Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Sanaʻa after government security agents fired on the protestors. This led to an increasing
flow of government ministers and military leaders defecting to join the protesters.
By April a Gulf Cooperation Council-brokered plan allowing Saleh to cede power in
exchange for immunity was put forward. Three times Saleh agreed to sign only to back
down at the last moment. All the while the protests became more and more violent and the
government started to lose complete control of much of the country. When, towards the
end of May, Saleh refused to sign the deal for the third time, Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar, the
head of the Hashid tribal federation, one of the most powerful tribes in the country, de-
clared his support for the opposition and brought his armed supporters to Sanaʻa. Almost
immediately fighting erupted between them and loyalist security forces with the result that
Sanaʻa was turned into a battle ground as gunfire and heavy artillery rocked the city. Th-
ings culminated on 3 June when Saleh was seriously injured in an attack (it remains un-
clear whether this was a bomb blast or a shell) on a mosque he was praying in. The next
day he was flown to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment and Yemenis celebrated the fall
of Saleh. Or so they thought.
Saleh's vice-president, Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi, was made acting president, but
from his hospital bed Saleh kept indicating that he would return to Yemen. For three
months Yemen was trapped in a kind of limbo; the protests continued unabated and, tak-
ing advantage of the chaos, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula started taking control of
huge swathes of the east and south of the country. Everyone was predicting the end of Ye-
men as a functioning state. Finally, in September 2011, Saleh suddenly re-appeared in Ye-
men, but his time was up and on the 23rd November he finally signed a Saudi brokered
agreement to resign.
TOP OF CHAPTER
History
Sabaeans & Himyarites
Aside from legend, a shroud of mystery still envelops the early origins of southern Arabia.
The area now known as Yemen came to light during the 1st millennium BC, when a
sweet-smelling substance called frankincense first hit the world's markets. Carefully con-
trolling the production and trade of this highly lucrative commodity were the Sabaeans,
initially based in eastern Yemen.
