![Local militia members guard a checkpoint at the entrance to the Balhaf LNG facility and military base in Shabwa Province, Yemen, on November 13, 2020. [Sam Tarling / Sana’a Center / ]](https://i0.wp.com/magazine.com.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/In-southern-Yemen-rush-on-the-gas-nest-egg.jpg?w=696&ssl=1 "Sam Tarling / Sana'a Center")
Sam Tarling / Sana’a Center
ReportageIn the province of Chabwa, a battle is being waged around a gas site, operated by the French giant Total before the war, which became a prison and an Emirati anti-terrorism center, and which the Yemeni state covets to rise from its ashes.
It makes you wonder if he wants to die. Mohammed Saleh Bin Adio, governor of Chabwa province in southern Yemen, is waging a personal war against the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which he says behaves like a colonial power in his country. “I stopped counting the number of times the Emiratis tried to assassinate me, asserts this 44-year-old former teacher, a little man with fragile health. In the summer of 2019, they sent me snipers, then drones. Last week [début novembre], they planted a bomb next to my house. “
Governor Bin Adio only leaves under good escort from his palace of Atak, capital of the province. He takes care of half a dozen baby gazelles that graze his lawns, and brings in a teacher for his five children, in order to save them all danger on the way to school. When the UAE imposed itself in warring southern Yemen in 2016, it carried out a campaign of targeted assassinations against figures of its party, Al-Islah, the Yemeni branch of the international brotherhood of the Muslim Brotherhood, against which the UAE is waging a ruthless struggle throughout the Middle East.
Mixed interests
In Chabwa, a miserable tribal land but rich in hydrocarbons, Mr. Bin Adio is caught in a monumental battle, where the interests of the Saudi and Emirati coalition, which has been bogged down since 2015 in its military intervention against the Houthi rebellion in Yemen; those of a French energy multinational, Total, which has been operating a liquefied natural gas plant on the coast since 2009 in Balhaf; and those of the Yemeni state, which relies on Total’s gas to rise from its ashes, after being consumed in five years of civil war.
“The Emirates sent me an envoy in October, Mr Bin Adio said. They offered me everything I wanted: money, help for my region… on the condition that I stop talking about Total. ” But he only has that word in his mouth. The governor dreams of driving the Emirati army out of the base it established in 2017, within the compound, to the chagrin of the French owner. This gas site provided up to 45% of Yemen’s tax revenue before the war. Since 2015, it has been stationary. “I want to reopen Balhaf!, hammers Mr. Bin Adio. I want to export my gas and it would be enough for the Emirates to leave their base for exports to resume! “
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