Ali Abdullah Saleh

A veteran of North Yemen's civil war, Saleh became president in July 1978 after his predecessor's assassination, consolidating control through a turbulent decade of rebellions and a military defeat against the South. By the mid-1980s he had stabilized the North and drawn support from both Washington and Moscow. When South Yemen collapsed in 1986, he engineered reunification in 1990, sharing power until a brief 1994 civil war — won with the help of jihadist fighters — allowed him to revert to autocratic rule. His opposition to the Gulf War cost him Saudi favor and triggered a mass Yemeni exodus…