Houthis raise $300,000 for Hezbollah as Yemenis starve
▶ The Houthis’ latest fundraising effort marks a new low for the Lebanese militant group
Houthi rebels in Yemen announced they had raised nearly $300,000 for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the GCC, the US and UK.
In a video published on Saturday, the director general of Houthi radio station Sam FM posed with a large amount of banknotes as the team celebrated raising 74m Yemeni riyals for the Lebanese militants.
“From Yemen the faith to Lebanon’s resistance, salute to the well-being of Yemen,” they yell. “Death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews.”
The funds would “support, aid and assist the resistance in Lebanon”, said a statement published by Sam FM alongside the video.
The donations from the third stage of the “Live for the good of Yemen” campaign is in addition to about $200,000 raised this year and in 2018 for the Houthis’ general military spending in Yemen, according to documents seen by The National.
If the Houthis’ self-reported figures are accurate, it means more than half of the funds raised by the Iran-backed rebels has gone to Tehran’s Lebanese proxy. The National could not independently verify the fund-raising claims. Hezbollah has come under increasing pressure from US sanctions, and in March, its secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, launched campaigns to raise funds for the group in Lebanon.
Hezbollah is widely believed to be providing training and advice to the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The Houthis view their support to Hezbollah as a way of paying back the group, said Fatima Alasrar, a senior policy analyst at the Arabia Foundation in Washington.
“It is a clear message of solidarity,” she said. “The Houthis are basically saying, ‘You can count on us to support you’.”
Sam FM defended the amount raised for Hezbollah as Yemen suffers widespread poverty, starvation and frequent cholera outbreaks.
“This is what Yemeni donors prefer of their own will, despite the siege and the cutting-off of their salaries,” a source at the station told The National.
But Afrah Nasser, chief editor of the Sanaa Review website, said the Houthis sometimes took “donations” for their military action from Yemenis without their knowledge.
“Houthis have masterfully milked the population under their control with unbelievable taxation and many times forcibly deducted money from businessmen, and through corrupt methods,” Ms Nasser said.
“The main method, though, has been mobilising the population into buying this idea to donate for the ‘military effort’, meaning to the Houthi army.
“And many people do donate many times without realising it.
“For instance, the Houthis force mobile telecommunications companies to deduct 10 per cent of a purchase of a Sim card or internet unit card.
“So if you want to refill your mobile and you buy a card worth $10, automatically 10 per cent will be deducted and you will receive an auto reply saying, ‘Thank you, you donated to the military effort’.”
Aid organisations raised concerns over large sums of cash apparently being shipped out of Yemen at the same time as humanitarian support falls short.
Houthi leader Abdulmalik Al Houthi “will deliver the proceeds of the campaign to Hassan Nasrallah, on behalf of the campaign’s management and all those involved”, Sam FM said.
Hezbollah’s media office was not able to confirm if that meant the Houthi leader would travel to Lebanon to deliver the cash.
The ties between Hezbollah and the Houthis run deep, analysts say. Hezbollah supports the Houthis on its media platforms.
Affiliated messaging apps provide regular military updates while its press office provides round-ups of Yemen-related security news. The Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah television station is in a Hezbollah-dominated suburb of Beirut.
“Many important analysts still refuse to see the links between the two groups, despite the evidence and disruptive impact it has on the sociocultural Yemeni environment,” said Ms Alasrar. “Ignoring these links distorts policy analysis and has a serious impact on our understanding of the conflict in Yemen.”
Sam FM, a radio station affiliated with the Houthi rebels in Yemen, has announced that it has managed to raise half a million dollars since the launch of its crowdfunding efforts last year. The campaign organisers said that more than half the total amount will be donated to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is regarded as a terrorist organisation by Gulf countries, the United States and the United Kingdom. It is no surprise that Hezbollah and the Houthis would support each other. Both are Iran-backed proxies that have caused chaos in their home countries and beyond.
This campaign was intended to raise funds for the Houthis’ military spending while proving that the group could still count on popular support for their cause. Instead, the fundraising effort has highlighted how desperate Hezbollah has become.
The organisation is starting to feel the pinch of increased sanctions from the US and the UK. In February, the UK ceased to differentiate between Hezbollah’s political and armed factions, and classified the entire group as a terrorist organisation. Meanwhile, the US has increased economic sanctions on Hezbollah and last year, the US Department of Justice designated the group as a transnational crime organisation. US sanctions against Tehran have also choked off the majority of the Iranian funds the group relies on to survive. This forced Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to launch media fundraising campaigns in Lebanon in March. Now, the group seems desperate enough to accept donations from one of the region’s poorest and most war-ravaged nations.
In a video posted on social media on Saturday, the director general of Sam FM and his team posed in front of the huge piles of money they had collected, chanting “From Yemen’s faith to Lebanon’s Resistance” and “Death to America”. It is morally repugnant to raise such vast sums of money, only to give it to a foreign terror group, especially when ordinary Yemenis are in dire need. Since the start of the civil war in 2015, the country’s long-suffering people have lived through violence, starvation and deadly cholera outbreaks. Despite donations worth billions of dollars – chiefly from the UAE and Saudi Arabia – the situation remains bleak. The United Nations has described it as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. That the Houthis and their supporters have prioritised the financing of a faraway ally, instead of working to improve the everyday lives of their own people, is all the proof anyone could ever need that the rebel group does not have the interests of ordinary Yemenis at heart.