Ibb.. the great Houthi spoils!

Following the Houthi militias’ coup against legitimacy and the outbreak of war in 2015, the city of Ibb maintained a special form of coexistence and harmony with the new epidemic that struck it, and preferred to avoid resistance; and became a front for displacement from Sana’a, Taiz or Aden, as it is the only city in Yemen that enjoys relative stability and a quiet life that displaced people, capitalists and the well-off headed to to resume their lives there.

But the city was unaware that this positive trait in it would become a curse that would cost it many silent tragedies and deep losses during its transformation into a city crowded with people, with an economic boom and active commercial movement, urban expansion in construction and a population expansion that linked the city to urban areas, and an inability to absorb the newcomers that led to its rapid growth in construction and investment in real estate to become the primary driver of life and reality in it.

This new demographic change whetted the coup’s appetite, made it feel like it had the biggest spoils and pushed it to determine a special formula for managing the province and tightening its control over it. It became an exceptional case in the eyes of its militia authority, and that authority exercised its powers and duties in a manner that differed from the general image of the Houthi authority in various cities, a case based on chaos, chaos, and acquisition, and bloated recklessness, and absolute violation of land and people. The city appeared as spoils of war and wasted land devoured by dynastic families thirsty for influence, robbery, and wealth, as it is an attractive spoil due to its nature, geography, and peaceful people who avoid the evils of the group by submitting and money.

It received the lion's share of the alienation, with complete silence, systematic humiliation, and the strengthening of the legitimacy of these behaviors in the name of "state institutions," such as the Office of Endowments and Public Works, or in an arbitrary individual manner by influential supervisors, and it is difficult for the oppressed to find a savior or protector who will do him justice from the Hashemite settlement.

The lineage supervisors rush and salivate whenever they are given supervisory and administrative tasks or leadership positions and official appointments within the scope of the city of Ibb or in its directorates to practice the lust of plunder, and achieve the dream of wealth and influence with a little trickery, deceit and swagger by applying the law in the name of the state; in fact, most of the supervisors follow the leadership of the first rank of the group and receive direct orders from it, and achieve imaginary revenues for it through their positions, and literally manage huge investment projects affiliated with it in the city, from strategic real estate and commercial malls and opening companies and factories and establishing new markets competing with the old markets - as happened recently with the opening of a new vegetable market in the Al-Sabil area and the closing of the old market in Al-Dhahar - as a comprehensive lineage commercial takeover of the movement of the economy, construction and real estate, to the point that the price of real estate in Ibb surpasses Dubai, due to the sudden obscene wealth of the lineage families who have made Ibb their own commercial center without dispute and the exclusion of all competitors.

The question that imposes itself here is: Why is all this happening in Ibb? Because the psychological composition of society in the city and its countryside is based on imbalances and intertwined conflicts between social classes regarding the conflict over free public real estate and private real estate belonging to endowments, and this problem is a focus that occupies the minds of the residents, the owners, the influential, the greedy, and the judiciary. The reasons for this turbulent real estate situation lie in the penetration of the influence of the experienced feudal sheikhs in this aspect, and their ability to impose societal dependency and submission to turn into brokers - they and the leaders of the local authority and the notables - for the Houthi supervisors to gain favor with them and avoid the theft of their private property.

This collusion, in addition to the lack of community awareness and the expansion of the internal conflict among the public, and their overwhelming desire to own land, pushed the dynasties to make the seizure of lands the first important thing for their presence as an authority, so they spread the slogan (all private or public land belongs to the endowments), so Ibb sank into a swamp of looting and plunder, and all of this was caused by the exorbitant price of land and real estate and the tremendous expansion in the countryside and the city, and the flow of capital and its investment in Ibb by merchants and expatriates who constitute a large percentage of it.

The Awqaf Office is leading the mission of legalizing the spoils and analyzing their ownership by creating innovative systems and new regulations that legitimize the desire of the clan to illegally own and dispose of them, whether by hiding documents or taking sides with them against their real owners. The office has worked to create new appointments for informants affiliated with the office in the city and directorates, to provide it with daily information related to lands over which it has no legal authority. The Ministry of Justice and the courts of Ibb have also issued instructions to reject land sale and purchase contracts except with the approval of the competent authorities.

The Houthi Ministry of Justice also summoned all legal secretaries for investigation and detained most of them - releasing those it trusted and who agreed to work according to the Ministry’s conditions - and preventing them from issuing any sale or purchase document until the seller brings the original ownership documents of his predecessor, and rejecting his current ownership documents even if they were certified in the courts before the coup as a pretext to prevent the owner from what he owns.

One of the strange things about the Ibb Endowments is the issuance of a circular stating that the lands surrounding any cemetery in the entire governorate are automatically considered to belong to the Endowments even if the cemetery itself was endowed by someone, and the Endowments in the entire region do not own a single inch. As for the tenants of the Endowments, they have suffered, and imaginary wages have been imposed on them or they have been forced to leave their homes. This is in the case of the city of Ibb, and laws have been issued to transfer its ownership to supervisors close to the group and of the same ilk.

If we hear here and there about an individual robbery, in Ibb it is a complex behavior and a complete system that is codified and protected in the name of “the state and its institutions.” It is worth noting that the Awqaf Office is not the one that represents the structure of spoils, as the Public Works, Municipality, Tax and Duties Offices, Zakat Authority and the judiciary all tamper with public and private money, and extract imaginary sums even in taxes and levies on various Houthi occasions, unlike their work in other governorates that do not perform their duties in the embezzlement manner prevalent in Ibb.

For the sake of this booty that the group and its leader have squandered for the supervisors and followers to tamper with as they please, as a divine gift to the family of the Prophet and the lineage as a whole, the militias impose an iron security grip on the province and practice repression and intimidation in a terrible manner, fearing for its commercial center, the source of its wealth and the source of its enormous income, as the media and elites neglect to expose this issue, reveal its threads and reveal its pictures, because the people of the city and its residents are completely unable to highlight this tragic situation that Ibb is experiencing, in order to avoid brutality and fear of Houthi abuse that does not have mercy on anyone who exposes its secret, especially in the material aspect.