On Oct. 12, 15,000 members of the presidential guard, special security and intelligence forces spread throughout the capital city of Sanaa to secure the road taken by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, as he went to attend the graduation of military officers about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) from the presidential palace. According to the local Al-Shareh newspaper, Hadi fears being targeted for assassination, particularly after security forces thwarted an attempt against his life a month ago.

In Yemen, it is not only the president who fears assassination. The specter of death no longer hovers above the heads of prominent leaders or security figures alone but also unprecedentedly haunts second-row security and military officers as well as civilians. This comes after many second-row officers died in individually targeted assassinations that took the lives of more than 100 officers in the last two years. 

It has become customary to hear almost daily news about the assassination of a security or military officer in Yemen at the hands of gunmen aboard motorcycles. It has reached the point where these have been dubbed “cycles of death.” The phenomenon of motorcycle killers and US drones have become terrifying aspects of Yemeni life, despite the fact that their targets and means greatly differ.

The assassination of the head of the Second Military Command, Maj. Gen. Salem Qoton, in July 2012 was one of the most devastating attacks, as it killed the man who had succeeded in defeating al-Qaeda in Abyan. While it was clear that al-Qaeda was responsible for Qoton’s assassination, the attempt was one of the few prominent attacks that carried with it obvious security motives.