Vice President Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi of Yemen in Sana'a, February 7 (Reuters/Khaled Abdullah)

Until last year, Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi was a name that many people in the Arab world and the West knew little about. Yemen’s vice president since 1994, he was typically overshadowed by Ali Abdullah Saleh, the one who made all of the government’s important decisions and had the authority to run Yemen like his personal fiefdom.

The protests that engulfed the Middle Eastern country last year changed the picture, peaking in a power transfer agreement, brokered by Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states, that pushed Saleh out and elevated Hadi into his post.

In February, millions of Yemenis formally voted Hadi in as their next president although he was the only name on the ballot.

Two months later, Hadi has been juggling his responsibilities in order to ensure that the new unity government in Sana’a is operating effectively.

In a bold and surprising decision, Hadi dismissed two high profile figures of Saleh’s extended family, paving the way for new leadership in the air force and presidential guard.

The new president and his allies have spoken out when signs of obstruction have pointed to Saleh’s loyalists, attracting the support of the United States in the process.

The most significant decision that Hadi has taken to date has been in Yemen’s fight against Al Qaeda and its terrorist allies in the south of the country. If 2011 was the year that allowed Al Qaeda to expand its control over towns and cities in the south and southeast, 2012 is turning out to be a year when the group is facing an unprecedented amount of pressure.

The Yemeni armed forces, once beaten and bruised by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, are taking back the land it lost only a few months earlier, launching air strikes on terrorist bases daily and sending in reinforcements to drive the group away from villages that were converted into Al Qaeda havens. The terrorist organization has faced its most significant operational setback in nearly a year, with Zinjibar, a city that it had controlled since May of last year, reportedly recaptured by Yemeni military forces after weeks of combat.

All the while, the United States have used their drone assets and warplanes to augment the Yemeni Government’s offensive, a sign of an enduring defense partnership that will outlast Saleh’s downfall

The United States have fired more missiles in Yemen this year than at any time since 2002, another indication that Hadi views the relationship is similarly valuable terms.

Ali Abdullah Saleh was once viewed as an indispensible asset in Washington’s counterterrorism strategy. Over the past few months, it has become quite obvious that Saleh was not only replaceable but perhaps lazy and manipulative when compared to his successor.

Vice President Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi of Yemen in Sana'a, February 7 (Reuters/Khaled Abdullah)

With former president Ali Abdullah Saleh tucked away in a New York City hotel, seven thousand miles away from his longtime home, millions of Yemenis voted for a new leader on Tuesday. The presidential election will not be much of a contest one—Vice President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Al-Hadi will be the only candidate on the ballot—but it will nonetheless provide the country with an opportunity to ditch the past year of bloodshed and usher in a new era in Yemeni history.

Yemen is clearly a country that is still fractured along a number of lines. When asked whether the upcoming presidential election will bring stability to their lives, some Yemenis are apprehensive, if not downright dismissive, that the vote will make any difference. Many of Yemen’s street demonstrators, who have done most of the protesting and dying over the last year, are insulted that the February 21 vote can be called an election at all. As one Yemeni interviewed by The Washington Post laid out with agitation, “How can they support such a thing? How can they call it an election?”

This sentiment is particularly widespread in Yemen’s southern highlands, which has perhaps been one of the most disenfranchised and abandoned regions of the country since the north and south merged in 1990.

Residents in the coastal city of Aden, the one time capital of the People’s Democratic Republic of South Yemen, are skeptical that a new government in Sana’a will do anything to give them their fair share of representation in the political process. Yemen may technically be a single entity, but a large portion of the population in the south still look back to the days of southern independence with “nostalgia,” when they controlled their own resources and were free to make policy based on their own needs. That short history came to an end when the Soviet Union scaled back its support to South Yemen (which was then the Arab world’s only Marxist state), which weakened it to the point of allowing Ali Abdullah Saleh to gobble up the region on his own terms.

Calls by southern leaders for some sort of separation from the north have grown significantly over the past year, where the power of the central government has been eroded. The Southern Movement is the loudest voice for those calls although the movement itself is divided, with some simply wanting more autonomy, while others are pushing for full independence.

Vice President Hadi is a southerner himself, albeit one that has ingratiated himself more with Saleh’s northern brethren than his people along the coast. The simple fact that a southerner will now hold the top spot in the government for the first time since unification could have enormous dividends for the people of the southern provinces.

