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Yemen's Saleh proves to be a survivor

Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been central to the Houthis' success in Yemen and may determine the country's future.
Yemen's former President Ali Abdullah Saleh pauses during an interview with Reuters in Sanaa May 21, 2014. Other Yemeni officials may have looted public funds, but Saleh says he was not one of them and he has challenged his authorities to find one dollar acquired inappropriately and hold him to account. His critics in Yemen, an impoverished country of 25 million where 40 percent of the population live on less than $2 per day, accuse him of embezzling billions of dollars during his 33 years in power. Picture

In the dangerous game of Yemeni politics, Field Marshal Ali Abdullah Saleh is the ultimate survivor. The Saudi-led air campaign is the fourth time the Saudis have tried to engineer his removal from Yemeni politics. Saleh has survived isolation, sanctions, civil war and assassins. Now he has built an alliance with his former foes, the Houthis, to oust his former deputy from the country.

Saleh, 73, is a Zaydi Shiite who joined the Yemeni army as a corporal in 1958. He attended the Yemeni military college and fought alongside the Egyptians against the Saudi-backed Zaydi royalists in the 1960s. He became president of North Yemen in 1978 after his predecessor died in an assassination arranged by the then-leader of South Yemen. The South Yemeni communist leader had sent an emissary to visit his northern counterpart with a briefcase allegedly containing a secret letter. Instead, it had a bomb inside that exploded, killing the messenger and Saleh's predecessor.

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