The Muslim Brotherhood imposes new levies in Taiz… What is the situation?

25th September 2024

2 minutes read

The Muslim Brotherhood imposes new levies in Taiz... What is the situation?

The forces of the Taiz Front, under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, have imposed new levies on domestic gas.

Documents and information published by Al-Umana Net indicate that checkpoints controlled by the Front and Colonel Abu Bakr Al-Jubuli, on the road connecting Tor Al-Baha and Hayjat Al-Abd, have detained dozens of trucks carrying domestic gas in the past two days to impose new levies on them.

Sources stated that the Front’s checkpoints and Al-Jubuli demanded truck drivers to pay 500 rials per gas cylinder, while gas tanker drivers were asked to pay 200,000 rials, which the drivers refused.

The sources explained that the Brotherhood forces justify these levies by claiming they are for the benefit of the “wounded”. If successfully collected, the amounts would exceed 300 million rials per month.

This incident prompted Mohsen Waheyt, the General Director of the Gas Authority, to contact Taiz Governor Nabil Shamsan to warn about the dangers of the Brotherhood’s actions, noting that this would destabilize the gas supply situation in Taiz.

In his letter, Waheyt confirmed that imposing any financial amounts on gas would raise the price of gas cylinders for citizens, increasing their suffering given the current conditions of the country. He urged the governor to instruct all military and security checkpoints in Taiz to stop collecting any financial sums on gas tankers or trucks, under any pretext, and to allow gas transport trucks to pass, as this violates the law and exacerbates the citizens’ hardship.

The attempt by the Taiz Front forces to impose new levies on domestic gas coincides with their recent resumption of seizing the khat tax. Documents revealed that three tax collectors responsible for collecting khat tax at the entrances to Taiz city submitted separate complaints to the provincial tax office, stating that the Front forces were preventing them from collecting the khat tax, collecting it themselves instead.

The collectors were blocked by forces from the 22 Mika Brigade, which is still holding one of them in its prisons, as well as by forces from the newly established “Victory Brigade,” a formation recently created by the Brotherhood.