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ABSTRACT
Most studies on oil and rebellion focus on the physical competition to control sites of resource production such as fields, refineries and export terminals. Issues of ownership are tertiary, even derisory. This paper takes issues of ownership seriously, detailing how rebel groups make legal claims to ownership of state-controlled oil assets. Rebel oil regimes are embedded in broader forms of rebel economic governance and diplomacy. Rebels can assert legal rights to resources even when they lack physical access to it. Using the case of the Houthis (Ansar Allah) in northern Yemen, the paper shows how rebel oil regimes help solidify elite bargains and relationships with outside patrons in ways that affect the course of conflict and conflict resolution. Considering legality alongside physical possession of resources better explains how rebel governance operates in the economic sphere.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Di John, ‘Oil Abundance and Violent Political Conflict’; Cotet and Tsui, ‘Oil and Conflict’; Ross, ‘A Closer Look at Oil, Diamonds, and Civil War’; Watts, ‘Rightous Oil?’; Ross, ‘What Have We Learned About the Resource Curse?’
2. Le Billon, ‘Oil and the Islamic State’; Ahram, ‘When Rebels Govern Oil’.
3. Arjona, Kasfir, and Mampilly, eds., Rebel Governance in Civil War; Duyvesteyn et al., ‘Reconsidering Rebel Governance’; Mampilly and Stewart, ‘A Typology of Rebel Political Institutional Arrangements’; Cunningham and Loyle, ‘Dynamic Processes of Rebel Governance’, ibid.
4. Kubota, ‘The Rebel Economy in Civil War’; Stys et al., ‘Brokering between (Not So) Overt and (Not So) Covert Networks in Conflict Zones’; Wennmann, ‘The Political Economy of Conflict Financing’; Schultze-Kraft, Crimilegal Orders, Governance and Armed Conflict (Cham: Springer, 2018).
5. Coggins, ‘Rebel Diplomacy’; Huang, ‘Rebel Diplomacy in Civil War’; Bos and Melissen, ‘Rebel Diplomacy and Digital Communication’.
6. Lujala, ‘The Spoils of Nature’.
7. Ralby and Soud, ‘Oil on the Water’; Ocakli and Scotch, ‘Oil-Fueled Insurgencies’; Walsh et al., ‘Funding Rebellion’.
8. Weinstein, ‘Resources and the Information Problem’; Whitaker, Walsh, and Conrad, ‘Natural Resource Exploitation and Sexual Violence by Rebel Groups’; Fortna, Lotito, and Rubin, ‘Don’t Bite the Hand That Feeds’; Haer, Faulkner, and Whitaker, ‘Rebel Funding and Child Soldiers’.
9. Humphreys, ‘Natural Resources, Conflict, and Conflict Resolution’; Collier, ‘Rebellion as a Quasi-Criminal Activity’.
10. Luong and Weinthal, ‘Rethinking the Resource Curse’; Karl, The Paradox of Plenty; Noreng, ‘National Oil Companies and Their Government Owners’.
11. Granovetter, ‘Economic Institutions as Social Constructions’; Metcalf and Wolfram, ‘Cursed Resources? Political Conditions and Oil Market Outcomes’; Bohn and Deacon, ‘Ownership Risk, Investment, and the Use of Natural Resources’.
12. Cheon, Lackner, and Urpelainen, ‘Instruments of Political Control’; Merrill and Orlando, ‘Oil at Risk’; Englebert and Ron, ‘Primary Commodities and War’.
13. Paine, ‘Rethinking the Conflict ‘Resource Curse’’; Ross, The Oil Curse.
14. Waldner and Smith, ‘Survivorship Bias in Comparative Politics’; Colgan, Petro-Aggression: When Oil Causes War; Kim, ‘A Crude Bargain’; Meierding, ‘Weaponizing Energy Interdependence’.
15. Dam-de Jong, ‘Armed Opposition Groups and the Right to Exercise Control’; Dam-de Jong and Stewart, ‘Illicit Exploitation of Natural Resources’.
16. Beckert and Dewey, The Architecture of Illegal Markets; Mayntz, ‘Illegal Markets’.
17. Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution.
18. Arato, ‘Revolutions and Constitution Making’; Sambanis and Schulhofer-Wohl, ‘Sovereignty Rupture’; Rule and Tilly, ‘1830 and the Unnatural History of Revolution’.
19. Humphrey, The Unmaking of Soviet Life.
20. Fabry, Recognising States; Talmon, ‘Recognition of Opposition Groups’; Lawson, Anatomies of Revolution; Griffiths, ‘Admission to the Sovereignty Club’.
21. Ross, The Oil Curse.
22. Dumberry, ‘Risky Business’.
23. Kubota, ‘The Rebel Economy in Civil War: Informality’; Stys et al., ‘Brokering between (Not So) Overt and (Not So) Covert Networks in Conflict Zones’; Wennmann, ‘The Political Economy of Conflict Financing’.
24. Schultze-Kraft, Crimilegal Orders, Governance and Armed Conflict, 102.
25. Bozcali, ‘Probabilistic Borderwork’; Furlan, ‘Understanding Governance by Insurgent Non-State Actors’, 17.
26. Nordstrom, ‘Shadows and Sovereigns’; Gregson and Crang, ‘Illicit Economies: Customary Illegality, Moral Economies and Circulation’.
