Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Fighting Across the Country

A 9-minute video of street fighters in the Midan section of Damascus on Monday

See also Syria Analysis: It's Not Quite "The Battle for Damascus"...But It's An Important Fight
Bahrain Snapshot: The Curious Tale of The American and $11 Million in Cash --- What Does It Mean?
Monday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Fighting in Damascus

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1935 GMT: Syria. A map of Damascus, a snap shot posted by the Syrian Uprising 2011 Information Centre:

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A snapshot of what is happening in Damascus now. The modern city centre is marked in Green. Strong opposition areas where clashes are reported are marked in Red. Military bases are marked as trucks, intelligence bases as question marks while flags show important government building such as parliament, ministries and Ba'ath Party buildings.

The map is visually striking, but if we were to make our own, it would show an even stronger presence of opposition fighters and popular support in some of those blank areas. Some of the area between the green and the eastern red is also a conflict zone, but the presence of military soldiers and armored vehicles has kept the peace so far today. Also, some of the areas northeast of the green are also heavily embattled. Though these areas are not "opposition strongholds" per se, just because they have not been filled in does not mean that the regime has significant there. By the same token, none of the areas in red are in opposition control, but they have a large presence of opposition fighters, and popular support for the opposition in many of these areas is overwhelming.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The Annan Plan is Failing --- We Must Have the Annan Plan

See also Syria Video Feature: Friday's Protests Across the Country
Syria Transcript: Kofi Annan's Speech to the UN General Assembly
Thursday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: More than 140 Die as US and Russia Talk of "Plan B"

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2105 GMT: Syria. The Salaheddin section of Aleppo tonight:

2035 GMT: Syria. Security forces fire at protesters in Aleppo today:

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Syria, Egypt (and Beyond) Live Coverage: More than 50 Die in Houla; A Presidential Run-Off in Cairo

UN military observers view dozens of victims of Friday's killings in Houla in Syria

See also Bahrain Special: Preaching Religious Tolerance, Practicing Religious Discrimination
Bahrain Live Coverage: UN Human Rights Council Sends Message to Regime
Friday's Egypt, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Waiting for a Presidential Outcome
Egypt Opinion: A Reminder After the Presidential Vote "The Revolution Lives"

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2015 GMT: SyriaTonight's protest in the Kafarsouseh section of Damascus, in sympathy with the people of Houla:

1945 GMT: Algeria. Lawmakers of the "moderate" Islamic Green Algeria Alliance and two smaller Islamic factions have walked out of the inaugural session of the new Parliament to protest against an election they claim was rigged to give a majority to the ruling party.

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Syria, Bahrain (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Enter the Observers

A protest in Aleppo on Sunday night

See also Bahrain 1st-Hand: Smuggled Footage of Crackdown & Interview with Ala'a Shehabi
Iraq Snapshot: The Divisions Among the Shia Factions
Bahrain Snap Analysis: The Regime's Propaganda Struggles
Bahrain 1st-Hand: The AlKhawaja Story - Wife/Mother Speaks Out
Turkey Live Coverage (30 April): Questions on the Syrian Front
Sunday's Bahrain, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The Two-Step of Protest and Detention

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2100 GMT: Iraq. In a further escalation of political tension, fugitive Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi and some of his bodyguards have been charged with a series of murders, including the killing of six judges.

Hashemi, a Sunni politician, fled Baghdad in December when the Shia-led Government issued an arrest warrant for him, accusing him of running death squads. He is now in Turkey and is not expected to attend the trial when it begins on Thursday.

2034 GMT: UAE. Amnesty International has called on the United Arab Emirates to immediately and unconditionally release nine political activists who have been detained in the last month.

The nine men belong to the Reform and Social Guidance Association (al-Islah), a non-profit organization that advocates --- through peaceful debate --- greater adherence to Islamic precepts.

