Ex-Yemen president Salleh killed in RPG, gun attack
DUBAI: Yemen’s steely former president of 33 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, made his last political gamble and lost yesterday, meeting his death at the hands of the Houthi movement, his erstwhile allies in the country’s multi- sided civil war.
Officials in his General People’s Congress party (GPC) confirmed to Reuters that the 75-year- old Saleh had been killed outside the capital Sanaa in what Houthi sources said was an RPG (rocketpropelled grenade) and gun attack.
A master of weaving alliances and advancing his personal and family interests in Yemen’s heavily armed and deeply fractious tribal society, Saleh unified his country by force, but he also helped guide it toward collapse in its latest war.
The Middle East’s arch-survivor once compared running Yemen to “dancing on the heads of snakes”, ruling with expertly balanced doses of largesse and force.
He outlived other Arab leaders who were left dead or deposed by uprisings and civil wars since 2011.
Cornered by pro- democracy “Arab Spring” protests, Saleh wore a cryptic smile when signing his resignation in a televised ceremony in 2012.
Saleh waged six wars against the Houthis from 2002 to 2009 before he made an impromptu alliance with the group that seized the capital Sanaa in 2014 and eventually turned on him.
The two sides feuded for years for supremacy over territory they ran together.
The Houthis probably never forgave his forces for killing their founder and father of the current leader.
Fearing the Houthis are a proxy for their arch-foe Iran, the mostly Gulf Arab alliance sought to help the internationally recognised Yemeni government win the conflict.
Saleh’s army loyalists and Houthi fighters together weathered thousands of air strikes by a Saudiled military coalition in almost three years of war. — Reuters