Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi
Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi was elected president of Yemen unopposed, lost the capital within two years, and spent most of his term in Riyadh. He had been vice-president for eighteen years under Ali Abdullah Saleh, which made him the compromise the Gulf states reached when Saleh was forced out after a year of protests and an assassination attempt that burned him badly. Hadi stood in a one-candidate election in 2012 for a two-year transition. He was also the only southerner to lead unified Yemen. He had been an officer in South Yemen, fled north after losing a factional war there in 1986, and fought on Saleh's side against his own region in the civil war of 1994 - which made him acceptable in Sanaa and suspect in Aden, and left him without a base in either. The transition did not work. A national dialogue produced a federal plan that satisfied neither the Houthis in the north nor the southern separatists, a fuel subsidy cut in 2014 produced protests the Houthis led, and in September 2014 they entered Sanaa essentially unopposed - with the help of army units still loyal to Saleh, the man they had fought six wars against. He resigned in January 2015 under house arrest, withdrew the resignation, escaped to Aden and then to Saudi Arabia, and requested the intervention that began in March. The war that followed has killed hundreds of thousands, most of them through hunger and disease rather than fighting, and produced the largest cholera outbreak in recorded history. He remained the internationally recognised president from abroad for seven more years while his government held less and less, and in April 2022 the Saudis had him transfer his powers to a council, reportedly without his enthusiasm.
- Lived: 1945 CE – ?
- Nationality: Yemeni
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
