The war economy in Marib: The war from within ... Marib between fall and resistance
English - Saturday 01 May 2021 الساعة 02:35 pm
Aden, NewsYemen, Majid Zayed:
I spent a year and a half in Marib, it was an unforgettable and unforgettable period of life, a period of slow, fast and eventful time, during which I got to know the features of life and the nature of the residents and newcomers to the newly formed city.
It has already experienced a new formation of an emerging city with the occurrence of clear demographic variables, and although it appears to be in a state of continuous expansion, its population growth occurred gradually as a positive result of a negative period from the general perspective.
The governorate of Marib has gone through successive and increasing demographic cycles in a short time, and while its recent boom in real estate and buildings has managed to address the challenges created by the rising and sudden increase of the population, new obstacles have emerged that coincided with its challenges.
For example, the very rapid urban growth seven years ago resulted in finding solutions to some of the difficulties associated with human growth and the flow of youth to the city, but it also created a boom that led to the emergence of an exacerbated pattern of monopoly, profit and exploitation, and this resulted in a successive rise in the value of material living.
The cost of housing in Marib is comparable to Gulf cities in terms of its financial cost, and the value of consumables is very high. This city has gone through an era of radical change that is the most accelerated among its predecessors from Yemeni cities, and on the one hand, four interrelated forces play a major role in influencing the way the city develops. : The oil resources, the investments of the armed leaders, the high real estate prices, in addition to the reform leaders coming from the regions of Sana'a and its suburbs to invest in and shelter in the city.
Life in Marib is not a new outfit of openness and development, as much as it is overcrowding that brought openness, adaptation and development, the city’s streets began to pavement, leveling and expansion, the infrastructure machine is moving rapidly from the beginning, as if it was racing against time and chasing the lights and convictions, it also had another form of self-satisfaction. The subjugated or the competing self to rule in the city, especially with buried organizational disputes with the city's original sheikhs,It is also an attempt to find a civilized alternative to the lives of the previous rulers of Sanaa, perhaps to prove a successful model of competence, entitlement and pragmatism, and perhaps as an alternative to fantasies of returning to an ancient city, on the one hand, and on the other hand the city still suffers from existential fear, and the fire buried between two factions opposing each other And the suspicious security grip on everything that goes on in the streets ..!
This article will list many different facts, experiences, analyzes, and evidence, with different titles on issues that are close, separate, close to war, reality and the coming future.
Confused fear
During recent months, people in Marib, with all their affiliations and configurations, live on fantasies of fear of the next, fear of the inevitable war on their stability and growth, and just as Pixay says: At every historical juncture, human "fear" wears a new outfit ..
This is reflected in the interactions of people in the city and their turbulent and unstable imaginations, their interactions that were formed in its purpose and existence to deter the idea of "fear and danger", the fear that inhabits them about the Houthi war against them, and the escalating danger towards their city, and what those armed and increasing manifestations in their streets are just another picture of an idea. Searching for a state of "reassurance", meaning enjoying "the idea of a stable life and new growth" without thinking about "the exacerbating Houthi danger around the city!"
Their prayers in the mosques hardly stop, the Friday sermons and their mobilization during them, the manic warning about the engineered cells, the internal accusations, the systematic questioning of everything that lives among them, the great intimidation of the idea of truth and victory, all of these matters are a clear reflection of the general fear of an upcoming danger.
Therefore, resisting "fear" remained a haunting concern, whenever they wanted to chase it, it returned to them in the form of another front and greater mobilization. Man often creates fear and then fights it, so says "Pixai" whenever they believed that a new weapon protects them, they discover that there is a stronger weapon than it is in the hands of their opponents. They discovered that war is open to them from all sides and on all fronts, and death is in every corner. That is why fear remained, and the search for resistance to fear exists, and the industry of "fear" is also present.
Marib .. People, crowds and life
I still kept my words about the city and I was surprised by them from the beginning, the words through which I never expected, on my way to them, to become one of the lovers of it, its streets, crowds, markets and people who cling to the Arabism of the desert and the chivalry of the desert and the pride of the warrior Bedouins. The path of brotherhood and defending it, regardless of the costs, the original youth of the city or the newcomers resemble the homeland, or they search for it in most details, they wait for it every day and make another home from it for the borrowers out of fear, violence and fading.