Whatever the case, Hadi will have his work cut out for him as he enters office officially after the presidential vote. The United States has given the longtime vice president their full support, with some juicy economic incentives coming his way if he pushes for democratic reforms and cooperates fully on terrorism issues. But ultimately, Hadi can only survive with the support of his own countryman. In order to attract that support, he must demonstrate good will and show the courage required to tackle the tough issues. Introducing more equilibrium into the north-south relationship will be one of those major issues.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen

The process took weeks to debate and finalize but the Yemeni parliament has finally approved the Gulf Cooperation Council’s peace accord. The organization of Arab Gulf states tabled the plan last April in an attempt to slide President Ali Abdullah Saleh from his post after thirty-three years as the country’s top man.

In return for stepping down, Saleh has been granted a total reprieve for crimes that he allegedly perpetrated during his three decades in power, including crimes that were committed during the past eleven months of bloodshed against Yemeni demonstrators.

The accord, when first proposed by the GCC, was highly controversial. Navi Pillay, the United Nations human rights commissioner, denounced the plan as a breach of international humanitarian law due to its immunity clause. Human Rights Watch issued a scathing critique of the agreement as “a license to kill” more protesters. 

Anti-government protesters, some of whom have lost loved ones to regime shelling and snipers, are understandably the most upset. Before parliament formally endorsed the power transfer plan, tens of thousands demonstrated in cities across Yemen to express their frustration with what they perceive as a bill that not only condones murder but protects the murderer from prosecution.

If there is any consolation to the protesters, it is the fact that parliament took their anger into consideration.

Originally, the GCC agreement provided full immunity to Saleh and all of his aides for all crimes that may have been committed during the past thirty-three years. This would have not only included the killing of innocent Yemenis in city streets but violence connected to all of the country’s regional conflicts, including the indiscriminate bombing campaign against Shī’ah Houthi rebels in the north and a crackdown on separatists in the south. Monetary violations, such as shady real estate deals and outright corruption, would also have been barred from the courts.

Some of those stipulations are now gone. Saleh enjoys full immunity but his aides will no longer be protected from charges of corruption or crimes related to terrorism.

Although Saleh is not set to resign, the future for Yemen remains bleak at best. The president is reportedly scheduled to leave for Oman before flying to the United States for treatment on wounds that he received after a June assassination attempt at his palace. 

Washington will most likely ask him to depart after his medical tests are completed, rightly concerned that an extended or permanent stay would give Yemenis the impression that the United States are willfully harboring a war criminal. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have already refused to take Saleh in which begs the question of where he will eventually end up.

Then there are questions relating to how much Yemen will actually change from a post-Saleh transition. His son, Ahmed, remains in control of Yemen’s most elite and well trained branch of the military. Loyalists are keeping their positions in the government which could help destabilize the country by allowing Saleh to manipulate Yemen’s politics behind the scenes.

In the end, ruling out of sight may not even be necessary for Saleh has already indicated that he plans to return to Yemen as an opposition candidate after his medical stay in the United States.

None of these concerns even begin to account for the country’s longer term problems, such as increased resentment in the south over what is seen as a “northern occupation” there. Al Qaeda’s freedom of movement is also a blaring problem with possible regional dimensions.

To expect Yemen’s unity government to solve all of these problems in a few months or even a few years would be a viewpoint in the realm of the imaginary. The international community will have to wait and see whether Saleh’s departure will really make any difference.

View of Sana'a, the capital city of Yemen, January 13, 2007 (Eesti)

Al Qaeda’s core organizational leadership may be at its weakest point in over a decade but the group’s regional franchises are certainly making up for their losses.

Nowhere in the world is this more obvious than in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, with a government fractured internally and system of political parties fighting among itself. Add acute child undernourishment, widespread illiteracy, inaccessible health care services and a country awash in weapons to the picture, and it is a wonder why terrorists did not try to expand their territorial reach in Yemen sooner.

Yemen was in horrible shape to begin with, even before millions of Yemeni demonstrators took to the streets in strong opposition to their president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. But with eleven months of turmoil pitting security forces against demonstrators and armed tribes, in multiple cities, Al Qaeda’s wing in this Arabian Peninsula state has been given a gift from the ruling regime.

