In recent years, debate has intensified over the circumstances, causes, and final hours leading up to the killing of former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh by Houthi militias. The controversy has persisted despite the near-definitive account provided by his son Madin, who remained by his father’s side until the final moments of his life.
The proliferation of politically diverse podcasts, together with the transformation of social media into an open public forum, has broadened the debate. Former political, military, and intelligence figures now compete for attention, offering testimony and conflicting accounts of what happened. The pattern has become increasingly clear: those who know usually remain silent, while those who speak often know the least.
Like other researchers and journalists concerned with Yemen, and perhaps more attentive than most to its details, I followed the relationship between Saleh and the Houthis from its inception and anticipated how it might end. During the final months of 2017, I monitored developments in Sana’a almost hour by hour, particularly after tensions peaked between Saleh, a central figure in Yemen’s deep state whom I knew, and the Houthis, the rapidly rising armed movement whose beginnings I had witnessed.
My reporting drew on an extensive network of sources and on long-standing relationships—repeatedly renewed and often close—with senior figures on both sides of the conflict. It also rested on nearly half a century of experience covering Yemeni affairs from within the country and abroad.
The origins of the alliance
In my assessment, three main factors drove Saleh’s rapprochement with the Houthis and shaped the events that followed.
The first was his desire for revenge against the military officers who had defected during what became known as the ‘Youth Revolution’ or the ‘Arab Spring’, led by his former ally, General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar. Saleh also sought to settle scores with his Islamist adversaries, whom he accused of having “ridden the wave of that revolution”.
The second concerned Saleh’s view of his deputy and successor, the late president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, whom he had personally chosen to succeed him. Saleh believed that Hadi had subsequently failed to restructure the Republican Guard and the other military and security formations that Saleh had spent years building, arming, and training. In his view, this weakened those institutions and reduced their ability to “protect the state and its achievements”.
The third factor lay in the Houthis’ duplicity and their eventual betrayal of the relationship Saleh had cultivated with them without the knowledge of the senior leadership of the General People’s Congress, his powerful party. A senior party official confirmed this to me, saying: “Saleh did so in order to use the group against his military and Islamist opponents, among others.”
During the political courtship that preceded the alliance, three men helped establish the relationship between Saleh and the Houthis. All three were childhood friends of mine from the al Dhari area of Khuban district in Ibb province, where I was raised and spent my earliest years. They were the late politician Zaid al Dhari, who had developed an early and close relationship with former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah; Nazih al Imad, the son of Major General Ahmed al Imad, who had been close to Saleh; and Hammoud Abbad, a former minister who now serves as mayor of Sana’a under the Houthi authorities.
The three acted almost as couriers between Sana’a and Saada, the Houthis’ stronghold, carrying messages between Saleh and the movement. At least one of them boasted to me that he had helped weave the “threads of the alliance” between the two sides in pursuit of what he called “the supreme national interest”.
The collapse of an alliance of necessity
Much has been said about Saleh’s role in helping the Houthis supplant his former regime as an act of revenge against the Islamist, nationalist, and leftist forces that had joined together to remove him during the protests of 2011. It was clear, however, that the alliance between Saleh and the Houthis would not last long, for reasons that soon became apparent.
The military intervention launched by the Arab coalition to reverse the Houthi coup and support the restoration of the Yemeni state gave the two sides a further reason to remain together. Their partnership nevertheless remained burdened by contradictions.
Saleh believed he could contain the Houthis by closing the chapter on the six wars they had fought against his government and entering into an alliance with them. He defended his position by saying: “When they rebelled against the state, we fought them. Today, however, they are a political force with which we must deal.” He knew better than anyone that they had not changed and would not change, and that they had little connection to politics in any meaningful sense.
