Building a New Yemen: Recovery, Transition, and the International Community

This collection of essays is a useful primer on the politics and economics of Yemen, now mired in war and dysfunction. Although the authors do address the “fragmented interventions” of various international players, from the United States to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (Iran does not figure prominently), most of the contributions are devoted to detailed and instructive discussions of tangled local political alliances and the severe economic challenges with which any postwar settlement will have to contend. One essay offers a useful description of the history of the Houthi political movement and its tortured relationship with various local governments. Another assesses the scandalous decline in living standards across the country, no matter who is in control. Damning descriptions of international aid programs whose donors seem not to have known or cared whom they were supporting intersect with equally negative assessments of local political venality and economic greed. It is hard to conjure a happy end to this story, but this book provides a clear-eyed appraisal of where a conclusion to Yemen’s long era of war will have to start.