The Best Houthi insurgency in Yemen Books of All Time

Western media has worked to obscure the roots and history of the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement in Yemen. However, the Yemeni resistance forces are now at the center of the world stage as they stop ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with the Palestinians. Caleb Maupin, an anti-imperialist journalist who participated in a Red Crescent Society mission to Yemen in 2015 gives an overview of the Houthis and their origins. He traces the movement back to the Young Believers organization created by Hussein Al-Houth in the 1990s, all the way up to the 2015 seizure of Sanaa, and the Red Sea crisis of today.

He makes a case as to why American patriots and working class people in the United States struggling to defend their jobs, homes, schools and communities should support the Houthis and oppose Joe Biden's operations against them.

Tribes and Politics in Yemen tells the story of the Houthi conflict in Sa'dah Province, Yemen, as seen through the eyes of the local tribes. In the West the Houthi conflict, which erupted in 2004, is often defined through the lenses of either the Iranian-Saudi proxy war or the Sunni-Shia divide. Yet, as experienced by locals, the Houthi conflict is much more deeply rooted in the recent history of Sa'dah Province. Its origins must be sought in the political, economic, social and sectarian transformations since the 1960s civil war and their repercussions on the local society, which is dominated by tribal norms.

From the civil war to the Houthi conflict these transformations involve the same individuals, families and groups, and are driven by the same struggles over resources, prerogatives, and power. This book is based on years of anthropological fieldwork expertise both on the ground and through digital anthropological approaches. It offers a detailed account of the local complexities of the Houthi conflict and its historical background and underscores the absolute imperative of understanding the highly local, personal, and non-ideological nature of internal conflict in Yemen.

Why is Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, involved in a costly and merciless war against its mountainous southern neighbor Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East? When the Saudis attacked the hitherto obscure Houthi militia, which they believed had Iranian backing, to oust Yemen's government in 2015, they expected an easy victory. They appealed for Western help and bought weapons worth billions of dollars from Britain and America; yet two years later the Houthis, a unique Shia sect, have the upper hand.

In her revealing portrait of modern Yemen, Ginny Hill delves into its recent history, dominated by the enduring and pernicious influence of career dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled for three decades before being forced out by street protests in 2011. Saleh masterminded patronage networks that kept the state weak, allowing conflict, social inequality and terrorism to flourish. In the chaos that follows his departure, civil war and regional interference plague the country while separatist groups, Al-Qaeda and ISIS compete to exploit the broken state. And yet, Yemen endures.