Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh placed family members in critical positions throughout Yemen’s security forces. This graphic shows his family network.

The new government in Yemen has extracted several of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s cronies from the country’s power structure, including demotion of Saleh’s half-brother Mohammed al Ahmar and nephew Tareq Mohammed Saleh, the former heads of the Air Force and Presidential Guard, respectively.

Yemen’s unrest has not ended with the ouster of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Yemeni Revolution instead has entered a new phase, the “Parallel Revolution.”

Yemenis voted on Tuesday February 21st, and after thirty-three years of authoritarian rule, Ali Abdullah Saleh was replaced as head of state by current Vice President Abdurabu Mansur Hadi. It remains to be seen whether the winner of this one-man contest will cooperate with the United States on counter-terrorism.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh refused to sign a deal aimed at ending nearly four months of political upheaval threatening to destabilize the country. How will this impact Yemen? And what should US policy be?

Taiz is as important a city as Sana’a to understanding the Yemeni Spring, yet its significance has been largely overlooked by the international community. The path to meaningful political settlement in Sana'a runs through Taiz.

The prospect of regime change or even state collapse in Yemen undermines the entire basis of U.S. counter-terrorism operations and brings to the fore the danger posed by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a group that has already attempted multiple attacks on U.S. soil.

American policy makers have failed to implement this strategy outside of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The result has been a growing threat from the Gulf of Aden region, where two of al Qaeda’s franchises—al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen and al Shabaab in Somalia—have established safe havens. (INCLUDES VIDEO)