Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, who has also been deputy prime minister and minister of defence, has long managed the Yemen portfolio. For decades, he paid a network of Yemeni contacts and informants, which generated resentment on the Yemeni side about Saudi "meddling". Sultan also headed the small Special Office for Yemen Affairs, which remained the main locus of Saudi Arabia's Yemen policy and patronage throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a role that weakened beginning in 2000. Its annual budget was believed to be $3.5 billion per year until the Treaty of Jeddah was signed in 2000. But even as late as early 2011, the "number of people thought to be receiving subsidies still remained in the thousands, but in April recipients were notified that payments were being terminated".Ginny Hill and Gerd Nonneman (May 2011), "Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States: Elite Politics, Street Protests and Regional Diplomacy", Chatham House Middle East and North Africa Programme Briefing Paper, p. 9 The tribal elites Saudi Arabia supports to weaken Yemen central governmentBernard Haykel, "Saudi Arabia's Yemen Dilemma: How to Manage an Unruly Client State", Foreign Affairs, June 14, 2011; ungated version at CNN are behind the drug trade.Michael Horton, "Yemen's Dangerous Addiction to Qat", The JamesTown Foundation Saudi Arabia overreached, according to Yemen, "by accusing Yemeni smugglers of fomenting terrorism" because "homegrown Saudi terrorists—with or without weapons obtained from across the border—cannot be blamed on Yemen"."The World's Most Complex Borders: Saudi Arabia/Yemen", PBS
