REPORT: Profile of Yemen's ex-president Saleh

The radio station on Yemen's Houthi controlled interior ministry said on Monday Yemen's ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, had been killed.

Saleh became the ruler of North Yemen in 1978 at a time when the south was a separate communist country, and went on to lead the unified country after the two states merged in 1990.

Born in 1942 near Sanaa, Saleh received a limited education before joining the military as a non-commissioned officer.

His first break came when President Ahmed al-Ghashmi, who came from the same Hashed tribe as Saleh, appointed him military governor of Taiz, North Yemen's second city. When Ghashmi was killed by a bomb in 1978, Saleh replaced him.

In 1990, an array of domestic and regional circumstances propelled North Yemen under Saleh and the socialist South Yemen state into unification that neighboring Saudi Arabia, which shares a long porous border with Yemen, at first opposed.

He angered Riyadh by staying close to Saddam Hussein during the 1990-91 Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, leading to the expulsion of up to one million Yemenis from Saudi Arabia.

But Saleh then won plaudits from Western powers for carrying out economic reforms drawn up by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and made efforts to attract foreign investors.

His General People's Congress party swept to victory in a 1993 parliamentary election, the first held after unification. South Yemen tried but failed to secede in a brief civil war in 1994 and Saleh then proceeded to move closer to Saudi Arabia, allowing an influx of its radical Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam.

Opponents often complained that Saleh failed to address the basic needs of Yemen's people, two-thirds of whom live on less than $2 per day. Yet Saleh managed to keep Western and Arab powers on side.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities, Washington became more aware of Yemen as a source of foot soldiers for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Though he was born in Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden himself could trace his roots back to Yemen's Hadramaut region.

Saleh cooperated with U.S. authorities, and the CIA started taking action against wanted figures. But by 2007, militants had regrouped in Yemen, and in 2008 they announced that their Saudi and Yemeni wings had united under the banner of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia, the United States and other allies responded by stepping up financial support to bolster Saleh's rule.

But popular uprisings that toppled Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak in 2011 resonated in Yemen, drawing tens of thousands to daily protests in Sanaa and in Taiz to the south, threatening Saleh's apparent dynastic ambitions.

The bombing of Saleh's compound in June 2011, an apparent assassination attempt, left Saleh with severe burns, forcing him to seek treatment in Saudi Arabia.

Ever nimble, Saleh reneged on three deals to transfer power before the attempt on his life and shrugged off U.S. and Saudi pressure to stay in exile, making good on a promise to return home the following September.

But international pressure redoubled in October, when the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution demanding he sign a handover plan brokered by Gulf neighbors. France and Britain hinted at European Union sanctions against him.
Saleh struggled to quell the protests against his rule as a spate of gun battles pushed Yemen closer to civil war.

The violence culminated in deadly clashes between forces of the Hashed tribal group and government troops. Under mounting pressure, Saleh agreed to sign the accord in November which led to him relinquishing power to his former Vice-President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in February 2012.

Since relinquishing power Saleh has continued to receive treatment in Saudi Arabia and the United States for injuries sustained during the assassination attempt. On January 16 it was announced the 71-year-old had been admitted to the Saudi German Hospital in Sanaa for an ear operation.

Saleh once compared his 33-year rule of Yemen to “;dancing on the heads of snakes.” If he has been a determined survivor, he has also been a charismatic and often popular ruler with a canny understanding of the workings of Yemeni society.



REUTERS


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