Saleh’s Shadowy Role in Slide to War
By
Angus Mcdowall
27 March 2015
When Saudi Arabian jets struck Houthi positions in
Yemen on Thursday they also hit forces loyal to a key figure who many Yemenis
believe has orchestrated the present crisis from the shadows: Former President
Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Army units loyal to Saleh have fought alongside the
Houthi militiamen, often in civilian dress, as they swept southwards through
Yemen’s highlands in recent weeks to advance on the port of Aden, where
President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is based.
Saleh’s continuing ability to deploy forces and take a
seat at any negotiating table will prove pivotal to Yemen’s future given the
former president’s wide support base in the army and bureaucracy. However, the
coming weeks may determine the fate of Yemen’s arch survivor, who once likened
ruling his country to “dancing on the heads of snakes” and who outlasted
numerous enemies by repeatedly proving the least-worst option for foreign
powers.
Despite being forced to step down in 2012 under a
Gulf-brokered transition plan following mass protests against his decades of
rule, Saleh won immunity in the deal and has remained a powerful political
player operating behind the scenes. The decision to let him stay in Yemen three
years ago now looks like a massive miscalculation by Gulf states.
Analysts say Saleh has backed the Houthis for months,
helping to stop any serious army resistance when they seized the capital Sanaa
in September and using his party’s continued dominance in Parliament to weaken
Hadi’s government. They believe his ultimate aim is to help the Houthis defeat
their common enemies, and then use his extensive political base to build a role
as powerbroker before turning on the rebel group and installing his son Ahmed
Ali Saleh as president. In a conflict dripping with historical ironies, Saleh
waged six wars against the Houthis from 2002 to 2009. Hadi served two decades
as Saleh’s vice president and was a general in his army during Yemen’s last
civil war in 1994.
Those big switches of loyalty, which have come to
define Yemen’s complex and constantly shifting political landscape, were set in
train by the very 2011 Arab Spring protests that ultimately led to Saleh’s fall
from the presidency.
The decades-old coalition of northern tribes that once
supported Saleh was ruptured in the unrest and Saleh turned to his old foes the
Houthis to make common cause against shared enemies, say analysts.
Hadi attempted to loosen Saleh’s grip on main parts of
the armed forces, including crack Republican Guard units, with a military
reorganization in 2013, but the former president retains the loyalty of around
a third of the army, analysts say. Those units, some of which have backed the
Houthis in battles around Taiz and Marib, are better equipped than other parts
of the army.
However, the tactical alliance between Saleh and the
Houthis remains highly fragile. They remain intensely suspicious of each
other’s ultimate motives and share little ideological ground.
“Right now there’s a crisis uniting Saleh and the Houthis,
and that is President Hadi. As long as there is one coherent target for the two
of them, the relationship will stay somewhat strong,” said Fernando Carvajal of
Exeter University. In November the United Nations Security Council imposed
targeted sanctions on Saleh, alongside two senior Houthi leaders, accusing him
of being “behind the attempts to cause chaos throughout Yemen” and of backing
the Houthi rebellion. Saleh has denied those charges, saying they stem from an
attempt to blame the failures of Hadi’s transitional government on his decades
of rule, and denying he seeks a return to power.
Unlike past political comebacks, Saleh has this time
burned so many bridges with important domestic groups and key foreign allies in
Riyadh and Washington that a return to the presidency may prove even beyond his
talents.
Attention has instead moved to his son, Ahmed Ali
Saleh, the former head of the Republican Guard and now Yemen’s ambassador in
the United Arab Emirates, whom he has long tried to position as his political
successor.
Asked by Reuters in an interview last summer if he
thought his son should run for president, Saleh replied: “I would not stop him,
but I wouldn’t recommend at this time that he become a candidate when the state
is in disarray.”
Saleh appears to hope that he is the only person able
to hold together the country’s political, regional and religious factions and
will thus prove indispensable for foreign countries worried about Al-Qaeda,
which has a branch in Yemen.
Source: http://www.arabnews.com/columns/news/723866
URL: https://newageislam.com/the-war-within-islam/saleh’s-shadowy-role-slide-war/d/102173