With Yemen’s elite counterterrorism units diverted to the capital and its army picked apart, AQAP is on the ascendancy, grabbing territory in the south and attempting to do what they miserably failed to do in Iraq years earlier—establish an Islamic emirate in an Arab state.

Abyan Province along Yemen’s southern coast has been, and continues to be, the hotbed of AQAP’s governing project. Al Qaeda’s Yemeni outfit, which used to call itself Ansar al-Sharia, has been in firm control of two large Yemeni towns in the province, including the provincial capital of Zinjibar since May of last year.

Eight months later, AQAP militants remain in the city, administering their code of justice and attempting to exert their will on the local population, despite multiple offensives from what is left of Yemen’s armed forces. The city of one hundred thousand now resembles a deserted town, with buildings completely abandoned, streets marked with potholes and what were homes that have transformed into military garrisons  Residents are only just returning, after being refused entry by the militants twice before.

Two towns held by Al Qaeda are disturbing enough. But evidently, the militants are only beginning their trek for more land and resources.

Earlier this week, fighters connected to AQAP entered the interior Yemeni town of Rada’a without resistance from the police forces. Residents in the area reported that some policemen voluntarily gave their weapons to Al Qaeda before fleeing town. AQAP is now essentially the policemen, service provider and mayor of the city, all rolled into one. In case anyone doubted its strength, the militants hoisted their black flag above the town’s mosque in a show of defiance to the central government, demonstrating, in the meantime, that the people of Rada’a are now beholden to Al Qaeda rule.

Yemen’s interim unity government may not view Al Qaeda or terrorism in general as its top priority. Given the country’s horror story, from Saleh prolonging the transition process to a desperate cash flow problem, perhaps Yemen’s government should not be. But Al Qaeda is not waiting around for Yemen’s leaders to pounce before making their move. The Yemenis may not be worrying about it but you can bet that the United States intelligence community is.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen (Reuters)

The man who once described ruling Yemen as “dancing on the heads of snakes” has been bitten by the wrath of his own people.

Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to transfer power to his vice president on Wednesday in exchange for an immunity arrangement that will save himself and his family from facing trial for the killing of Yemeni protesters.

The veteran Yemeni president had promised to relinquish power several times before this year only to backpedal from agreements at the last minute.

The country meanwhile, already among the most impoverished in the Middle East, is at a delicate standstill between a regime that refuses to make any concessions and a grassroots protest movement that has laid siege to the streets of the capital city since for nearly ten months.

Yemen’s demonstration committee estimates that at least one thousand civilians have died from pitched battles with Saleh’s security forces while hundreds of others were probably killed outside the protest zone in skirmishes between the country’s most powerful tribal confederation and remnants of Saleh’s Republican Guards unit.

The Yemeni army has been stretched thin across the country by the protests, making it difficult for the armed forces to simultaneously combat the separatist threat in the central south of the country where Al Qaeda has established a presence.

Pressure from months of protests and an assassination plot couldn’t make Saleh consider his neighboring states’ peace plan so what changed?

The exhaustion and depletion of the armed forces, an institution that is fighting deserting military units, tribes, separatists and Al Qaeda militants all at once, would be the most logical conclusion. A United Nations Security Council resolution that embarrassed Yemen s government for all of the world to see last month may have also had a role in Saleh’s sudden determination to quit.

The final nail in the coffin may well have been how the Security Council resolution was passed—unanimously, without any objection from permanent council members like China and Russia that have otherwise resisted Western initiatives at the UN.

Saleh, once an American ally, evolved into a man that was more isolated diplomatically than Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who has to date retained the lukewarm support of Beijing and Moscow. Indeed, it is difficult to find anyone alive today who was still standing by Saleh’s side as his country deteriorated into anarchy. Most of his countrymen want him detained and tried for war crimes for the excessive force that has been deployed against them since February. Once allies were turned off by his arrogance and dictatorial attitude.

Given Saleh’s wily personality and survival skills, he might try to draw out the implementation phase of the Gulf Cooperation Council proposal, only to make sure that his sons and nephews hold onto their positions in the military and security forces. He has, after all, performed circus tricks before when he decided to backtrack on the power transition a total of three times. This time, the feeling in the air is different. Ten months of excruciating stress, a near death experience, a three month exile to Saudi Arabia and the loss of his closest friends seems to have weighed the strongman down to the point of capitulation.

