Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: A Peace Plan Accepted?

A demonstration in front of the Grand Mosque in the Damascus suburb of Douma on Tuesday night

See also Middle East and Iran Videos: 4 Activists on Women's Rights After the "Arab Spring"
Tuesday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: 65 Dead Amidst Manoeuvres for Talks

---

2110 GMT: Kuwaiti authorities arrested a man late on Tuesday for allegedly insulting the Prophet Mohammed on his Twitter account.

The man, whose name was not disclosed, defamed the Islamic faith and slandered the Prophet Mohammed, his companions and his wife, the Ministry of Interior said in a statement issued on state-run news agency KUNA. He is being interrogated ahead of court proceedings.

The ministry saiid that it “regretted the abusing of social networks by some individuals to offend basic Islamic and spiritual values, vowing to show zero tolerance in combating such serious offences”.

In September a Kuwaiti court convicted a man for insulting Gulf rulers and posting inflammatory sectarian comments on social media, but he was released immediately because of time already served while awaiting trial.

Click to read more ...

Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: 65 Dead Amidst Manoeuvres for Talks

A video illustrating that, despite reports of juveniles tried in military courts (see 0847 GMT), all Egyptian children love the ruling armed forces

---

2040 GMT: According to the Locall Co-ordinating Committees of Syria, the Assad military has begun an assault on the town of Saraqeb in Idlib Province:

Idlib:Saraqeb: The regime's army continues to encircle the city amid a widespread deployment of tanks in the southern part, where continuous gunfire and explosions were reported. The regime's army has also surrounded hospitals to deny entry to the wounded; this led residents to treat the wounded in field hospitals along the city's perimeter. Electricity is still cut off for the fourth consecutive day.

The regime's arrest campaigns are still ongoing as well, and the number of detainees is now in the hundreds. Moreover, residents cannot bury the martyrs who fell during the days-long regime siege on Saraqeb because of the continuous shelling and bombardment. The random shelling has also damaged the Information Office, which therefore cannot post any videos that document the harsh reality in the area

Click to read more ...

Turkey Live Coverage (26 March): Has Assad Solved Erdogan's Kurdish Problem?

;1845 GMT: According to a survey conducted by the Ankara-based MetroPOLL Strategic and Social Research Center, 61.7 percent of respondents said they supported children's receiving education in their mother tongue on the condition that they learn Turkish.

1825 GMT: In order to increase the cooperation against the PKK-Syria camp, the Iraqi Kurdistan regional government Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani will make his first diplomatic visit to Ankara. 

1740 GMT: Ahead of the 'Friends of Syria' meeting on April 1, Ankara heeds the two-day meeting of Syrian opposition groups in İstanbul. Out of 200 representatives of the country, the only group left out of the two-day meeting is the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) because of its affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"This is by far the most significant meeting as far as the Syrian opposition is concerned,” a Turkish official told journalists.

Click to read more ...

Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Will the US Aid the Opposition?

2002 GMT: A late-afternoon surprise from the State Department. While we could have guessed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be traveling to Turkey for the "Friends of Syria" meeting, we were not aware that she would be traveling to Saudi Arabia to discuss Syria first:

ecretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will travel to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from March 30-31, 2012. While in Riyadh, she will meet King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. She will also attend the First Ministerial Meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council-U.S. Strategic Cooperation Forum. In her conversations, she will discuss the full range of bilateral and regional issues, including ongoing security cooperation in the region, as well as the international community’s continuing efforts to stop the bloodshed in Syria.

Secretary Clinton will then travel to Istanbul, Turkey from March 31-April 1 to attend the second meeting of the “Friends of the Syrian People.” This meeting will build upon steps that our friends, allies, and the Syrian opposition continue to take in an attempt to halt the slaughter of the Syrian people and pursue a transition to democracy in Syria. While in Istanbul, Secretary Clinton will also conduct bilateral meetings with Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu and other foreign leaders.

What does this mean? We could read a lot into a short statement, but it certainly means that Clinton is seeking regional unity on Syria. Remember that Saudi Arabia walked out of the last "Friends of Syria" meeting because of a lack of perceived progress in ending the crisis. Whatever the FoS decides, they will look weak and illegitimate without the backing of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the other major regional players.

1957 GMT: The Syrian government has banned all male citizens under the age of 42 from traveling internationally:

Click to read more ...

Syria Wired: The Latest from Social Media and EA's Readers

"Ahmed" takes viewers through a demolished mosque in Saramein in Idlib Province

See also Syria Wired (25 March): The Latest from Social Media and EA's Readers

---

Our pilot feature for EA readers to bring in the latest news from social media....

