The dance of daggers is Yemen's most deceptive martial tradition. Partners unsheathe their weapons and surge forth at each other with a kick, feinting and shrinking back. Just when you might expect one to plunge his knife into the other's heart, suddenly, they clasp arms, smile, and swirl in unison, only to break away and bristle again.
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In happier times, President Ali Abdullah Saleh and top general Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar treated camera crews to the spectacle at a public celebration in Sanaa, the capital.
Today, and for almost a month running, their daggers are heavy artillery, their audience Yemen's abortive protest movement, and their dance floor a prone country whose future depends on the outcome of their duel.
Nine months into a nationwide popular uprising, the reality facing this impoverished southern Arabian nation is bleaker than ever. As Libyans celebrated the demise of Muammar al-Qaddafi and Tunisians headed to the polls, Yemenis were caught in the throes of the bloody power struggle between the two friends-turned-foes, a deadly standoff that drowns out their calls for democracy and drags the country closer to civil war.
Not without cause, last Friday's U.N. Security Council resolution urging a political transition assigned blame to both sides of the country's political divide for a recent spike in violence, as dozens of protestors and civilians were caught in crossfires across Sanaa between government snipers and al-Ahmar's soldiers.
The newest strategy of al-Ahmar' renegade First Armored Division, which defected in March, is to accompany unarmed marches on their perilous route from "Change Square," the vast area on the west side of town where the mostly youthful protesters have set up camp, to new strategic areas of the capital, expanding his sphere of influence over the divided city and dragging whole neighborhoods into fierce clashes. The protesters have become, in effect, human shields.
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