DUBAI: A day before they killed Yemen’s former president, gunmen from the Iran-aligned Houthi militia group overran one of Ali Abdullah Saleh’s fortified compounds in Sanaa. Ransacking the villa, they snapped photos of liquor flasks and vodka bottles and posted them online. “This is how the traitor (Saleh) and his family lived during a time of war, siege and cholera,” Hamid Rizq, a senior Houthi official, said on his official Twitter account. The Houthi gunmen acted fast and mercilessly to punish the 75-year-old Saleh for having appeared to switch sides in Yemen’s three-year civil war – a proxy battle for influence between regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia. Allied with the Houthis for three years, Saleh had called on Saturday for a “new page” in relations with Saudi Arabia. The murder is a setback for Riyadh, which had hoped the backing of Saleh – and his loyalist army units in northern Yemen – would help close a war that has killed 10,000 people and caused one of the world’s most acute humanitarian crises. Saudi Arabia fears the Houthis will become as powerful a force in the Middle East as Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah. The Houthis are holding their ground despite air strikes by Saudi Arabia and its allied forces and a naval blockade that has prevented food, medicine and fuel from arriving in Houthi-controlled northern areas, bringing the region to the brink of famine. Last month, the Houthis fired a ballistic missile into Riyadh. Now, the Saudis are turning their hopes to Saleh’s son Ahmed Ali – and his good ties with Saudi ally United Arab Emirates – to do the job his father couldn’t. Photos of Ahmed Ali, a military leader admired by thousands of soldiers in Houthi-run lands, appeared on the front page of UAE newspapers on Wednesday meeting the UAE’s de-facto leader Mohammed bin Zayed. Saleh’s death caps a 40-year political career that charts Yemen’s tragic modern history. A country with few natural resources, awash in weapons and fractured along tribal and religious lines, Yemen has long been buffeted by its powerful neighbours, particularly Saudi Arabia. Saleh was the first leader of a unified Yemen in 1990. But he shifted loyalties various times – fighting the Houthis in the 2000s, for example – as the plates of influence shifted in the Middle East. In this latest geopolitical drama, the UAE is emerging as playmaker in the Yemen crisis. The UAE has been financing and training armed groups that have been pushing towards the Red Sea port of Hodeida, a Houthi stronghold and entry point for supplies getting to millions of civilians in northern Yemen. The Saleh family has long enjoyed good relations with the wealthy Gulf state, which had over the decades funded infrastructure projects in Yemen before becoming a key member of the Saudi-led coalition. Hamza al-Houthi, a top Houthi leader, said the Houthis had suspected the Saleh family’s allegiance to the Saudi-held coalition for some time and that tensions had been brewing since August. Al-Houthi said his troops had intercepted UAE arms shipments bound for Saleh’s family late last month. As punishment, the Houthis killed his nephew Tareq on Monday. Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group said the latest events mean the war in Yemen is likely to escalate. “The Houthis, while an important military force, are not particularly adept at politics or governance. Their reach…in the population is limited, and over time that will play into their opponents’ hands. “But that won’t happen anytime soon, so it looks like the conflict will worsen.” Saleh’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and its allies has been marked by politics and prayer. Over the past few decades, Riyadh has tried, in succession, to quash an anti-royalist revolution, Marxism and al Qaeda militancy in Yemen. Riyadh backed Saleh, an Arab nationalist strongman, between 1978 and 2012 to help him quash those ideologies before they could seep next door to Saudi Arabia. Published in Daily Times, December 9th 2017.