Saleh's assassination adds to Yemen conundrum

Yemen's former President Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade and gun attack on his car at a checkpoint outside the capital Sanaa. The Houthis killed him for "treason" after he cut ties with the rebels in favour of the Saudi-led military coalition that is said to have carried out dozens of air raids on the Houthi-controlled government after Saleh's assassination. The United Nations has appealed for a pause in fighting in order to help civilians caught up in the violence. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, at least 125 people have been killed in Sanaa over the past week. Some 240 have been injured. The war in Yemen, now in its second year, has left thousands dead and led to one of the worst humanitarian crises in a country where as many as seven million people face starvation while one million people infected by cholera.
When Zein al-Abedin ben Ali of Tunis, Moammar Qadhafi of Libya, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the Khalifas of Bahrain were struggling against popular unrest unleashed by the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa, it was only the Yemeni ruler who had made one of the most bizarre moves against protesters: dumping on a daily basis the refuse and waste collected from the entire city in the capital's square to discourage the protesters through unbearable stench in order to continue to perpetuate his rule in the poorest nation of the Arab world. In 1978 Saleh became the president of what was then North Yemen, before leading the country on its unification in 1990. His country showcased the worst economic indicators when protests broke out in the Arab world in 2011 unlike the Egyptian economy that was doing fairly well when protesters began to fill Cairo's Tehrir Square demanding Hosni Mubarak's removal. According to a 2015 United Nations report, Saleh had amassed a vast fortune worth up to $60 billion from corruption, extortion and embezzlement. Saleh's crackdown on dissent that led to the killing of over 50 protesters triggered a chain of events that ultimately ended his rule under an agreement brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Yemen's internationally recognized President Abdelrabbo Mansour al Hadi, who came to power through a referendum like election in 2012 and fled to Saudi Arabia at the start of 2015 after the rebels, mainly comprising Saleh's supporters and the Houthis supported by Iran took control of Sanaa in 2014, has now made a passionate appeal to the Yemenis to rise up against the Houthi rebels. Violence further escalated in the capital following the assassination of Saleh who, according to his assassins, had betrayed them. Hadi, living in exile in Riyadh, seeks to cash in on the opportunity presented by the turn of events to weaken his adversaries. In his speech broadcast live by Saudi Arabia's Al-Arabia TV channel, he called for a "new page" in the battle against the Houthis, declaring, "Let's put our hands together to end the control of these criminal gangs and build a new united Yemen".
Saleh's assassination has added a new page to the story of Middle East unrest. In the Yemen theatre, fighters from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have already taken advantage of the increasing chaos by stepping up their attacks in government-controlled Aden. It is only in this theatre where US finds Al-Qaeda militants as its convenient allies. After Moammar Qadhafi, Saleh is the other Arab leader killed at the hands of rebels. Since the Arab world is still characterized by a strong sense of assabiya, or clanship, the quest for revenge has precedence over any other objective for an Arab. After the growing violence in Libya since the assassination of Moammar Qadhafi, the violent death of Saleh has caused immense harm to the prospects of peace and stability in the entire Arabian Peninsula. The relevance of the GCC, which is already beset with deep differences over the diplomatic boycott of Qatar, has suddenly reduced after its key members, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, decide to form a new military and trade partnership separate from the GCC. In the Middle East, there is still no light at the end of the tunnel.