Focusing on the fundamental reasons underlying the lasting crisis of the Yemeni Civil War, this book frames contemporary Yemen and assesses prospects beyond the conflict, identifying the factors which will determine its future internal and international characteristics. Building on Helen Lackner’s profound experience in Yemen, this volume discusses Yemen’s history and state formation, the main political institutions emerging since the Republic of Yemen was established and their role in the war, including the significance of current fragmentation. The volume goes on to discuss climate change, including the water scarcity issue, in the context of resource constraints to economic development and the role of migration. Rural and urban life, as well as the impact of international development and humanitarian aid, are also covered, together with Yemen’s international relations – its interaction with its neighbours as well as Western states. Looking forward, it suggests the type of policies able to give Yemenis the conditions needed for a reasonable standard of living. Thanks to analysis of determining events, the book will appeal to politicians, diplomats, humanitarian organizations, security analysts, researchers on the Middle East and those generally interested in Yemen. It will also be an essential text for students of international relations, political economy, failing states, development studies and contemporary Middle Eastern history.

This book analyzes the civil war in Yemen and how intervening external actors have shaped the trajectory of the conflict. The work examines the conflict in Yemen as a testing ground for expectations about the autonomy and control of proxies by external patrons and the direct consequences for civilian victimization and duration of war. Like other proxy wars, the international dimensions of the war made the conflict in Yemen subject to the geopolitical interests of intervening powers. The longstanding power rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran over Middle East supremacy resulted in a competitive intervention in Yemen, where the initial belligerents of the civil war—the Houthi and the Hadi regime—were used as proxies by Tehran and the Gulf coalition led by Riyadh, respectively. Their intervention ultimately translated into a prolonged and destructive conflict. The often contradictory and self-interested patronage strategies by the coalition’s two central patrons, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, undermined their broader goal of containing Iran. However, Iran’s support for the Houthis enabled them to bait and bleed the Gulf coalition. Lastly, in an effort to balance against Iran, the United States underwrote the military campaign of the Gulf states with military hardware and personnel, thereby further prolonging the conflict and humanitarian disaster. This book concludes that intervention by external patrons both protracted the civil war and made it far more destructive for the civilian population. This book will be of much interest to students of proxy wars, Middle Eastern conflict, and security studies in general.

Christopher Ward provides a complete analysis of the water crisis in Yemen, including the institutional, environmental, technical and political economy components. He assesses the social and economic impacts of the crisis and provides in-depth case studies in the key management areas. The final part of the book offers an assessment of current strategy and looks at future ways in which the people of the country and their government can influence outcomes and make the transition to a sustainable water economy. The Water Crisis in Yemen offers a comprehensive, practical, and effective approach to achieving sustainable and equitable management of water for growth in a country whose water problems are amongst the most serious in the world.

Expert analysis of Yemen's social and political crisis, with profound implications for the fate of the Arab World The democratic promise of the 2011 Arab Spring has unraveled in Yemen, triggering a disastrous crisis of civil war, famine, militarization, and governmental collapse with serious implications for the future of the region. Yet as expert political researcher Helen Lackner argues, the catastrophe does not have to continue, and we can hope for and help build a different future in Yemen. Fueled by Arab and Western intervention, the civil war has quickly escalated, resulting in thousands killed and millions close to starvation. Suffering from a collapsed economy, the people of Yemen face a desperate choice between the Huthi rebels on the one side and the internationally recognized government propped up by the Saudi-led coalition and Western arms on the other. In this invaluable analysis, Helen Lackner uncovers the roots of the social and political conflicts that threaten the very survival of the state and its people. Importantly, she argues that we must understand the roots of the current crisis so that we can hope for a different future for Yemen and the Middle East. With a preface exploring the US’s central role in the crisis.

This report shares an analysis of the effects of natural and man-made shocks in Yemen’s agri-food system. It analyses the results of a field assessment conducted from November 2020 to February 2021 . The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is implementing a project to contribute to data collection and analysis linked to shocks affecting agricultural livelihoods and food security, in order to inform evidence-based programming in selected countries. The objective is to assess the effects of these shocks on the agri-food system, which includes crops, livestock and fishing, food supply, livelihoods and food security of rural populations. Information is collected from primary sources of the production process: producer households, traders or marketers, inputs suppliers, extension officers and other key informants. This report covers the second round of data collected through the FAO monitoring system in Yemen. A first round was collected earlier in 2020, followed by an initial report published in March 2021. The report was made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents of this report are the sole responsibility of FAO and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States of America Government.

An insider's account of the often-fraught U.S.-Saudi relationship Saudi Arabia and the United States have been partners since 1943, when President Roosevelt met with two future Saudi monarchs. Subsequent U.S. presidents have had direct relationships with those kings and their successors—setting the tone for a special partnership between an absolute monarchy with a unique Islamic identity and the world's most powerful democracy. Although based in large part on economic interests, the U.S.-Saudi relationship has rarely been smooth. Differences over Israel have caused friction since the early days, and ambiguities about Saudi involvement—or lack of it—in the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States continue to haunt the relationship. Now, both countries have new, still-to be-tested leaders in President Trump and King Salman. Bruce Riedel for decades has followed these kings and presidents during his career at the CIA, the White House, and Brookings. This book offers an insider's account of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, with unique insights. Using declassified documents, memoirs by both Saudis and Americans, and eyewitness accounts, this book takes the reader inside the royal palaces, the holy cities, and the White House to gain an understanding of this complex partnership.

A bold firsthand account of one of the persistent Arab uprisings, in Yemen At its beginning in 2007, the Southern Movement in South Yemen was a loose merger of different people, most of them former army personnel and state employees of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) who were forced from their jobs after the war in 1994, only four years after the unification between the PDRY and the Yemen Arab Republic. This bold ethnographic account of a persistent Arab uprising, in a rarely studied corner of the Middle East, explores why the Southern Movement has grown so tremendously during the last decade, and how it developed from a primarily social movement demanding social rights into a mass protest movement claiming independence for a state that had long vanished from the world map. Anne-Linda Amira Augustin asks why so many young people born after 1990 joined the movement and demanded the re-establishment of a state that they had never themselves experienced. At the core of South Yemeni resistance lies the transmission from generation to generation of a dominant counternarrative, which may be seen as the continuation and rehabilitation of the PDRY’s national narrative. This narrative, amplified through everyday communication in families and neighborhoods, but also by media-makers, journalists, school and university teachers, civil society actors, and by the movement’s activists, opposes the national-unity narrative of the Republic of Yemen and intensifies the demands for an independent state.