Changing Local Governance in Yemen District and governorate institutions in the areas under Ansar Allah’s control Joshua Rogers Working Paper About this paper This working paper was written by Joshua Rogers with research assistance from Samah al-Taher. Special thanks to Dalia Barsoum, Oliver Wils and Sonja Neuweiler for comments. To cite this paper Rogers, J. (2020) Changing Local Governance in Yemen: District and governorate institutions in the areas under Ansar Allah’s control. Berghof Working Paper 12/2020. Berghof Foundation, Berlin. Imprint Copy editing: Hillary Crowe Design and layout: AMBERPRESS, Katja Koeberlin, Gosia Warrink Cover photo: Anas Alhajj/ Shutterstock.com Acknowledgements This report forms part of the project “Strengthening Inclusive Local Governance in Yemen”, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. © 2020 Berghof Foundation. All rights reserved. Changing Local Governance in Yemen Photo: Dinos Michail/ Shutterstock.com Executive Summary The Berghof Foundation has been working with In the areas of Yemen under Ansar Allah’s control, local authorities and the central administration(s) the war and recent policy changes have together led in Yemen since 2017 to strengthen inclusive to significant changes to local governance. There local governance, support the resolution of local has been, first, a multi-phase takeover of local conflicts, and ensure that key concerns from the institutions. Ansar Allah appointees and networks local level feed into central policy-making and the of ‘supervisors’ have displaced the dominance peace process. This working paper contributes of the former ruling party, the General People’s to these overall goals by exploring how local Congress (GPC), and its networks of patronage at governance is changing in the areas under Ansar the local level. Second, the state is now more visible Allah’s control. Subsequent papers will explore and present at the local level, due to renewed local-level changes in other parts of Yemen, notably efforts to collect taxes and other revenue and due to in Aden and Hadhramawt. The peace process will increased centralisation, coupled with new forms need to take these ongoing changes into account. of central oversight and control. Together, this Only a clear-eyed assessment of the evolving has created a significantly more centralised and context can serve as a starting point for a realistic securitised system than that which operated under agreement and allow a transitional dialogue to President Saleh; and this new system is extracting work towards local governance arrangements that a greater share of resources from the domestic address important long-term drivers of conflict, economy. Finally, there has been a collapse of local particularly adequate service provision and social budgets and salary payments. These financial and political inclusion. shortfalls, caused by war and a blockade of Ansar 3 Changing Local Governance in Yemen Allah-controlled territory, have coincided with The future of increased taxation and of local limited investment in service delivery as scarce governance with limited service delivery resources were redirected to security and military obligations is less certain. If, in the context of a institutions. As a result, responsibility for services peace agreement, central government regains has fallen to international aid organisations. access to oil and gas revenue, the perceived need Ultimately, war, the economic blockade of Yemen, to extract as much as possible from the local level Ansar Allah’s policies and international aid have may ease and central authorities may relax the combined to hollow out the existing local authority current intensive efforts to collect funds locally. structures in Yemen. Citizens and business owners would likely breathe a sigh of relief. On the other hand, wartime These changes matter because they are likely to increases in taxation have proven remarkably have long-term implications. The system remains durable in other contexts and the link between in flux, but as patterns become more established, higher taxation and better services appears robust they will become facts on the ground that constrain across a broad range of contexts. In the medium options for the post-war period. The ongoing term, there is hope that a Yemeni state that taxes centralising legal and administrative changes to more may also be pushed to provide better services formal state structures and the creation of parallel to its population, and that an end to the war would supervisory networks will likely prove difficult to free up resources for investment in local services. roll back. The legal and constitutional provisions of an eventual settlement will have to contend with this high level of de facto control from Sana‘a, exercised in multiple overlapping ways. 4 Changing Local Governance in Yemen Introduction Past wars in Yemen have driven local, everyday and a more intrusive and visible local state changes that left deep and enduring legacies for presence due to renewed efforts to collect taxes the shape of the state. There is