Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes

Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen from 1990 - 2012,
described the process of governing Yemen as akin to “Dancing on the
heads of snakes”. Such were the profound splits in Yemeni society,
and with other strongmen, tribes and insurgent groups vying for
their own power, Saleh knew that to keep his newly unified country
together from the 1990s onwards would take a dance of real
precision. In this second episode of our five part series on the
history of Yemen, we find out if Saleh was nimble enough to hold
onto power as the vipers beneath him began to show their force.
From the civil war of the 1990s to the rise of the insurgent
Houthis in the 2000s, we cover the period from 1990-2010, to see
how these divisions in Yemeni society would ultimately lead to the
civil war which continues to ravage the country today. And to help
us on our way, we welcome back our first ever guest Baraa Shaiban,
a Yemeni journalist and political activist, who this week tells us
about his extraordinary first hand account of growing up alongside
the growing Houthi insurgency in northern Yemen. Join our FB
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