To understand the way in which Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other groups have become involved in the conflict in Yemen, we must understand the complexities of both political life and the conflict itself. The existence of myriad groups with competing agendas reveals the parabolic pressures working broadly within the context of the Yemeni state. Although largely reduced to either a ‘proxy struggle’ between Saudi Arabia and Iran, or a conflict between the Houthi insurgents and the regime of President Hadi, events on the ground are far more complex. While there are aspects of both narratives that ring true, both require contextualization and must be located within the milieu of Yemeni politics.

Chapter 6 focuses on Libya and Yemen, both cases in which the former ruling dictator was removed – and eventually in both cases killed – but the result was the fragmentation and near-collapse of the state accompanied by direct and competitive foreign military intervention. Although ‘tribalism’ is often presented as a common factor in producing this outcome in both states, the chapter presents a materialist account of the tribe: just as in the case of the sect, tribal identification and forms of mobilisation acquiring their importance from previous forms of political economy. In both Libya and Yemen, the inheritance of previous revolutions from above – Gaddafi’s in Libya, and the anti-monarchical and anti-colonial revolutions of the 1960s in North and South Yemen, respectively – also shaped the revolutionary-counter-revolutionary conflicts after 2011. Although the NATO campaign in Libya in 2011 has been taken as a paradigmatic case of humanitarian intervention, assimilating the uprising to mid-2000s US policies of ‘regime change’, this chapter demonstrates that in both Libya and Yemen counter-revolutionary external intervention has been much more substantial and consequential.

Chapter 4 tracks Yemen’s democratic transition and descent into civil war. Like Libya, Yemen entered the Arab Spring with severe national unity and state-capacity challenges. National unity collapsed in Yemen when the military fired on protestors and some soldiers and officers defected to the uprising. In addition, in Yemen, during the democratic transition, potent political parties never emerged to represent the secular youth who spearheaded the regime. Houthi rebels, the main challengers to the prior regime under Saleh’s rule, also felt left out of the transition process. Lastly, political parties also failed to forge consensus on conflicts between the former North Yemen and South Yemen, which prevented a democratic bargain or political pact. Yemen was also the poorest country in the region making it exceptionally vulnerable to socioeconomic challenges.