This is not the end for Yemen. The country faces problems that together resemble a combustible flame. Saleh left in his wake a nation that, hope aside, has been ruined diplomatically, financially and politically. Yemen is awash in guns but running out of oil and water.

Saleh may be gone, but his relatives are still sitting comfortably behind their desks. Other elements of Yemen’s elite may find it wise to draw up plans of their own in the hopes of grabbing some power themselves. Vice president Abd al-Rahman Mansur al-Hadi, used to sitting in the background, is now thrust in the spotlight of international affairs. In the meantime, the government and the opposition must find enough common ground to rebuild a transitional government before presidential elections can take place months down the road.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen

Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to transfer power in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday in a deal that was brokered by the oil kingdom and its smaller Gulf neighbors.

Last week, Saleh told France 24 that he would step down “within ninety days” of reaching agreement with Yemen’s neighboring states. Since the uprising began in his country in February, the president has repeatedly promised to relinquish power only to change his mind every time.

Wednesday’s agreement sees Saleh transferring power to his vice president within a month in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Presidential elections should be scheduled within three months.

This summer, the Yemeni president was severely injured in a bomb attack on his palace. He spent months recuperating in Saudi Arabia where former Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has also lived since his regime was swept away in a popular uprising earlier this year.

Saudi Arabia has a long history of interfering in Yemen’s affairs. The country is divided along ethnic and political lines. The main opposition party Islah is conservative and Islamist while many of the young protesters in Yemen’s streets call for democracy and free elections.

The Hashid tribal federation, the second largest of its kind in Yemen, is probably the most powerful group within the Islah party. It is based in the north and northwest of Yemen where a guerrilla campaign has been waged against the government for many years. The Saudis built a wall along their southern borders to contain this uprising and conducted air strikes in the area to prevent rebels from crossing the border into their kingdom.

The northern insurgency is distinct from the separatist threat in the central south of Yemen that is fueled by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, currently perceived as the most powerful branch of the infamous terrorist network.

Saleh has maintained for years that the two conflict are intertwined; that Al Qaeda was coordinating tactics with the northern insurgents while Iran was masterminding the plot from afar. The United Kingdom and the United States have backed Saleh’s government with arms and funds to crush the Al Qaeda presence but it’s unclear whether he hasn’t diverted those resources to combat the more existential threat to his regime which is the Hashid presence in the north.

The Saudis were quick to side with Saleh when riots erupted in his capital but they now appear to be more sympathetic toward the opposition. Both were acceptable to the kingdom—Saleh and the Hashid have depended on Riyadh for financial support. The only outcome that it may not be prepared to accept is democratic chaos that will divide Yemen again.

The first United States Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft reconnaissance system arrives at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, May 26

Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni American cleric that the United States have been trying to kill for the past year, finally met his maker on Friday.

American drones hovering in Yemeni airspace spotted the radical imam in a remote area in the north of the country, considered the tribal heartland of Yemen. Awlaki had just finished breakfast and was headed for his vehicle when the unmanned aircraft fired their their missiles, first at the car of Awlaki’s companions, then at Awlaki himself. The missiles incinerated the two vehicles and left Awlaki in scattered pieces until his hosts gathered his burnt remains and buried him deep underground.

Besides Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawhiri, Anwar al-Awlaki has been one of those senior Al Qaeda figures that Washington has hoped to get its hands on for years. His name rapidly elevated in importance after investigators learned that the young Nigerian who attempted to blow up an airplane with explosives sewn in his underwear was encouraged and directed by Awlaki to hit the plane with full force.

The American intelligence community has been trying to kill him ever since and came extremely close to doing so this past May when an earlier drone attack targeted a convoy of vehicles that Awlaki was believed to be riding in. The Yemeni American escaped that strike unscathed, providing the United States with an even greater incentive to find him and finish the job.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (APAP), a franchise group that the Obama Administration has called the most lethal and dangerous terrorist threat to the American homeland, has not had many bad days. Friday was the exception. Not only was Awlaki killed; his associate and chief propagandist, Samir Khan, another American, was neutralized in the same attack as well.

Khan is better known as the editor of AQAP’s online magazine, Inspire, which releases articles about its martyrs and lengthy statements urging Muslims in the West to go after their host countries.