27. Saylor, State Building in Boom Times, 22–33.
28. Le Billon, Wars of Plunder, 57.
29. Lyall, ‘Process Tracing, Causal Inference, and Civil War’; George and Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences; Tang, Xiong, and Li, ‘Does Oil Cause Ethnic War?’
30. Thies, ‘A Pragmatic Guide’; Kay and Baker, ‘What Can Causal Process Tracing Offer to Policy Studies?’
31. George and Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development, 121; Gerring, ‘Is There a (Viable) Crucial-Case Method?’
32. Alley, ‘Yemen’s Multiple Crises’; Salmoni, Loidolt, and Wells, Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen: The Huthi Phenomenon; Freeman, ‘The Al Houthi Insurgency’.
33. Alley, ‘The Rules of the Game’, 389, 99; Lackner, Yemen in Crisis, 257–8; Hill, Yemen Endures, 52.
34. Colton, ‘Yemen: A Collapsed Economy’; Salisbury, Yemen’s Economy, 5, 12–13.
35. Salisbury, Yemen’s Economy: Oil, Imports and Elites, 5, 12–13.
36. Thiel, ‘Yemen’s Imposed Federal Boundaries’; Brandt, ‘The Huthi Enigma’.
37. Lackner, Yemen in Crisis: Road to War, 232.
38. Ibid., 51.
39. Clausen, ‘Competing for Control over the State’; Eleftheriadou, ‘Non-State Armed Actors and Contested Sovereignties’.
40. Dahlgren and Augustin, ‘The Multiple Wars in Yemen’; Ahram, Break All the Borders.
41. Bisswell, ‘Yemen Economic Bulletin’; Kerr, ‘Yemen Wheat Traders’.
42. Bauer and Pelofsky, ‘Yemen’s Banking Problems’.
43. UN Security Council, ‘Letter Dated 26 January 2018 from the Panel of Experts on Yemen’; ‘Letter Dated 25 January 2019 from the Panel of Experts on Yemen Addressed to the President of the Se curity Council’, (2019), 37–38, 126–28.
44. Lackner, Yemen in Crisis, 162–4.
45. Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, ‘Corruption in Yemen’s War Economy’; UN Security Council, ‘Letter Dated 26 January 2018 from the Panel of Experts on Yemen’, 37–38, 126–28.
46. International Crisis Group, ‘Discord in Yemen’s North’.
47. Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, ‘Game of Parliaments’, 12.
48. UN Security Council, ‘Letter Dated 22 January 2021 from the Panel of Experts on Yemen’, 38.
49. Ibid., 35, 207–19.
50. Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, ‘Corruption in Yemen’s War Economy’; Hill, Yemen Endures, 293.
51. Huddleston and Wood, ‘Functional Markets in Yemen’s War Economy’.
52. Harris, ‘The Rise of the Subcontractor State’; Coville, ‘The Economic Activities of the Pasdaran’.
53. The Iran Primer.
54. UN Security Council, ‘Letter Dated 25 January 2019 from the Panel of Experts on Yemen’, 129–30.
55. International Crisis Group, ‘Preventing a Deadly Showdown in Northern Yemen’.
56. Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, ‘Deescalate the Economic War‘.
57. Human Rights Watch, ‘Deadly Consequences: Obstruction of Aid in Yemen During Covid-19’.
58. UN Security Council, ‘Letter Dated 22 January 2021 from the Panel of Experts on Yemen’ Addressed to the President of the Security Council’, 38–39.
59. Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, ‘Houthis Scuttle Truce Talks with Last-Minute Demands’.
60. ‘Sana’a’s Decision to Protect Oil Wealth’; ‘Yemen Houthis Give Foreign Oil Companies Ultimatum’.
61. Huber, ‘Resource Geographies’.
62. Johnson, ‘Near Futures and Perfect Hedges’; Manera, ‘Introduction to a Special Issue’.
63. Gallien, ‘Informal Institutions’; Gallien and Weigand, ‘Channelling Contraband’; Sweet, ‘Bureaucrats at War’; Bozcali, ‘Probabilistic Borderwork’.
64. Weber, Simulating Sovereignty; Bryant, ‘Sovereignty in Drag’.
65. Le Billon, ‘Oil and the Islamic State’.
66. Revkin, ‘What Explains Taxation by Resource-Rich Rebels?’
67. Aspinall, ‘The Construction of Grievance’; Anderson, ‘Gangster, Ideologue, Martyr’.
68. Campos, ‘Oil, Sovereignty & Self-Determination’; Naili, ‘Defeating Illegal Trade in Western Sahara’; Irwin, ‘Terrains of Legality and Sovereignty’.
69. Seelke et al., ‘Venezuela: Background and Us Relations’, Venezuela: Political, Economic and Humanitarian Issues (2021).
70. Voller, ‘Kurdish Oil Politics in Iraq’; Mills, ‘Under the Mountains’.
71. Ahram, ‘Rebel Oil Companies’.
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Ariel I. Ahram
Ariel I. Ahram is Professor at Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs and the author of War and Conflict in the Middle East and North Arica (Polity, 2019).