How International Humanitarian Organizations Subsidize The Houthi War Machine
Humanitarian organizations and funds are thus directly subsidizing the Houthi war machine and entrenching their political power, in the process aggravating the very humanitarian situation they’re ostensibly trying to alleviate.
The prevalent misconception is that a Saudi blockade of Yemen is the main cause of the humanitarian catastrophe in the country. Leaving aside Saudi Arabia’s dubious capacity to actually enforce whatever blockade exists, it does not really impact imports such as food and oil. Moreover, multiple former and current U.S. officials involved in Yemen policy have testified that it is the Houthi regime, not the blockade, that is overwhelmingly responsible for the problems relating to humanitarian aid.
The Associated Press reported in February 2020 that the Houthis were blocking half of the United Nations (U.N.) aid programs in Yemen, as well as U.N. efforts to monitor the hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian funds, while demanding a massive cut of that aid. One U.N. official remarked on the World Food Program’s potential decision to cut its food aid because of Houthi obstruction, “It’s unfortunate that people will suffer but this is on the Houthis. They can’t use people as hostages for too long.”
U.N. agencies channeled unaudited funds for these aid projects through the Houthi “aid-coordination” agency, the Supreme Council for Management and Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and International Cooperation (SCMCHA), which oversaw every project, AP reported:
“U.N. agencies continued to put hundreds of millions of dollars into Houthi accounts for ‘capacity building’ … [L]ast summer, the U.N. requested all agencies report how much they were giving in direct cash transfers. In 2019, the total reached $370 million, around 10% of the entire international aid budget for Yemen, according to a U.N. spreadsheet obtained by the AP. Around $133 million was marked in the spreadsheet as ‘not audited.’
Some officials in the Houthi aid body, SCMCHA, appear to be receiving multiple salaries, the data shows. For a time, three U.N. agencies were each giving salaries to the body’s president, his deputy, and general managers. Each of the officials received a total of $10,000 a month from the agencies, the spreadsheet shows.
The U.N. refugee agency also gave SCMCHA $1 million every three months for office rental and administrative costs, while the U.N. migration agency gave the office another $200,000 for furniture and fiber optics.”
Former chief of U.N. humanitarian operations in Yemen Lise Grande told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April that Houthi’s “coercive, predatory, police state” had “imposed hundreds of restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid” and “continues to threaten, bully, intimidate, and detain humanitarian staff.” Grande lamented that it may not be possible to prevent the coming cataclysmic famine or even mitigate the humanitarian situation as long as Houthi’s theocracy exists.
U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking and Assistant to the Administrator of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Sarah Charles explained to the Atlantic Council in March that the chief problem was not food or other aid coming in, but Houthi obstruction and diversion of the aid being delivered. In June, Lenderking urged “the Houthis to avoid stockpiling and manipulating fuel prices, which we fear has kept prices artificially high even as fuel has arrived through Hodeida and overland from Southern ports.”
In June 2020, Trump administration Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker similarly blamed the Houthis for the humanitarian catastrophe, calling “upon the Houthis to stop obstructing humanitarian assistance to the Yemeni people. We have made the difficult decision to halt much of our assistance to areas controlled by the Houthis because they were not observing internationally recognized humanitarian principles to allow the aid to get to people in need.”
The problem is emphatically not aid delivery to Yemen, but the ability of Yemenis to access it, something which the Houthis have rendered nearly impossible.
An additional, fatal obstruction to the delivery of humanitarian aid is the widespread, indiscriminate use of landmines by the Houthis. The Houthis have laid hundreds of thousands, and potentially over a million, mines across Yemen that, on top of obstructing aid delivery, have directly killed and maimed hundreds if not thousands of civilians and will continue to do so.
There is nothing humanitarian about the pervasive belief that aid delivery can be compartmentalized—the road to hell is paved with an “aid at all costs” attitude that is substantially empowering the cause of the humanitarian catastrophe: the Houthis. As a detailed investigation of Houthi aid weaponization revealed in March, the Houthis are diverting food and aid delivered by U.N. agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) via the SCMCHA and other Houthi organizations to their frontline fighters and loyalists.
The Houthis also use their control of food and funds to recruit fighters, including children, in exchange for the aid. Refusal to submit to Houthi demands or supply manpower results in being deprived of aid. Humanitarian organizations and funds are thus directly subsidizing the Houthi war machine and entrenching their political power, in the process aggravating the very humanitarian situation they’re ostensibly trying to alleviate.
Oved Lobel, a policy analyst at Australia Affairs Council and the author of a recent report for EER on the Houthi jihad against Yemen.