(File) How did the local authority in “Al-Shamaytain” in Taiz miss the opportunity to transform “Al-Turbah” into a more prosperous, modern city?

The city of Al-Turbah, located 60 km southwest of Taiz Governorate, represents the center of gravity for the Al-Hajariya region, to which most of the southern countryside districts of the governorate belong. Since ancient times, the city of Al-Turbah has been the main market for a number of those districts, with a high population density.

The residents of the Al-Hujariya area depend mainly on commercial and service activities, in addition to agricultural activity. A number of commercial houses in Al-Hujariya are famous for taking over the private sector, and they spread their various commercial and service projects throughout most of the governorates of Yemen.

The interesting irony is that the city of Al-Turba has little access to commercial and service activity from the private sector. Even despite the availability of all the necessary elements to help this, recently, after “Al-Turbah” turned into an important vital area due to the war and the total siege imposed on the city of Taiz, where “Al-Turbah” became the only outlet for the people of the besieged city..!!

Many attribute the reason for this, mainly; To the administrative neglect that the city is witnessing by the leadership of the local authority in the “Al-Shamaytain” district, which considers the city of “Al-Turbah” its center and administrative capital.

Vital statistics for transformation

Since 2015, the city of Al-Turbah has transformed from a small, remote town on a side road unsuitable for the passage of commercial trucks between the governorates of Taiz and Aden, into a shelter for tens of thousands of displaced people, affected by the hell of the Houthi war on Yemen.

Statistics indicate that more than 25,000 families fled the city of Taiz, the capital of the governorate, to settle in the city of Al-Turbah during the year 2015 alone.

According to a private source, from an international organization concerned with refugees and displaced persons, who spoke to “Yemen Shabab Net”; There are at least 15,000 displaced people living in rented homes in the city of Al-Turbah.

In 2016, the forces of the National Army and the Popular Resistance succeeded in expelling the Houthi militia from the Dhabab Line (southwest of the city of Taiz), and subsequently established a huge commercial activity, according to which Al-Turbah became a commercially active area. It was helped by the stifling siege imposed by the Houthi militia on the city of Taiz (which still continues today), as the city of Al-Turbah turned into a vital transit area because it is located on the only remaining line of travel from Taiz, south, to the temporary capital, Aden.

In confirmation of this feature; An official at the "Quds Towers Foundation", which is concerned with building materials trade, said in an exclusive interview with "Yemen Shabab Net": The widespread commercial prosperity that the city of Al-Turbah has witnessed since the year 2025 prompted the organization to move its business to the city, after it faced obstacles, including the harassment it was subjected to in several other governorates as a result of instability.

Wasted opportunity

After successfully clearing the city of "Mokha", located on the western coast, from the terrorist Houthi militias, in early 2018, the city of "Al-Turbah" became a destination for the influx of thousands of members of the Giants Forces and the Guards of the Republic, with their families, to settle in the city near the western coast.

The displaced people and those arriving to the city, in addition to others coming to it to engage in commercial and service activities, represented a valuable opportunity to revitalize the remote city with life and trade, and transform it into one of the most prosperous new Yemeni cities. Which has not happened yet; Not by the three governors who have been rotating in leadership of the governorate since 2015, nor even by the direct official in the directorate, represented by its director appointed more than seven years ago. Which, instead, itself became a stumbling block in the way of its development. According to what is revealed by the volume and types of complaints filed by its citizens..!!

The exact number of the population of the soil is not known (according to population projections, since the last population census in the country in 2004, the number may currently have exceeded one million people, taking into account the numbers of displaced people and those arriving there during the years of war).

Whatever the case, the reality is that the city had a great opportunity to prosper, like many other regions in the country that have grown, developed, and prospered since 2015, when a responsible local authority was found capable of seizing the opportunity, so that the war would be a gateway to building it and transforming it into a large, active, and influential city.

