I have been semi-aware of the civil war and the attendant humanitarian crisis in Yemen for the last eight years or so, and I recall it being particularly bad in 2017 and 2018. However, I’ve never really understood what the actual contours of the conflict are. I don’t know what the two opposing sides or ideologies are; in fact, I don’t even know if there are just two. (I do know that the Houthis are one of the involved groups, but even there I don’t really know what they’re about, e.g. their vision and objectives; and the same goes for whomever they’re fighting against.) I recall that a few years ago there was a lot of left discourse about how the (USA-supported) Saudi intervention in Yemen was bad, and I guess I’m willing to take other leftists’ word on that, but I’d still like to understand why that intervention was bad.

I’m asking about this because I came across this post recently on Substack, in which the writer implies that the Saudi intervention in Yemen was done for good reasons and gets unfairly criticized. Now, that person is an odious Israeli racist, so I don’t trust that their account of the situation in Yemen is particularly fair, but I do feel a bit stumped; I don’t know much about Yemen, this guy seems to know more than I do, and I don’t know what the counterargument is.

Is there a good article/explainer/blog that I could read about this?