DID the autocrat who once famously compared his political dexterity to 'dancing on the heads of snakes' take his last political steps when he waltzed off to Saudi Arabia last Saturday, a day after he was injured in an attack on the presidential mosque in Sanaa?

Those who have been celebrating Ali Abdullah Saleh's departure on the streets of the Yemeni capital certainly hope so. The fact that his entourage included 35 close relatives also seemed to suggest this was no ordinary trip to the hospital. Most observers incline towards the view that even if Saleh wished to jitterbug back into the Yemeni limelight, his hosts would take measures to dissuade him.

The Saudis have seldom hesitated to intervene in the affairs of the occasionally troublesome and frequently troubled entity at the bottom of the Arabian peninsula, and they have lately played a leading role in negotiations aimed at securing a relatively orderly exit by Saleh. He more than once agreed to step out of the way within a month, but then changed his mind, and his thugs even had the audacity to intimidate emissaries from the Saudi-dominated Gulf Cooperation Council.

Last Friday's attack on the mosque in the presidential compound appears to have been the consequence of long-standing tribal rivalries, rather than directly related to a popular movement for change that took its cues earlier this year from events in Tunisia and Egypt.

Well before the first shoots of the Arab Spring forced their way out of seemingly infertile ground, Saleh had managed to alienate the powerful Al Ahmar family, the guiding force of the Hashid tribal confederation that had elevated him to power in the first place.

That was in 1978, less than a decade after the end of a conflict in North Yemen that had pitted pro-republican Nasserite Egypt against Saudi Arabia, which favoured the hereditary imamate that had been overthrown by young nationalist army officers.

An estimated 200,000 Yemenis died in that now largely forgotten war — and it has been suggested that the high level of casualties among the Egyptian army, whose troops were unaccustomed to the hilly, forested terrain, lowered its morale and played a significant role in its miserable performance in the Six-Day War with Israel.

In North Yemen, the inconclusive confrontation eventually led to a compromise whereby the Saudis agreed to the establishment of a republic, although conflicts continued to simmer between relatively progressive urban dwellers and the conservative tribal hinterland.

They were overshadowed for a while by the outbreak of hostilities between the new Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and the ostensibly communist Democratic People's Republic of Yemen (DPRY, a nomenclature favoured by neither Moscow nor Beijing, its chief benefactors) that had emerged following a rebellion against British colonial rule in South Arabia.

An Arab-mediated truce led to declarations from both sides that Yemen would shortly be reunified, but the parameters for a political union could not be worked out at the time.

In 1978, Saleh was ensconced at the helm of a political order he had helped to establish as a coup participant four years earlier. It was a dozen years later that the two countries became one, when the Soviet Union was headed towards extinction and after the leadership of the DPRY's ruling party had more or less devoured itself.

Overall, the consequences of the attempted synthesis between Marxism and Arab nationalism were less than impressive, yet the legacy of the DPRY was not entirely bereft of redeeming features, notably systems of universal healthcare and education. The pattern of the 1970s was reversed in the 1990s when reunification was followed four years later by a civil war, and secessionist tendencies have simmered in the south ever since.

They haven't attracted much international concern, which has lately been focused on the outfit that calls itself Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) — even though most analysts suspect its strength has been exaggerated by Saleh as well as the Americans, albeit for somewhat different reasons. Although the outfit's strength in Yemen has been estimated at not much more than a couple of hundred, efforts to eliminate it by the usual means — aerial bombardment — have led to substantial civilian casualties.

That's hardly an unusual consequence, but it's worth noting that AQAP's complete destruction would have negated Saleh's relevance as an over-eager ally in the so-called 'war on terror'. In that capacity, he was able until fairly recently to count on Washington's reluctance to dispense with his services, which included a willingness to take the credit for US military operations.

It was reported this week that Saleh was recuperating in Riyadh following successful operations. His wounds will heal much more rapidly than the fractures he leaves behind in Yemeni society, including an extraordinary tendency towards corruption that kept tribal leaders in clover even as the masses starved. His opponents in the Al Ahmar clan are among the richest businessmen in the Arab world's poorest nation.

The fact that they have devoted some of their resources to toppling him does not necessarily imply that they favour a truly democratic alternative any more than Saudi Arabia or the US. And it's far from clear what role will be played by the son and nephews Saleh has left behind in charge of Yemen's key security outfits in determining the blighted nation's future.

It's a nation whose estimated level of unemployment, at 40 per cent, is considerably higher than that of the worst culprits elsewhere in the Arab world. And a median age of less than 18 testifies to Yemen's stature as the Arab nation with the highest birthrate. Up to three-fourths of its denizens have never known a president other than Saleh.

Whether any sort of elections will be held within the next few months, and whether they'll throw up a reasonable alternative, remains to be seen. But then, the parameters of change haven't been established in Tunisia or Egypt, either. The situation in Libya and Syria remains fluid, and in Bahrain doctors and nurses who treated injured protesters face charges of treason.The Arab Spring has given way to the Arab summer. It is bound to be hot, but it'll nonetheless be a relief if it doesn't feature the sort of dirty dancing in which Saleh specialised.

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