As for the city of Al-Turbah, the boom in commercial prosperity that the city has witnessed over the past eight years, due to its transformation into a major corridor for commercial activity for the entire southern countryside of Taiz Governorate, and also for the city of Taiz since 2016; The local authorities in the district did not bother to translate it into a stable and permanent state, but rather treated it as a season whose activity fades with the end of the season, returning to its previous state as a small market for remote and poor villages..!!

Organizations... great support without effect

With the security stability enjoyed by the city of Taiz and the liberated areas and districts around it, including the city of Al-Turbah, the latter was chosen to be a safe haven for the headquarters of most international and local organizations that provide their services to the liberated areas in Taiz Governorate. However, this situation did not last long, as a number of these organizations gradually began to leave the city for many reasons, most notably the lack of a suitable environment to work there...! According to what sources related to relief work reported, I spoke with “Yemen Shabab Net” on condition of confidentiality.

According to our sources in the governorate’s planning office, major international, international and local organizations had taken their headquarters in the city of Al-Turbah to cover their activities allocated to Taiz Governorate, with budgets amounting to millions of dollars. However, the effects of the organizations’ activities on the infrastructure and strategy of the city of Al-Turbah are negligible, compared to the huge sums. Which she spent on her projects there..!!

In response; A senior source in an international organization said, in an exclusive interview with “Yemen Shabab Net”: “During the first years of the war, the Al-Shamaytain District received approximately 40% of the organizations’ total budget.”

The source, who requested to remain anonymous, revealed that “poor management, planning and coordination between the local authorities in the directorate and the organizations made these projects, with their huge budgets, useless.” This recently led to a number of humanitarian and relief organizations taking a decision to move their headquarters and operations from the city of Al-Turbah.

"Yemen Shabab Net" obtained, from its close sources, details of the situation of the most important organizations that: Either it completely transferred its business outside the country, or it opened other support offices outside it after it was limited to its sole headquarters there, according to the disclosure below:

Huge levies... and a collapsed city

The city of Al-Turbah is the strangest city in Yemen.! Although it has recently become highly populated, and has become a major shopping center for most of the southern countryside of Taiz, its population growth and commercial development have not been accompanied by real, witnessed development in infrastructure and services..!

To this day, the city is almost completely devoid of streets paved with asphalt. Indeed, its only main street, which is always crowded, has become dilapidated and turned into a semi-rough road, full of garbage and overflowing sewage water. Instead of repairing it, the local authority resorted to cutting it off with concrete barriers, diverting vehicle traffic from the west of the city to its east via a circular road that is also rugged, unpaved and narrow..!!

Many pictures were spread on social media revealing the extent of the comprehensive destruction to which the city’s main street was exposed, including the path that passes in front of the local authority complex, despite the huge and varied revenues this authority earns, especially since the city has turned into a single main corridor for trucks transporting goods. And travelers, to/from the city of Taiz and its liberated districts, after the Houthi militias closed the main crossings east and north of the city.

According to private sources working in the transportation sector who spoke to Yemen Shabab.net, at least approximately 100 transport trucks pass daily through the city of Al-Turbah to Taiz Governorate, and from them the local authority collects levies in the name of improvement and others in the name of transportation, most of which range between 50 and 100 thousand riyals. It may sometimes reach 150,000 riyals, and the least is 30,000 riyals for one truck.

Since the local authorities in the Soil Directorate did not officially disclose the total of these levies, the responsible financial authorities refuse to give any numbers “because the data they obtain is much less than what is collected in levies,” according to one of the relevant sources. However, by estimating the transportation sector fee revenues only, according to the previous figures above, it is possible to talk about hundreds of millions of riyals that the local authority earns annually. Financial sources in the directorate believe that the number may sometimes reach billions..!!

Building permit brokers

And so on; Private sources told "Yemen Shabab Net" that brokers linked to the local authority in the district are extracting illegal taxes in exchange for granting building permits outside the law. According to the information, the auction in this regard reached approximately seven thousand Saudi riyals in exchange for granting some of these licenses.

