Reuters President Ali Abdullah Saleh returned to Yemen as abruptly as he left, and whether he plans to effect a transfer of power or stamp out protests, his country is a tinderbox edging towards civil war. Protests have simmered for three months while Saleh recovered from an assassination attempt in June, which burned his hands and arms and drove wooden shards into his torso. But the protesters' attempts to escalate protests last week set off fierce fighting between loyalist troops and former Saleh forces that claim to support the opposition. The clashes left some 100 protesters dead, and Saleh — sensing an opportunity —slipped back in the middle of the night, unknown to all but a few security guards. “This is an ominous sign, returning at a time like this probably signals he intends to use violence to resolve this,” said Abdulghani Al-Iryani, a political analyst and cofounder of the Democratic Awakening Movement. A political survivor who has ruled the chaotic Arabian Peninsula country for 33 years, Saleh called for a ceasefire upon his return so that talks can be held, even though he has backed out three times from a power transfer agreement. “It is not a new tactic,” said Yemen scholar Gregory Johnsen of Princeton University, who sees Saleh's move as a chance to act as a solidarity figure with the goal of regaining a grip on power. “He saw a deteriorating, bloody situation and saw opportunity to swoop in as a national figure that brings the country together, he did this in the 1990s and in 2006 and I think he's trying to do it again.” But with conditions so tense in Sana'a, the technique could backfire: “He comes back at the exact worst moment, this is likely to exacerbate the situation.” If Saleh clings to power, all-out war could follow and plunge the country into a chaotic battle between tribal factions of rebels in the north, separatists in the south and Al-Qaeda militants moving in to exploit mayhem. __
