Libya Special: Creating Armies out of Militias (Sheridan)

The Washington Post's Mary Beth Sheridan offers a slightly more pessimistic analysis than that of Barry Malone (see separate entry), focusing on the National Transitional Council's challenge to build an army out of the militias that toppled Muammar Qaddafi.

Sheridan does stress that the optimism and confidence of the recently victorious fighters is a positive and that many within Libya are committed to avoiding the mistakes of the past. However, this is a major challenge for the new Prime Minister, Abdurrahim El Keib, as both pro-Qaddafi fighters and anti-Qaddafi fighters struggle to find a place in the new Libya.

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Libya Special: National Transitional Council Struggles to Remain the "Good Guys" (Malone)

http://bit.ly/tC4bKtWith Muammar Qaddafi gone, the unifying focus for National Transitional Council fighters to do the near-impossible has been removed. In the face of massive obstacles, despite politics, infighting, and even the death of the commander of the NTC forces, Abdul Fatah Younis, the fighters did not let sectarian tensions distract them from their cause.

Now that Qaddafi is dead and the country is united under a single, transitional, national government, there are obvious problems in maintaining that unity and avoiding the sectarian strife.

Barry Malone, writing for Reuters, examines the problems facing the NTC as they attempt to "remain the good guys." But Malone is not all doom and gloom, predicting that in all probability, Libya will evolve into a scene of "peaceful politicking with some low-level skirmishes possible as Libya moves down a bumpy path of change"....

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Bahrain, Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: A New Dialogue?

1850 GMT: According to a source in Bahrain, when detained teacher Jalila Al Salman was released from prison, she immediately joined a protest, organized by Al Wefaq, that was designed to press for her release. A photo gallery of the event can be found here.

1826 GMT: We have received this video, reportedly showing Syrian soldiers firing guns and rockets into the city of Hama. The video appears to be leaked, and it is very unclear when it was taken. As such, it's very hard to cross-verify this video with eyewitness reports, though there have been plenty of reports of violence over the last few weeks in Hama.

The LCCS had these reports from Hama today, though because this video is leaked, and undated, we don't know when the video was actually taken:

Hama: security forces are heavily spread in the Al-Amiriyeh neighborhood amid widespread detention campaign. Of the detainees is Amir Salha

Hama: Hayaleen: security forces raided the village in a major security force to arrest Sheikh Ammar Khaled Al-Mansour, Imam of Al-Kabeer mosque, and to terrorize the people

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