Page 90 - The Economist

90 The Economist December 9th 2017
Obituary Ali Abdullah Saleh

the Hashid, the most powerful in the land.
Other members, especially the al-Ahmar
tribe (some of them cousins, from his own
village), prospered too, and non-blood
tribes were kept in line with handouts
from oil revenues, gifts of new cars and a
vast web of patronage controlled by his
party, the General People’s Congress.
In the oil-rich 1990s he piled up and
paid off freely, stashing billions of dollars’
worth ofgold and propertyunderdifferent
namesin hidey-holesabroad. Hispalace in
Sana’a boasted marble halls, gold-inlaid
furniture and shelves of shiny, unopened
books. (He relaxed not by reading, but by
playing billiards or tooling round the hills
about Sana’a in his luxury Toyota pickup.)
Hishome village acquired, amongthe dust
and dogs, a compound of Saleh family vil-
las clad in coloured marble, and a swarm
of security guards in shades. Not a lot of
money trickled down to desperately im-
poverished Yemenis, especially in the
south. But that was not his problem.
His problem was how to stay in power.
He compared it to dancing on the heads of
snakes: these reptiles lurking in his own
Snake-in-chief party and the Hashid confederation, as
well asin rival tribes, though he was snake-
in-chief. When his security detail once
failed to catch a rare wild black camel by
roping and dragging it, he used that meta-
phor too: Yemen could not be governed by
force. He broke that rule in 1978, when he
Ali Abdullah Saleh, firstpresidentofa united Yemen, was killed on December 4th, killed 30 army officers for conspiracy, and
aged 75
in 2011, when his troops shot at least 50
HEN Houthi rebels broke into Ali northern accent, hisheavysilvertribal ring protesters hoping for an Arab spring in Ye-
W Abdullah Saleh’s house in Sana’a on and his mesmerising stare, turned out to men. Buttheywere stoogesofal-Qaeda, he
December4th to ransackit, theyfound sev- have contacts all overthe place. brusquely told the Western press.
eral bottles of vodka and premium Leba- Hence, in part, his dizzying rise to pow-
nese arak. The unIslamic hoard cast doubt er. From tankcommander he became pres- Plotting in the shadows
on the president’s public shows of prayer ident, in 1978, of North Yemen, which un- The West may not have noticed because
and the great mosque, with six white min- ited with the communistsouth in 1991with his wiles were so subtle, and his shift of
arets, looming beside his palace. It sur- him, naturally, in charge. He went on to alliances so constant. When it suited him,
prised no one who knew that, as a high- rule the new country, with maximum he went soft on the jihadists and Salafists
lander from Yemen’s northern mountains, guile and graft, for the next 21 years. He who increasingly infested the north. In
he probably liked a chaser after a pleasant rose, too, because no one else cared to rule 2005 he said he would retire, but in 2006
chew of qat in the afternoons. Others North Yemen, where the two previous in- he changed his mind, because his people
would have remembered how, as a young cumbents had been dispatched within were urging him to stay. He said he would
army officer in charge of a checkpoint on nine months ofeach other: one shot while leave power “like kicking off my shoes”,
the main road to Taiz from the Red Sea, he cavorting with foreign prostitutes, the oth- but they proved tight-fitting. In 2012 he
would wave through whisky smuggled up er minced by an exploding briefcase. Mr stepped down, but only in exchange for
from Africa if enough rials crossed his Saleh did not want courage. He had his immunityfrom prosecution. He also never
palm. That blind eye won him useful allies own close shaves, the closest in 2011 when went away, plotting in the shadows, his
amongthe merchants ofTaiz. hismosque wasblown up with him inside portrait still on shop walls, for only he
He needed such rusesbecause he was a it. The Saleh Museum, opened in Sana’a could hold his dissolvingcountry together.
nobody. His clan, the Sanhan, was a lowly, two years later, displayed his scorched Hishalf-secretmarriage ofconvenience
overlooked group in a society seething trousersand the shrapnel taken outof him. after2014 with the Shia Houthi rebels, who
with wild and larger tribes heavily armed By then he had stepped down, but only had previously opposed him, was riven by
with pride and Kalashnikovs. His family after an extraordinary spell in power, bol- mutual mistrust—over patronage in the
contained no sheikhs, and his village, fly- stered first by a wall of relatives around north, and especially over his long off-on
blown Bayt-al Ahmar, had no one rich him. When he became president of the dalliance with Saudi Arabia, supposedly
enough to subsidise him through officers’ whole country they assumed key posts in theircommon enemy, and with the United
training school. To that end he was helped ministriesand the army, while hisnephew Arab Emirates, where his son Ahmed was
bya southernerand this, too, proved politi- Tarek headed the elite Republican Guard; under loose house arrest. The prospect of
cally useful. In his rugged and chronically his son Ahmed was groomed to succeed continuing the family’s rule through the
ungovernable country the short, bull- him. His Sanhan clan was now important, good offices ofthe Sunni Gulfstates was ir-
necked soldier, with his sharp sing-song and the tribal confederation it belonged to, resistible. That sealed his fate. 7