Five Strongmen, and the Fate of the Arab Spring<br />The news on Monday that Yemen’s ex-president had been killed is not only a key moment in a country<br />that is wracked by civil war, torn by a sectarian proxy struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the home of what has been called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.<br />Ousted in February 2011 after nearly 30 years in power, Mr. Mubarak, 89, once symbolized the unassailable Arab strongman,<br />and his downfall appeared to signal a political sea change.<br />Confounding predictions by Western leaders that he was next in line to fall, President Assad has remained in power through a 2011 uprising<br />that morphed into a civil war, devastated Syria and created a staggering refugee crisis.<br />Here is a look at what has befallen five leaders in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia<br />and Yemen, the countries at the center of the political uprisings that began in 2011.<br />He remained a powerful political personality and later aligned himself in with Yemen’s Houthi<br />rebels, who have been fighting a Saudi-led military coalition for nearly three years.<br />Mr. Saleh, considered one of the most cunning autocrats in the Arab world, stepped down in early<br />2012 after three decades of leading Yemen, the Middle East’s most impoverished country.
