In the dangerous game of Yemeni politics, Field Marshal Ali Abdullah Saleh is the ultimate survivor. The Saudi-led air campaign is the fourth time the Saudis have tried to engineer his removal from Yemeni politics. Saleh has survived isolation, sanctions, civil war and assassins. Now he has built an alliance with his former foes, the Houthis, to oust his former deputy from the country.

Saleh, 73, is a Zaydi Shiite who joined the Yemeni army as a corporal in 1958. He attended the Yemeni military college and fought alongside the Egyptians against the Saudi-backed Zaydi royalists in the 1960s. He became president of North Yemen in 1978 after his predecessor died in an assassination arranged by the then-leader of South Yemen. The South Yemeni communist leader had sent an emissary to visit his northern counterpart with a briefcase allegedly containing a secret letter. Instead, it had a bomb inside that exploded, killing the messenger and Saleh's predecessor.

It was widely assumed that Saleh would not last six months. Instead, Saleh survived several coup attempts before securing the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990, when the Soviet Union could no longer afford to keep the communists in power in Aden. Saleh gained much popular support for the unification.

Later that year, Saleh sided with Saddam Hussein and Iraq when it invaded Kuwait. Yemen was Saddam's only supporter in the UN Security Council. The Saudis believed he had a secret deal with Saddam to restore Yemeni rule over provinces lost by Yemen to the kingdom in a 1934 war between the two countries. Working closely with President George H.W. Bush, Saudi Arabia's King Fahd sought to isolate Saleh to punish him for his pro-Iraqi sentiments.