“…Much of it resulted from grand corruption and divide-and-conquer tactics initiated by the former central government-a "shadowy group" (Clausen, 2018, p. 562) surrounding the country's former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Financed mainly through foreign aid and (now-absent) hydrocarbon revenue, he and his allies constructed a large-scale patronage network used for the co-optation of elites and the embezzlement of public funds (Ansari, 2016;Heibach & Transfeld, 2018).…”