In a single day, AQAP lost two of its more charismatic figures. But the organization is still up and running and will likely continue to run until the Yemeni political crisis is resolved and the Yemeni Government extends its authority throughout its tribal frontier.

For President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Awlaki’s demise could not have come at a better time. Saleh has been battling his own citizens in Yemen’s major cities for eight months. His family, which controls the country’s security services, is besieged by tribal fighters supportive of the opposition (the Ahmar family) and former soldiers of his own military (General Ali Mohsen).

The United States, the president’s biggest military benefactor, have distanced themselves from Saleh’s regime as the protests grew larger and bloodier with so sign of any political opening. It was only a few months ago that the Yemeni president was burned and severely wounded by an assassination attempt at his palace. The perpetuators are still unknown.

The latest counterterrorism success against AQAP may be the most significant yet for Saleh, potentially consolidating his domestic position in relation to his armed rivals. In any event, it will strengthen Saleh’s argument that he is the only man capable of stopping an Al Qaeda takeover of the entire country—a claim still ludicrous to millions of Yemeni protesters but buzzing louder in the corridors of power in Washington.

There is no clear indication as to whether the United States will now give Saleh and his regime a pass on stepping down from power and living a life of leisure in a third country, which would kill any chances of improving America’s image with the Yemeni population. The Yemeni intelligence service is rumored to have been a key interlocutor and partner during the Awlaki operation—a rumor that if substantiated, could give American officials pause in their call for the Yemeni president to quit.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, 2010

It has been a little over two months since Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was nearly killed. On June 3, shelling from tribal forces in residential neighborhods of the capital Sana’a hit the presidential palace’s mosque just as he and a number of government allies were praying there. The mortar attack killed a few of Saleh’s elite Republican Guard troops, injured several of the highest officials in his ruling National Congress Party, including the prime minister, and came close to ending Saleh’s own life. His face was burned and shrapnel was lodged close to his heart, enough to have him whisked off to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment.

Government spokesmen have issued multiple statements on Saleh’s health—so many that it is difficult to determine which ones are accurate and which ones are being used for propaganda purposes. But Saleh put an end to the confusion over his fate on August 16, when he released a videotaped speech to his tribal supporters claiming that his health was improving by the day and vowing to return to his native Yemen. In the same speech, he vowed not to resign amid threats of threats, violence and inflammatory rhetoric—even as he deployed those very tactics to subdue his opponents.

We must discuss all the available data, all the events in Yemen, and how to get our country out of the crisis. The crisis which was fabricated by some political forces to reach power. We welcome the opposition and tell them that you can reach power through ballot boxes, not through coups, statements, denunciation, insults or irresponsible speeches.

The speech is the epitome of what Saleh has represented for the past thirty-three years—a shrewd political survivor and manipulator. He knows how to get under the skin of his rivals, when to use threats and when to act like a consoling figure willing to reach out to his opposition. This is the same talent that fooled the Yemeni opposition, his Arab Gulf neighbors and the United States not once or twice but three times, when Saleh reneged on signing a Gulf Cooperation Council deal that would have transferred power over to his deputy within a month.

With Saleh nursing his wounds in Riyadh, responsibility for quelling the protests and hostile anti-government tribes fell to his son, Ahmed, and his oldest nephew, Yahya. The preeminent security institutions in Yemen are under the control of Saleh’s close relatives, assuring that defections from elite units will be kept to a minimum.

The ploy has worked good enough, so far. Downtown Sana’a is still full of Saleh loyalists and has been used as a sanctuary to rain rockets and shells on tribal strongholds in the capital’s periphery. Yet in a society as fragmented and armed as Yemen’s, central Sana’a is where Saleh’s influence runs out. The Hashid confederation, led by the influential Sadiq and Hamid al-Ahmar, is in no way deterred by the Republican Guard’s many attacks. In their eyes, they see the Guard maneuver as an act of desperation and a tacit admission that the influence of Saleh’s government is bottled up in the central corridors of the capital.

Southern Yemen is a rather different story. While street battles and demonstrations are as frequent there as in other parts of the country, the revolt in the southern mountains has a dangerous extremist dimension that caught the United States and its Yemeni counterterrorism partners off guard.

