Ali Abdullah Saleh Is Finished, But Someone Should Tell Him

By Mai Yamani
This commentary was published in The Daily Star on 06/04/2011

Ali Abdullah Saleh is finished as the president of Yemen. Popular democratic protests that started on a small scale in the middle of February outside Sanaa University have widened to encompass the whole country. The continuity and strength of the demonstrations clearly indicate that the regime’s days are numbered. Tribal leaders have joined the protesters. Even close allies who belong to Saleh’s own Hashid tribe, such as the First Armored Brigade commander, General Ali Mushin al-Ahmar, have abandoned him. Now, even his long-term protector, the United States, seems to be abandoning him.

Saleh, who has been in power since 1978, knows that his time is up. “They are falling like leaves in autumn,” he recently said of the regime’s defectors. Official resignations have increased: ambassadors, ministers, significant media figures and army generals.

It is the last group that is decisive: when senior military and security personnel abandon an authoritarian regime in the face of popular pressure, one can safely say that the regime’s days are numbered. Yet Saleh still retains the loyalty of the Interior Ministry, the Republican Guard, and part of the air force. However, clashes between the army and the Republican Guard are further eroding the regime’s coherence.

Like other dictators who have been ousted from office or who are presently in their political death throes – the regimes of the former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and Libya’s Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, for example – Saleh has warned of the dangers the world would face if he is forced to depart. He has warned of the Muslim Brotherhood, attacks by Al-Qaeda, Iranian regional hegemony, and the breakup of Yemen. “After me the deluge,” seems to be the sole justification that the Yemeni president can offer for his continued rule.

His desperation mounting, Saleh has ordered deadly attacks on protesters, evidently believing that his considerable skill at political manipulation would see him through the current crisis. However, when the president declared a state of emergency on March 23, the number of protesters in the streets doubled. Given his regime’s obvious lack of legitimacy, Saleh is playing a dangerous game. The sooner he leaves office, the better for Yemen’s stability and its security.

Indeed, all Yemenis – Houthis, Harak, and even the Al-Hashids – appear united in their opposition to Saleh’s ailing regime and in their quest for an amelioration in civil and human rights in Yemen. Members of hundreds of tribes have erected tents in the location where the weeks of protests have been centered, namely “Change Square” in Sanaa. Perhaps more remarkably, in a country that contains more than 12 million guns, the protesters have not fired a single shot.

Then, on the eve of the Yemeni opposition’s planned “Friday of Departure” protests in late March, the United States resuscitated Saleh’s rule. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declared that, “the fall of Saleh would pose a real problem for [the United States’] counterterrorism work.” Saleh, emboldened by the secretary’s remarks, immediately appeared on television and ordered all his opponents to leave Yemen, as if millions of Yemenis could simply desert the country, leaving him and his family to reside in peace.

Since 2009, the United States has showered Saleh’s government with military aid. But Washington is well aware that Al-Qaeda is an enemy of convenience for Saleh, and that the danger to the United States from post-Saleh chaos in Yemen is exaggerated. Democracy cannot coexist with Al-Qaeda. On the contrary, the rising threat of radicalization stems from the delay Saleh’s departure.

America’s credibility, which was already low in Yemen in the first place, has hit rock bottom; its leaders’ words are no longer taken at face value. The gap between Washington’s rhetoric and policies has widened. The Obama administration has relied on the language of human rights in Libya, but it has contented itself with ignoring the democratic demands of millions of Yemenis.

The reality is that the United States has known for weeks that it cannot save Saleh’s regime. Its concern for Saleh’s political survival is closely linked to its guardianship of the Saudi regime, which fears that ferment in Yemen could give Saudi Arabia’s own Shiite, Zaidi, and Ismaili populations dangerous ideas about democratic reform – if not threaten the very existence of the Saudi state. After all, Saudi Arabia’s southern tribes and Yemen’s northern tribes are historically the same people, while the Shiites in the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province are protesting in political harmony with the Shiites of Bahrain.

Not surprisingly, Saleh has tried to reach for the familiar Saudi lifeline, sending his foreign minister to Riyadh to plead for the sort of help the Saudi king provided to Bahrain. But the Saudis, having backed Saleh financially, and having sent troops to Yemen in 2009 to help him wage a war against the Houthis, now consider him beyond saving. Instead, they are betting on potential new alliances within Yemen to deal with events in the unpredictable neighboring country.

Finally, the United States now appears to have concluded that Saleh’s regime cannot be revived. The most compassionate measure that the Americans, and Saudi Arabia, should take is a form of political euthanasia. A young Yemeni protester put this case succinctly: “America, stop administering life support to Saleh and deal with us directly. Yemen is the Yemeni people. We are Yemen. Saleh is only your crony.”

Mai Yamani is an author, whose most recent book is “Cradle of Islam.” THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate © (www.project-syndicate.org).