One source said that licenses to build a residential house in the villages surrounding the city of Al-Turbah cost him no less than 13,000 Saudi riyals, in exchange for allowing him to build his own house.

However; The effects of these levies did not appear on the city. "Yemen Shabab Net" obtained more than one document and guidance. He was the director of the directorate, which he has been in charge of for nearly seven years. Road projects are announced, then evaporate without any official explanation. While the city is becoming more crowded with residents and displaced people, with the spread of random construction in it, without any horizon of transformation from a mere village to a modern city..!!

According to a memorandum submitted by the director of the directorate to the director of the directorate’s works office on September 11, 2023, he asked him to “quickly prepare studies on the main street...” Although the Director of the Directorate concluded his memorandum with a decisive directive to the Director of the Public Works Office to “speed up the work,” warning him to hold him “responsible for the delay,” none of that has happened yet despite the passage of nearly a year since that memorandum..!! (See image of the memo below)

Illegal levies by force

The matter was not limited to these irresponsible methods in dealing with the directorate’s issues. Rather, in other aspects, it reached the level of blackmailing merchants in the city of Al-Turbah by collecting illegal funds to implement projects that the directorate is supposed to carry out from its budget, or at least from the huge levies that are imposed on it. You get it..!

One of the documents we obtained indicates that the director of the directorate established a special committee under the name “Community and Sanitation Committee,” headed by a person named Abu Bakr Al-Shaibani, for the purpose of collecting money from merchants and shop owners to dig sewage drains on Street 24.

The document submitted by the Director of the Finance Office in Al-Shamaytain District, to the Director of Finance in the Governorate, Dr. Muhammad Abd al-Rahman al-Sama’i, dated May 3, 2024, revealed that the aforementioned committee collected an estimated 150 million riyals, which was collected illegally through the committee and the Public Works Office branch. The General Directorate of the Directorate by “forcing citizens to pay sums of money and unofficial bonds,” and whoever refuses will be imprisoned..!! According to the document.

The memorandum also indicates that not only were the illegal levies collected by force from merchants on Street 24 illegal, but “30,000,000 riyals/thirty million Yemeni riyals have been allocated in the budget of this year’s investment program for the same purpose, which is to repair the street’s sewers.” 24”, which made the Director of the Finance Office wonder about the fate of those amounts that were collected outside the law and order, which are estimated at more than 150,000,000 riyals (one hundred and fifty million Yemeni riyals)???

Recently, the Director of the Directorate arrested the Director of the Directorate’s Finance Office, Hashim Al-Mughrabi, in an illegal manner, according to what was confirmed by the arrested Director and his colleagues who carried out protests against Al-Shaibani after their colleague was detained in a private prison within the Directorate..!!

The Director of the Directorate himself had previously directed the formation of a community committee to collect funds from merchants and citizens for the purpose of rehabilitating and maintaining the “Haija Al-Abd” Road and directed the opening of accounts for it, according to a memorandum submitted by him to the Director of the National Cash Transfer Company, dated September 26, 2020. However, it was not done. Haijat Al-Abd Road has been repaired since then. It is currently being repaired with Saudi support and funding..!!

 Not only that; Indeed, a complaint had previously been filed by the Director of the Directorate’s Finance Office to the Public Funds Prosecution’s lawyer on June 12, 2021, regarding the collection of funds estimated at 200 million riyals under artificial and unnumbered bonds. The Public Funds Prosecution’s lawyer sent a memorandum to the Public Funds Prosecution on June 15 to investigate the matter. This incident. However, the same process and method was repeated later, as we indicated in the two previous incidents above..!!

Wasting millions on failed projects

In addition to the above, documents we obtained prove that the director of the directorate wasted huge sums of money on ill-considered projects, which were canceled. This is also the case with the sanitation project in the villages of Wadi Adeem, which ended up being stopped by the court, because it led to sewage being directed to residents’ homes and caused the spread of diseases. According to sources familiar with the project, the Director of the Al-Shaibani Directorate wasted more than 28 million riyals on this failed project..!!