Militants thought to be affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have seized Zanjibar, the capital of Abyan Province, and held onto their territory despite repeated campaigns by the Yemeni army and air force to scatter them. Government troops report militant casualties every day yet the balance of power on the ground is still the same as it was a month ago. Yemeni soldiers situated in the southern end of the peninsula have increasingly been prime targets for militant attacks, including a suicide bombing along a checkpoint last week that killed eight troops. American drone aircraft have picked up the slack, bombing suspected terrorist positions and relieving some of the stress that the Yemeni army has had to deal with.

Saleh’s return is still questionable. If Saudi Arabia were smart, they would “convince” the Yemeni president to join his Tunisian counterpart on permanent vacation in the kingdom, sparing Yemeni civilians an even greater amount of violence were he to return. Regrettably, even this prescription would not dampen the bullets from firing in the direction of anti-government forces, as Saleh’s son and nephews could easily use Yemen’s security establishment to kill off any political transition.

The United States are is once again left with few options—a testament to how versatile and people driven the Arab revolutions have become.

The crossover occurred two weeks ago when Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen, rejected for the third time a peace proposal mediated by the Gulf Cooperation Council that would have rewarded him with immunity for stepping down. The country’s most powerful tribal confederation, the Hashid (which Saleh’s own tribe is a part of) finally decided that enough is enough. With the blessing of the tribe’s leaders, also Yemen’s wealthiest businessmen, Hashid fighters have begun attacking Saleh’s government with live ammunition.

The battles between Saleh’s security forces and Hashid insurgents have plunged the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, into a state of desperation. Over two hundred people have been killed over the last week of fighting alone with both sides registering casualties. Hundreds of Yemeni families are gathering up their belongings and heading out of the capital city toward towns in the periphery which are experiencing problems of their own.

In a bid to consolidate his authority and eliminate his strongest political rivals, Saleh’s military rained mortars and rockets onto the Hashid leadership compound. None of them were killed though the attack highlighted the steps that Saleh was willing to take to kill his opponents and silence dissent.

The military operation only worsened the situation however. Rather than cow down, tribal fighters approved a retaliatory strike by shelling the president’s palace residence in the heart of the city. Saleh, his prime minister and the speaker of the Yemeni parliament were all injured in the attack. Seven guardsmen were killed and the violence got so out of hand that the White House and American State Department released a statement calling for all sides in the conflict to stand down and implement another ceasefire.

Luckily for the United States, Saleh was not killed in the shelling. For if he was, the administration would have been forced to recraft its Yemen policy virtually overnight.

Washington may be distancing itself from its onetime ally and asking the president to lead a peaceful transition but the death of Saleh would have been a catastrophic blow to the American position. Counterterrorism is America’s top priority in Yemen even if the safety, security and prosperity of the Yemeni people happen to concern the United States as well. Economic reconstruction and the development of strong and resilient governing institutions in Yemen is one way President Barack Obama has attempted to stem the pool of terrorist recruits in the bud. Unfortunately, that strategy has hinged on the hope that Saleh would act responsibly and use his power to bring about political reforms. In the record of the past four months, indeed of the past decade, it is evident that improving the lives of Yemeni citizens is not on Saleh’s “to do list.” Any foreign assistance that is diverted away from the military would strain the patronage network that Saleh has depended on for the past three decades.

The problem for American policy in Yemen is its lack of depth and clarity. Fighting terrorism and preventing extremism from proliferating in Yemen has been the central focus for the past ten years. Supporting Saleh to the hilt, even as the sixty-five year old president detained human rights activists and terrorized religious minorities, was a far easier way for the United States to bring this about rather than addressing Yemen’s root insecurities. Building schools, fostering political participation, diversifying Yemen’s economy and redesigning its political structure would take years, if not decades, to achieve. Training Saleh’s army and hoping that they would take the fight to Al Qaeda, on the other hand, is a quicker way of frustrating the terrorists’ plans.

Yemen policy since 9/11 has been to promote a short term fix to a terrorist threat that has longevity. Indeed in Yemen, extremism is generational, with former Arab resistance fighters telling their children stories about the 1980s Afghan jihad. Their lessons are passed onto grandchildren, creating another wave of recruits for the radical Islamist cause.

Saleh is, or was, an integral part of America’s fix against terrorism in Yemen. Yet his history of combating jihadists is spotty at best. During the 1994 Yemeni civil war, Saleh’s regime enlisted Salafi extremists to fight southern secessionists, to deadly effect. The Yemeni leader has also been known to hype the Al Qaeda threat in the hopes of extracting more money from the United States and the international community.