In Marib, life with its simple and popular features has become as beautiful as the hearts of young people as they walk in the city’s parks and evening markets. Life there is full of features but is waiting for peace after drawing it in its many details, but it is afraid of war and avoids thinking about its consequences, in the Ma'rib of generosity and generosity, magnanimity and fathers, good people Resilience and comrades, love when stepped on cannons, after the heart fell in love with words alien to faraway cities, words of pride and pride and forcing oneself to live for the sake of others.
Marib as a city has features of modern forms, but despite this it suffers from the exploitation of merchants, their greed and perhaps their monopoly, the restaurant in Marib demands double prices, the grocery owner, the food merchant, the transport driver, the potato seller, the owner of the network, the barber shop, clothes and shoes Luxuries, furnishings, furniture, libraries, hotels, breaks, rentals, everything, bastards also resisting, everyone asks double prices, much doubled, as if they are silently looting people, no one knows or talks about them, no one dares perhaps.
Merchants in Marib determine the amount of their profits and gains according to their whims and moods at the moment, this is what really happens when the commercial and consumer side is uncontrolled, prices will rise, greed will increase, and discontent will increase in the same geography left without price inspection campaigns. The currency is also collapsing by the action of these opportunists, by ignoring the authority to them. This is more than a front of war in its importance and severity, they let greed seize the market in it, they let the merchants blackmail the poor consumer.
In Marib, electricity prices are also high, and all of its merchants complain about doubling the prices for electricity without marketers, but it remains free for alleys and homes. This is a fact, and another fact that everyone should know. Life in high-temperature regions without electricity or alternative electricity is suffering and crime that prevents life from continuing, details in which become forms that are meaningless, without desire, without life to its foundations, ideas and luxury matters are worthless without cold air. Electricity is a lifeline, and the necessity for survival is inevitable and existential, and its absence is final.
Electricity provides oxygen to the people, bread relieves the hungry from death, a blood vessel that connects the head to the heart, and its interruption is a war crime, a crime that does not fall with days, a crime that throws into Hell those who caused its ruin or those who prevent it from the people.
In other words, exaggerated examples of the war economy appeared in Marib, as the collapse of the state and the unusual conditions of war allowed people in political and military places to gain material profits in ways that were not possible in peacetime, meaning that corruption is rampant in a large way in the city and the war conditions are equally exploited. In the rest of the cities affiliated with Hadi's government ..
Marib .. and the displaced
There are 138 IDP camps in Marib, of which five have been canceled and three have been evacuated from the areas of armed conflict.These camps are distributed on the outskirts of Marib, its desert, and its areas bordering the city, in addition to the Al-Jafina neighborhoods and their expanses far away. The necessary humanitarian services are minimal.
These numbers of displaced people have brought to the city dozens of international organizations and foreign and current humanitarian workers. Foreign employees, in addition to their humanitarian duties, communicate with news agencies and Western channels to provide them with new information, and this matter is the source of some counter-reality news, news that angered the city's activists and the validity of what they are promoting. On the course of the line of battles and confrontations.
That is why do not be surprised by Reuters or the French Agency when it publishes news that contradicts what the city’s activists want, because their source actually lives inside the city and is close to the authority and contracts with several local employees who provide them with information and developments regardless of the nature of the information.
These foreign workers fled the city to Seiyun hotels twice and returned after two months, and of course, fearing the approaching war towards the city. These are indications of their hidden conviction that the city will fall into the armed Houthi hands, which is blown up by reality every time ..
In the displacement camps in Marib, people spend their lives looking for mere survival, and their tongue in his silence says: A homeland for God, philanthropists, this is the truth of what is going on. Another, and next to them in close quarters lay the homeless people coming from Africa, lining up with their disappointments next to their misery, and they live waiting for something from God to happen to save them also from their plight, as if homelessness and disappointment are one homeland for all the deprived.
Finally, with the increasing pace of the war, the human tragedy remains the missing part in the news of the battles in the city, as the fate of hundreds of thousands of displaced people who live in the outskirts of Marib, and are scattered in its displacement camps, remains a real disaster as a result of the approaching battles towards them. This coincides with the absence of a responsible international position to stop this disaster.
* From the author's Facebook page