every reason to and other local revenues; and finally (3) a collapse believe that this is happening again. of local budgets and salary payments and a de facto transfer of related responsibilities to In terms of past conflicts, the civil war between international aid organisations. royalists and republicans in the 1960s underwrote the post-war dominance of tribal and military These changes have combined with the broader figures, ushered in a long period of relative grim economic and humanitarian context in local autonomy, and initiated a pattern of Yemen – a collapse in salaries and earnings, statebuilding that was expenditure-led, at once an international blockade, falling remittances, highly centralised and largely disconnected from inflation, fuel shortages, airstrikes and shelling – everyday life in much of the country (Rogers to reconfigure local governance and the face of 2019b). Three decades later, the 1994 war deepened the everyday state. Recent changes are creating and accelerated the newly unified state’s move a significantly more centralised system than that towards crony capitalism through post-war land which operated under President Saleh, although seizures and privatisations and exacerbated the increased centralisation of revenues and decision- grievances that later drove the Southern Movement making has coincided with fragmentation in (Day 2012) and its more recent offshoots, not least service delivery, as the uneven impact of war and the Southern Transitional Council. patterns of the international humanitarian and development response have partially decoupled Now the war is again forcing changes. This services from other areas of local governance. working paper focuses on those occurring in the areas under the control of Ansar Allah, a These ongoing centralising legal and Zaydi revivalist movement headed by successive administrative changes to formal state structures members of the al-Houthi family that has been and the creation of parallel networks of so-called in de facto control of much of northern Yemen ‘supervisors’2 and other loyalists may prove since 2015.1 Since the end of 2014, war and Ansar difficult to roll back. At the same time, the changed Allah policy have together brought about dramatic political economy of local governance in Yemen, changes to local governance in Yemen. This has implied by greater local taxation and a central taken the form of (1) a multi-phase takeover of government dependent on local taxation rather local institutions, so that the dominance of the than oil rents, may offer a chance to rebalance the GPC and its networks of patronage focused on Ali relationship between the central state and local Abdallah Saleh and key allies has been replaced authorities in the medium term and to put local on all levels by figures belonging to or close governance on a more inclusive and sustainable to Ansar Allah; (2) an unprecedented level of footing. These issues are explored further in the centralisation, central oversight and control, conclusion. 1 The paper uses Ansar Allah to refer to what is more commonly called the Houthi Movement, following the movement’s own preferred usage. On the history of the Movement see Brandt 2017 and Salmoni, Loidolt and Wells 2010. 2 Ansar Allah appointed loyal supporters of the movement as ‘supervisors’ (mushrifin) in formal state institutions at all levels. See the discussion in: ‘A multi-phase takeover’ below. 5 Changing Local GovernanceSAUDI in Yemen ARABIA OMAN Sa'adah al-Jawf al-Mahrah Amran Hajjah Hadramawt Marib Al Mahwit City of Sanaa Shabwah Hodeidah Dahmar Raymah ARABIAN SEA al-Bayda Ibb Ad Dali Abyan Taiz Lahj ERITREA Adan Socotra DJIBOUTI GULF OF ADEN SOMALIA Governorates in Yemen. Berghof Foundation, May 2018. The provisions in the agreement designed to Brief history of provide a measure of checks and balances on central discretion, like an upper chamber of the legislature, remained largely unimplemented local governance and the period after unification saw rapid moves 3 towards more central control. By 1993, Al-Bidh in Yemen lamented that the political system born of unification did not have effective guarantees to protect it from a gradual takeover by northern elites (Toye 2002: §21). When former North and South Yemen entered into negotiations over unification in 1990, it was widely Tensions between the leadership of the former expected that they would implement a federal North and South came to a head in 1994, in a civil system. However, the Presidents of the Yemen Arab war largely fought between their respective former Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic armed forces, with a subordinate role for tribal of Yemen, Ali Abdallah Saleh and Ali Salem al- auxiliaries and Islamist fighters (Dresch 2000: 196). Bidh respectively, ultimately settled on a unitary Saleh and his allies won the war and proceeded to centralised system with only passing nods towards deepen centralisation. Local governance came to decentralisation (Detalle 1994) and no reserved rely on centrally appointed governors and heads power for the regions (Lackner 2019: 117).