Saleh’s near death experience should serve as a warning to American officials. It is time to look to the future. Sooner rather than later, Saleh will be gone and Yemen’s various power centers will begin competing among themselves for a spot in the new government. That new leadership may or may not have the gumption to thoroughly pluck away at Yemen’s multiple problems. Even if there is dedication, Yemen’s fumbling economy assures that these new leaders won’t have the resources to do the job effectively.

Washington has money but not the dedication. Dedication will only come if a new strategy for Yemen is devised, one that is geared toward helping the Yemeni people rather than aiding the Yemeni regime. A post-Saleh Yemen could be a fresh start for both.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen (Reuters)

If you thought Ali Abdullah Saleh was on the ropes when he had just the Yemeni demonstrators to deal with, think again. The United States, Saleh’s most important financial and military donor outside of Saudi Arabia, are now edging ever closer to the opposition. And if rumors are correct, Obama Administration officials are in modest talks with the Yemeni Government and the political opposition to ease Saleh out of power, for good.

Although Yemen is distinct from other Arab states (tribes are vastly more important than the central government and the state is riddled with weapons), one cannot help but compare this latest shift in American policy to the hasty response during the Egyptian protests two months ago.

Ali Saleh, like Hosni Mubarak, is a man who sat in the presidential palace for over three decades, manipulating his country’s politics by exploiting tribal fissures within his own society. Saleh, like Mubarak, is (or was) a pro-Western Arab autocrat, allowing Washington to conduct air strikes and counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in military reimbursements. Saleh’s son, Ahmed, holds a prestigious position in the Yemeni Government, serving as the commander of the Republican Guard. Mubarak’s oldest son Gamal was a top official in the National Democratic Party, planning policy for the group and ushering in economic reforms to benefit Egypt’s new entrepreneurial class.

But perhaps the most obvious parallel between the Egypt and Yemen scenarios is the way Washington has been forced to deal with both crises—quickly, and without time for a full assessment of America’s goals and what it seeks to accomplish.

Days after the political unrest began in central Cairo, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all but dismissed them as a minor nuisance to Mubarak’s “stable” regime. Vice President Joseph Biden went one step further by refusing to call Mubarak a dictator, despite the thousands of political dissidents who were rounded up and jailed before the demonstrations grew into a formidable power in Egyptian society. It was only when Mubarak’s lame concessions were refused by the millions of protesters in Egypt’s cities that the White House reassessed its strategy. The result was the resignation of an American ally.

The situation in Yemen is not exact, but it is reminiscent of at least a partial déjà-vu.

A month and a half ago, American officials were quite confident that Saleh could weather the storm and maintain his grip on power. After all, he had done it before, first during the country’s unification in 1990 and then during Yemen’s brief civil war in 1994. The tribes, which have long been the backbone of Yemeni politics, were consistently bought off by Saleh’s inner circle in return for loyalty to the regime and tentative peace in the countryside. The sixty something year old politician also discovered a way, like Mubarak, to plead for American assistance, giving his government the revenue needed to sustain operations by paying off its soldiers, tribesmen and clerics.

Yet that arrangement seems to be all but over. According to this New York Times story, the United States decided to stop backing Saleh once he entered negotiations with the opposition. A possible transfer of power agreement, whereby Saleh would step down in exchange for immunity, is now in the works and sponsored by the Gulf Cooperation Council.

It’s far more plausible to suspect that the United States threw in the towel with Saleh weeks ago, when Yemeni security services and government loyalists killed over fifty protesters in the capital. Not to mention that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the most important issue for the United States in Yemen, has been taking advantage of the government turmoil by stepping up attacks in the south and reportedly capturing several small towns in the southeast. Combine these two elements and it becomes quite clear that Saleh has lost all of his value.

The costs of backing a tepid counterterrorism partner have now outweighed the benefits of being connected or associated with a regime that is fractured and unable to provide the most basic public services for its own citizens.

Nobody wants to back a government that indiscriminately kills fifty of its citizens in cold blood in a single day. Now the United States, Yemen’s most strategic non-Arab ally, is among that growing list.

For more opinions on the evolving situation in Yemen, check out expert Gregory Johnson’s blog and Dexter Filkin’s article in last week’s issue of The New Yorker.