In the End, a Painful Choice

He had met with the sheiks and told them not to trust the Americans, and he had met with Americans and told them not to trust the sheiks. He had made a speech in which he all but accused NDI of interfering in Yemen's internal affairs. His party newspaper suggested Robin Madrid was an American spy. Four months into the program, his foreign minister informed the U.S. ambassador to Yemen that the program needed to end, and that's one of the reasons Campbell was hoping to meet with Saleh, "to try to determine through speech, body language, anything, where we could go."

Campbell wanted the program to continue, and told Madrid to apply for more government money. Madrid wanted the program to continue, too. So did the U.S. ambassador. Despite episodes of infighting, so did the sheiks. But as with everything that occurs in Yemen, Saleh's is the voice that matters most.

He has run Yemen since 1978, ascending from the military after Yemen's two previous leaders were assassinated within months of each other. "People laughed at his speechmaking. He looked like a comical figure in his uniform. The CIA guy was taking bets -- this guy won't be around in spring," Robert D. Burrowes, an expert on Yemen who teaches at the University of Washington and has been traveling to the country since 1975, said of Saleh's first days. "And 27 years later, here he still is."

Like Harry S. Truman, Burrowes said, Saleh grew into the job. The military uniform became a suit. The wild hair calmed down. The confidence, always there, only increased, especially after Saleh oversaw the unification of North Yemen and South Yemen into one country in 1990, an accomplishment that is highlighted on his official Web site with admiring quotes from other world leaders.

"The unification of Yemen is the only positive event in modern Arab history," said Moammar Gaddafi.

"Yemen unity represents a strong tribute to power and protection, and dignifies the Islamic world," said Saddam Hussein.

Hussein, Gaddafi, Yasser Arafat, Hafez Assad of Syria -- their neighborhood is the one Saleh and Yemen have been part of. Hussein was giving millions of dollars to Yemeni Baathists right up until the U.S. invasion. Saudi Arabia has been paying monthly stipends to Yemeni sheiks for decades; Sheik Abdullah bin Hussein al-Ahmer, the most powerful sheik in Yemen, is said to receive about $1 million a month. With a population that is 99.99 percent Muslim, thousands of religious schools, a growing Wahhabi influence, and a law based primarily on sharia principles, Yemen seemed as far from Western values as any country on the Arabian Peninsula.

And yet somewhere along the line, after unification, Saleh began moving Yemen toward democracy. Throughout much of the 1990s, Yemen was regarded as the leading democratic force in the Arab world, and while that may not seem like much of a distinction in the West, it was to Saleh, especially as Yemen's economy worsened, its water began running out, its modest oil reserves began running out, Arab monetary contributions diminished, and he needed to find new sources of foreign aid.

Enter the United States -- which had stopped giving aid to Yemen after it sided with Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and started again after the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 -- with its expectations of democracy.

"He leads the charge in promoting democracy and human rights," is how Saleh now describes himself on his Web site, and maybe that's the kind of leader he has grown to be.

Or maybe, as Burrowes said, "he is telling us what we want to hear him say."

Long sanguine about Yemen, Burrowes has become so pessimistic about its future because of corruption that instead of describing Yemen as a democracy, as he used to do to the point of being considered an apologist for Saleh, he now calls it a "kleptocracy -- a government of, by and for thieves." As for the kind of leader Saleh has grown into, Burrowes said, "He has become a very good dictator."