This timely book hits the shelves as its subject, Yemen, one of the least-covered political crises of the Middle East, spirals further and further into a humanitarian nightmare. In 2004, a former Yemeni parliamentarian named Husayn al-Huthi was murdered on orders from then Yemeni president ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih. This triggered a series of conflicts between the army, Salafis supported by Saudi Arabia, local tribes, and a rising Zaydi group that has come to be known as the Houthis. After the fall of Salih in 2011, the Houthis mustered a range of tribal loyalty, allowing them, with the help of forces still loyal to Salih, to enter San‘a’ in September 2014 without resistance and eventually depose interim president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. The bombing campaign and blockade begun in 2015 by a Saudi-led coalition has caused thousands of deaths, major damage to the infrastructure and economy, an outbreak of cholera, the threat of famine, and the destruction of heritage. With little media coverage of the conflict, Brandt's masterful account now illumes the story of how this disaster has unfolded.

“The aim of this book,” writes Brandt, “is to reconstruct the conflict's development by giving full play to its local drivers: the micro- and meso-political, tribal, and personal dynamics that shaped the manner in which those individuals and communities directly involved in the conflict calculated their interests, concerns and ambitions, vis-à-vis each other, the Houthi movement and the old regime (2).” Brandt's book begins with an overview of the geographical, social, and political aspects of the northern regions of Sa‘da, Sufyan, and al-Jawf, including the traditional roles of tribes in these areas. Following the lead of other anthropologists working on Yemeni tribes, Brandt argues for the term tribe as the most useful translation of the local Arabic term qabīla, which in Yemen connotes a territorial as well as a genealogical grouping that is never a closed, self-contained system (18).

The bulk of her book is divided into two parts: (1) Legacies of the Past (1962-2004) and (2) The Sa‘da Wars. To understand the context in which the Houthi conflict has emerged, it is important to recognize the shifting tribal alliances during the civil war (1962-1970) that followed the overthrow of the Zaydi imamate. The northern area of Sa‘da, usually said to be uniformly pro-Royalist, also included those who opposed the imamate, especially because of the often-brutal ways in which the Mutawakkilite imams interfered with tribal shaykhs. “Bribes and the opportunity to ‘sell’ tribal allegiance played a major role” during the civil war (45). After the war, new shaykhly lineages patronized by the central government were established and the traditional power base of the Zaydi Sa‘da elite was curtailed. However, during and after the civil war Saudi influence over northern shaykhs was “almost rock-solid” (83). The border addressed in the 1934 Treaty of Taif remained a contested, poorly monitored zone with rampant smuggling activity. By the 1980s, the infiltration of Salafi views from Saudi Arabia, such as the establishment of Dar al-Hadith in Dammaj (see 105-111) and Saudi funding that brought in conservative Sunni school teachers for Yemen's education system, eroded and marginalized the Zaydi school. As noted by Brandt, the relations between Shi‘a Zaydis and Sunni Shafi‘is was not usually antagonistic (102). The spread of both Wahhabi Salafism and Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen led to a Zaydi revivalist movement, but it was not unified in a political sense until the establishment of the Zaydi counterpart “Believing Youth” in the early 1990s. Prominent in this revivalism was the family of Badr al-Din al-Huthi (1926-2010), who spent several years in Iran along with his son Husayn. Brandt provides a valuable summary of the rise and politicization of the Houthi movement culminating in the murder of Husayn in 2004 (114-115).

The second part of the book traces the course of the six Sa‘da wars in details not found elsewhere. These wars engendered local antagonism between Salih's regime and northern tribes, who increasingly became sympathetic to the Houthi cause. The power vacuum following Salih's removal allowed the Houthis to expand their influence, culminating with the takeover of San‘a’ in September 2014. This occurred after Hadi had sponsored a federal plan that would have isolated the Houthi homeland with a Faustian bargain made with former president Salih and the troops loyal to him. Since publishing this account, events in Yemen have continued to fester. In December 2017, Salih turned against the Houthi alliance, which had completely sidelined him, only to be ambushed and killed. Whatever the outcome of the current conflict, Brandt's blending of local and global considerations in analyzing the rise of the Houthis will remain a valuable resource.

As an anthropologist, Dr. Brandt was well-prepared to carry out this research based on her experience between 2003-2008, when she lived in San‘a’, Yemen's capital. Her work in development often led her as far north as Sa‘da and in the process she established valuable contacts with shaykhs and tribesmen, many of whom have played major roles in the ongoing Houthi conflict. An advantage she has in writing this extraordinary account of the Houthi phenomenon is the ability to stay in touch with contacts through the use of social media. The fact that one of her nicknames was al-akhṭabūt (octopus) because “she has her fingers in pies everywhere” (xi) explains how such an impressive account was possible.