Over the past few years, Yemen has featured in the news as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The hopes of the protest movement in 2011 gave way to civil war and a brutal Saudi-led invasion.

But the people of Yemen aren’t just the victims of a political tragedy. In its modern history, Yemen has inflicted a humiliating defeat on the British Empire. One part of the country became the only Arab state to adopt Soviet-style Marxism as its ideology. Yemen’s path to its current disastrous condition is a complex and fascinating story that tells us a lot about the modern world system.

Helen Lackner is one of the leading experts on modern Yemen. She spent several years living in the country and has written numerous books and articles about it, including Yemen in Crisis: The Road to War.