For the regime of the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the man who ruled the difficult-to-rule Yemen for more than three decades (1978–2012) through a delicate balance of patronage networks and “dancing on the heads of snakes” (as Saleh often put it), al-Qaeda was not Yemen’s main security nightmare. Saleh’s regime did not perceive terrorism and militant jihadism as an existential threat on a par with the threat posed by the revivalist Houthi Zaydi militant rebellion, which had erupted in 2004 in the mountainous northern parts of the country along the porous border with Saudi Arabia. Saleh described the Houthi Zaydi rebels in 2008 as a “racist” group who “try to exploit people” by claiming that “the state is fighting all Zaydis.” According to Saleh the rebels believe that: