resources in the eyes of the Houthis are nothing but tributaries of the war machine that enables them to continue and enter into new cycles of war that may last for years.
The Houthi group seeks to achieve rapid wealth for its leaders and supervisors, at the expense of doubling the burdens on the Yemeni people, who have tampered with all the capabilities of their country and mastered various methods in order to humiliate and starve them, after looting their salaries during the years of war, and drowning them in illegal levies that have many names.