Syria Wired: The Latest from Social Media and EA's Readers

See also Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: 45 Dead amid Regime Attacks on Homs and Idlib

---

In our 3 1/2 years, we have been fortunate to have readers who brought in latest news and ideas. Recently, that has been especially true over Syria, amidst the rapidly-shifting events of the political crisis, military operations, and violence against civilians.

So today we are starting a pilot feature. We are simply posting this introduction and then turning the entry over to readers for the latest reports from Syria. 

Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: 45 Dead amid Regime Attacks on Homs and Idlib

The Syrian regime's attack on Saraqeb in Idlib Province on Saturday

See also Syria Wired: The Latest from Social Media and EA's Readers
Saturday's Bahrain, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The Surge of Protest

---

2015 GMT: Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has defended its handling of Egypt's political transition against criticsm from a Parliament led by Islamist parties.

The Muslim Brotherhood, whose Freedom and Justice Party has the biggest bloc in Parliament, described Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri's cabinet as a failure and criticized the army for continuing to support it, in a statement on Saturday.

"We understand that the government's performance may not satisfy public aspirations at this critical stage," SCAF said in a statement read on state television. "But we emphasize that the nation's interest is our first concern and we will not spare any effort and will take any measures or decisions needed for the sake of the nation and its citizens."

SCAF and the Ganzouri Government has been criticised for failing to halt the slide in the shattered economy and for heavy-handed tactics in dealing with protests against its rule.

The Brotherhood said the Cabinet of Ganzouri, who also served as Prime Minister in the Mubarak regime in the 1990s, had been worse than its predecessors.

Click to read more ...

Bahrain, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The Surge of Protest

Protesting women greet armoured personnel carriers with peace signs; police respond with sound grenades

See also Palestine Opinion: The Hunger Strike of Hana Shalabi --- "Will Anyone See It?"
Middle East Feature: Why are Arab Journalists The "Unknown Soldiers" in Battle for Truth?
Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: This is "Peace" --- Another 90 Die

---

1818 GMT: The Local Co-ordination Committees of Syria claims that 45 people have died today, including three women and four children. Twenty-four of the deaths were in Homs, where several neighbourhoods are being shelled, and 13 in Idlib, where regime forces have moved into the Saraqeb district.

1641 GMT: Andrew Hammond of Reuters writes, amidst reports of widespread use of tear gas by Bahrain's security forces:

back after Sitra. all i can say is that was really insane. cld have been worse too if media hadnt been around

— Andrew Hammond (@Hammonda1) March 24, 2012

Click to read more ...

Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: This is "Peace" --- Another 90 Die

Thursday night's protest rally in the Douma suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus

---

2200 GMT: We're closing yet another crazy Friday. Here's a summary.

In Bahrain, there were nine very large protests, most or all of which were attacked by police who used teargas to disperse the crowds. Though protests were planned, they were larger and more energetic today after the news that a man died last night from tear gas inhalation.

Some protesters destroyed closed-circuit TV cameras and threw rocks at police. Apparently, there was at least one occurrence of youth throwing Molotov cocktails.

This anger was sparked by what the activists consider widespread police brutality. Large parts of the island nation were covered in teargas again today, and riot vehicles reportedly chased down protesters in an attempt to run them over. There are also more unconfirmed reports of injured children, and another unconfirmed report that police sexually molested a young girl. Earlier in the week activists say that the police molested and tortured a 16-year-old boy, Ali.

At the end of the day, resolution to this conflict seems further away than it has ever been.

In Syria, the primary headline was arguably the use of helicopters to attack ground targets for the first time that we can confirm. There were several instances of this today and last night, all of them between Aleppo and the border with Turkey.

At nightfall, there are more reports of widespread fighting between FSA soldiers and the Assad military, specifically in Hama and to the east of Damascus.

The other noteworthy video was posted at 1544 GMT, showing an IED attack against Assad infantry in Hama.

However, once again the fact that will be lost to most headline writers is that there were large and widespread protests across the country, including in Damascus and Aleppo. Once again the Syrian opposition has used another Friday to prove that their resistance to the regime cannot be shot or shelled into submission.

Click to read more ...

Iran & Turkey Feature: Tehran v. Ankara in Battle for Hearts and Minds (Akyol)

Turkish President Erdogan & Supreme LeaderThe Arab Spring has heightened the ideological tension between Ankara and Tehran, and Turkey's model seems to be winning. Last spring, Iran often claimed that the Arab revolutions were akin to the Iranian one decades before and would usher in similar governments. Yet in Tunisia and Egypt, for the first time, leading figures in mainstream Islamist parties have won elections by explicitly appealing to the "the Turkish model" rather than to an Iranian-style theocracy. What's more, in December 2011, the Palestinian movement Hamas salted the wound when a spokesman announced the organization's shift toward "a policy of nonviolent resistance", which reflected its decision to distance itself from Syria and Iran and to move closer to Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar.

Click to read more ...