Hundreds of Thousands Rally Against Saleh in Yemen

Largest Rallies Since Saleh Assassination Attempt

With Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh out of the hospital and back to his old tricks of hyping a power transfer deal before angrily rejecting it at the last second for some minor objection in its content, rallies seem again to be swelling in Yemen.

For the first time since Saleh fled to Saudi Arabia after an unsuccessful assassination attempt,
the rallies swelled to several hundred thousand protesters nationwide. The protesters demanded Saleh never return to he country.

At the same time, Saleh is facing yet another international effort to see him ousted from power, this time while allowing him to keep the title of President on condition that he not return and give all actually power to Major General Hadi, the nation’s Vice President.

The deals on Saleh’s ouster, at least from the GCC and the US, seem to center on the assumption that Hadi will be better able to seize control over the nation. The massive numbers of protesters in the streets and more than half a year of pro-democracy rallies however suggest that simply swapping one military ruler for another probably isn’t going to placate anyhow.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.