Ali Abdullah Saleh was a Yemeni politician who served as the first President of Yemen from 1990 to 2012. Before unification, he had been the President of the Yemen Arab Republic, commonly known as North Yemen, from 1978. His long and often controversial rule was marked by political maneuvering to maintain power over a deeply divided country. Saleh was forced from power during the Arab Spring in 2012 and was later killed by Houthi forces during the Yemeni Civil War in 2017.