Yemen Head of state

Ali Abdullah Saleh

علي عبد الله صالح

Head of state Inactive Verified

President of North Yemen (1978-1990), unified Yemen, president of Yemen 1990-2012. Resigned amid the Arab Spring uprising, allied with the Houthis in the 2014-2017 phase of the civil war, killed by Houthis December 2017.

Country: Yemen
Party: Independent / unaligned
Role: Head of state
Status: Historical figure

Position

Ali Abdullah Saleh governs without formal party mediation and has no source documents on file yet, so no individual position is assigned.

On the record

Quotes attributed to Ali Abdullah Saleh that have passed verification. Each carries a year, the context of the statement, and at least one source citation. Browse the full corpus or play the "Who said it?" game.

Ruling Yemen is hard. It is dancing on the heads of snakes.

حكم اليمن صعب. إنه رقص على رؤوس الثعابين.

1999 Repeated framing in interviews and memoir across the late 1990s and 2000s — the line that became the definitive autobiographical summary of governing the country. en.wikipedia.org · britannica.com

How to cite

Each record carries a retrieval date because the dataset is live — individual entries update as verification deepens. Use the per-record citation when referencing this specific profile; use the dataset citation below when referencing the project as a whole.

In-text: (Gara, 2026)

Per-record citation

APA 7Reference list · academic default

Gara, T. (2026). Ali Abdullah Saleh [Politician profile]. Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset. Retrieved June 21, 2026, from https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/pol/saleh

Chicago author-dateCommon in political-science journals

Gara, Tarek. 2026. "Ali Abdullah Saleh." Politician profile, Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset. Accessed June 21, 2026. https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/pol/saleh.

BibTeXFor LaTeX / Zotero / reference managers

@misc{tayyar-saleh,
  title     = {{Ali Abdullah Saleh}},
  author    = {Gara, Tarek},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset},
  type      = {Politician profile},
  url       = {https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/pol/saleh},
  urldate   = {2026-06-21},
  note      = {First-pass entry; second-pass external review planned before publication.}
}

Dataset / working-paper citation

If you're citing Tayyar as a project rather than this individual record.

APA 7Preprint

Gara, T. (2026). Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset [Preprint]. Retrieved June 21, 2026, from https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/paper

BibTeXPreprint

@unpublished{tayyar-preprint,
  title  = {{Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset}},
  author = {Gara, Tarek},
  year   = {2026},
  type   = {Preprint},
  url    = {https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/paper},
  urldate = {2026-06-21},
  note   = {Living document, regenerated from the live dataset on page load.}
}

First-pass entry; second-pass external review planned before publication.