The nine lives of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, one of the Middle East’s wiliest political survivors, finally seem to have run out. Saleh was reportedly killed by his erstwhile Houthi allies, who were fighting against his supporters for control of the capital, Sanaa. A grisly video circulating online shows his body, with a gaping head wound, being dumped into the back of a truck—a scene reminiscent of the killing of Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011.
Without the video, it would be hard to believe that he’s really dead. The 75-year-old had survived so many double-crosses and upheavals and was so adept at playing domestic and political rivals against each other that he was said to “dance on the heads of snakes.” For decades he courted foreign powers—most importantly the United States and Saudi Arabia—who saw him as a pliant strongman able to keep his country quiet and stable. And in the process, he drove it into catastrophe.
Saleh rose to power through the military and took power over what was then North Yemen after the assassination of his predecessor, Ahmad al-Ghashmi, in 1978. He ruled the entire country after North and South Yemen unified in 1990. As one Yemeni official told reporter Laura Kasinof for a profile earlier this year, Saleh “wasn’t a dictator. He was a manipulator” who managed over three decades to coopt or undermine any opposition to his regime.
He conducted foreign policy the same way. During the Cold War, Saleh courted U.S. military support for the fight against Marxist South Yemen while also wooing the Soviets. After the rise of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, Saleh’s government was a major recipient of U.S. counterterrorism aid, but he was also accused of using that aid to clamp down on political opponents while tolerating al-Qaida. U.S. officials also accused him of using his country’s instability and terrorism risk as a threat, in order to keep the aid money flowing. This dynamic was well-understood enough to be parodied by Saturday Night Live in 2010, with Fred Armisen playing Saleh.
Throughout his time in office, Saleh enjoyed the support of Yemen’s northern neighbor Saudi Arabia, which was happy to have a skillful and stable autocrat watching its southern flank.
In 2011, Saleh’s luck appeared to have run out. Protests linked to the Arab Spring, over Yemen’s dire economic conditions and corruption, broke out and were met by force. Those clashes ignited a tribal uprising, and Saleh fled the country after a rocket attack on his palace in 2011. He finally agreed to step down in an agreement pushed by Saudi Arabia and the United States in November of that year, transferring power to his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour al-Hadi.
But Saleh wasn’t quite done. In a final coda, he aligned himself with the Houthis, an Iran-backed Shiite rebel group that he had fought against while president. The Houthis took over Sanaa and forced Hadi from power in 2015, and Saleh has been an influential player behind the scenes since then. The rise of the Houthis, seen by their enemies as Iranian proxies, triggered a military intervention, led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the United States, to return Hadi to power. The ongoing war has killed thousands of civilians and caused a humanitarian emergency, with an epidemic of cholera and impending mass famine.
In his final days, Saleh appeared to be attempting one last pivot, breaking with the Houthis and calling for a resumption of relations with Saudi Arabia. Houthis and Saleh loyalists have been battling for control of Sanaa, though it’s not clear whether the former president’s forces can continue to rally after this death.
In the short term, Saleh’s death may make it harder to reach a diplomatic solution to one of the world’s most violent conflicts. If nothing else, Saleh was always willing to cut a deal, unlike the Houthis and Saudis who view each other as existential threats.
Saleh’s long career is also a cautionary tale about America’s habit of backing compliant strongmen in the Middle East, both during the Cold War when communism and Arab nationalists were seen as the primary threats, and today when the focus is on jihadi groups and Iran. For decades the U.S. saw Saleh, for all his flaws, as the devil we knew, the best hope of maintaining stability in a dangerous corner of the world.
Meanwhile, his misrule left a country with a stagnant economy and dysfunctional political system, vulnerable to famine, and perfectly suited for exploitation by groups like al-Qaida and ISIS.
After the disaster of regime change in Iraq under George W. Bush, and the disappointments of the Arab Spring under Obama, the Trump administration has embraced Middle Eastern autocrats with startling enthusiasm, viewing them as the best protection against Iran and groups like ISIS. The president regularly lavishes praise on leaders like Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and especially Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman.
But by suppressing dissent, strongmen don’t quell the discontent of their societies so much as delay the inevitable eruption. And the longer they stay in power and the more absolute their power becomes, the more unpredictable and dangerous that eruption is likely to be.
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