The Guardian | Saeed Kamali Dehghan: Former president’s death at hands of his erstwhile Houthi allies marks end of uneasy alliance that sparked war in 2014

The killing of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former Yemeni president, removes the country’s most important political figure for four decades from a complex equation that has plunged the Arab world’s poorest nation into conflict and sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

His death marks a dramatic shift three years into a war in a state of stalemate. It risks the conflict becoming even more intractable.

Saleh was an important player in Yemen’s descent into civil war. His reluctant departure from power in 2012 – forced upon him by the Arab spring after 33 years of rule – brought his Saudi-backed deputy, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, into office.

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