While the Houthi conflict dominates the news from Yemen there’s a risk of other issues being ignored. One that certainly should not be ignored is corruption, and last week Alistair Lyon wrote an excellent report about it for Reuters AlertNet.

As Lyon notes, “Corruption is rampant in Yemen, whether defined as the abuse of public office for private gain, or in the form of patronage, the diversion of state resources to seek political quiescence.”

The nature of the problem was explored in detail by USAID in its 
Yemen Corruption Assessment three years ago. Following that (and probably in response to it) the Yemeni government created a Supreme National Authority for Combating Corruption which – not surprisingly – has made little progress.

Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani, a Yemeni co-author of the 2006 USAID assessment, is quoted by Lyon as saying corruption remains "as bad as could be".

According to one survey, 425 officials were charged with corruption between 2005 and 2007. Of these, only nine were sentenced to more than two years in jail; 44 were acquitted and 73 received suspended sentences. “Many suspects avoided charges by bribing police or judicial officials. Even those convicted were rarely fired,” Lyon writes. He continues:

Legally it is hard to make officials accountable. Only civil servants between the level of director and deputy minister are required to declare their assets – a vital way to crosscheck if their wealth is disproportionate to their salary.

No one at or above the rank of deputy minister can be charged unless a two-thirds majority of parliament votes to form an investigating committee – which has never happened.

Two other news items away from the Houthi front:

• One person was killed and three injured during a four-hour battle between police and street vendors in Hayel Street, Sana’a.

• Members of the Laqmosh tribe clashed with the army in Shabwa province (southern Yemen), apparently in a dispute about “a checkpoint for collecting qat taxes”. The tribesmen “managed to seize the military vehicles and take six soldiers hostages … military reinforcements were seen heading to the area.”

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 6 September 2009.