Like Afghanistan, Yemen is a mountainous country with many internal divisions.As Lynch notes, the Salih government has been less and less tolerant of dissent in recent years, and Salih, who took over then-North Yemen in 1978 and is thus senior to every Arab fruler except Qadhafi and Sultan Qaboos &mdash he even has three years on Mubarak ??? is toying with having his son succeed him.