Ali, we hardly knew ye.

Yemen's hated strongman, Ali Abdullah Saleh, signed an agreement in Saudi Arabia today transferring executive powers to the country's vice president, Abdo Rabu Mansour Hadi. Saleh was Yemen's authoritarian ruler the last thirty three years. Never finishing elementary school, he was part of a military junta that seized power in a coup in 1974. Don't let anyone tell you that you need an education to succeed. Ali never got past sandbox and ran the whole joint for thirty three years.

Saleh made his mark by mastering the game of tribal rivalries. It takes real talent to forge a coalition amongst groups that hate each other with the kind of enmity you see in the middle east. That whole side of the continent is so strange, straight up to the Balkans.

I found myself wondering for a second about these tribal states and the leaders that flourish in such climes. Monarchs, thugs, autocrats and your standard garden variety dictators. Quick, name a middle eastern democracy or countrystan that has a democratic system that is not rigged... Finished?

Can we name one? Saddam Hussein, for all his admitted faults and barbarities, kept the Kurds, Sunni and Shia from civil war. Who knows if the incipient model will be able to avert such an occurrence? Who but Tito could have kept the divisions together in Yugoslavia. Maybe I am looking at this wrong, maybe the answer is peaceful divorce, like those old bickering Czech's and Slovaks did. Smaller countries if you really can't stand each other.

Maybe only a prickish dictator can function effectively in some of the more bristly geographies on our globe?