On March 8, Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi conducted a security and government reshuffle targeting certain important ministries and security agencies. The decree sacked the unpopular minister of interior, appointed a new minister of oil, but most importantly, got rid of Yemen’s strongest and oldest intelligence leader. Ghaleb al-Qamish, who for more than three decades was in charge of Yemen’s intelligence agency — the Political Security Office (PSO), and before it the National Security Agency — woke up on March 8 no longer the most renowned intelligence officer of Yemen.

The sacking of Qamish and appointment of a younger officer from National Security as his replacement was one of president Hadi’s strongest and most welcomed presidential decrees since he came to power in 2011. Qamish, a descendant of one of Yemen’s strongest tribes, was Yemen’s scariest man and had been in charge of destroying every political movement, party, individual or organization that challenged former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s power. 

For decades, he smashed nationalists, socialists, communists and reformists before being handed al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s file (AQAP) for a few years until he had to share it with another security agency — one created at the urging of the United States to combat AQAP in Yemen.

In the ’80s and ’90s, the PSO, under the leadership of Qamish, coordinated the recruitment of jihadists and their travel to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets — all with the blessings of Saudia Arabia and the United States. Later, when al-Qaeda became the new enemy, Qamish happily took the lead in fighting their members in Yemen and partnering with US agencies like the FBI and CIA in the war on terrorism.