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The Latest from Iran (23 April): "We Are the Inspiration for the Arab Spring"

See also The Latest from Iran (22 April): A Lull in the Politics

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Iraq PM Maliki & President Ahmadinejad2019 GMT: Elections Watch. More than seven weeks after the first round of Parliamentary elections --- and 11 days before the second round --- we finally have a claimed breakdown of the affiliation of those elected.

MP Asadollah Badamchian, quoting from a Ministry of Intelligence report, gives these figures for the 225 candidates elected in the first round: 64 are from the Unity Front, only nine from the Islamic Constancy Front headed by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, 50 are on the lists of both the Unity Front and the Constancy Front, and 14 are from the Steadfastness Front linked to conservative politician Mohsen Rezaei. There are 35 reformists, 39 "independents, and 14 Sunnis.

The other 65 MPs will be elected in the second round on 4 May.

2011 GMT: Abolfazl Qadyani, a senior member of the reformist Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution, has used a court appearance to declare that the Supreme Leader "has dealt the biggest blow to the nezam (system)....He is the true taghout (false idol)."

Qadyani was initially detained on 28 December 2009, a day after the opposition's Ashura rallies. He was given a one-year sentence for "insulting the President" and then, in December 2011, give three more years in prison.

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Bahrain, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Free Alkhawaja

One of Friday's "Free Alkhawaja" rallies in Bahrain --- see also our Bahrain Video and Photo Special

See also Bahrain Feature: A Call from Hunger Striker Abdulhadi Alkhawaja to His Family
Bahrain Video and Photo Special: Friday's "Free Alkhawaja Protests"
Lebanon Feature: Is Hezbollah's Syria Policy A Regional and Domestic Mistake?
Turkey Video Feature: Will the "Coup Trial" Heal Political Wounds?
Friday's Bahrain, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: A Kingdom on Edge

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2045 GMT: On Friday night, Bahraini activist Zainab Alkhawaja was seized as she stood outside a military hospital and called out to her father, political prisoner Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, held inside on his hunger strike. She was released this afternoon.

Tonight Zainab returned. According to her mother, she was seized, tied to a wheelchair, and taken to the security room at the hospital.

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The Latest from Iran (21 December): It's The Economy, Mahmoud

See also Iran Snap Analysis: The Currency Falls --- What Does It Mean?
The Latest from Iran (20 December): The Strains Within

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1705 GMT: Oil Watch. A bit of good news for Tehran amidst the economic pressure on the regime, including the possibility of a European Union ban on supplies of oil from Iran....

Turkey's biggest crude oil importer Tupras has renewed its annual deal to buy crude oil from Iran for 2012, at almost the same volumes as this year, according to industry sources.

China's top refiner Sinopec Corp said that buy less than half the crude it normally imports from Iran in January.

1655 GMT: Najmeh Bozorgmehr of The Financial Times offers valuable interpretation of the currency crisis:

The managed float mechanism has collapsed for much of this year. The central bank’s adoption of a multiple-rate system has also failed to bring back stability to the market and to foil the impact of international sanctions aimed at Tehran’s nuclear programme. Sanctions have caused the cost of financial transactions to increase, by forcing them to go through numerous back channels, and have hit foreign currency markets by reducing the supply of cash.

But there are also domestic dynamics at play. While the market remains anxious about the possibility of a European Union oil embargo and the US imposing sanctions on the central bank, local media have accused the government of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, president, of engineering a deliberate devaluation to boost the rial value of its oil income in the final months of the fiscal year to March.

Economists and parliamentarians have predicted this year’s budget deficit could be as high as $30bn, or 7 per cent of the country’s GDP.

The government is due to present its budget bill to parliament soon and some analysts believe the government is allowing the rial to weaken to reset the official exchange rate to the dollar in the budget, which has traditionally sat around the 10,000 mark.

But Iran’s minister of economy and finance, Shamsoddin Hosseini, on Wednesday denied any such intention. “The government has had no, [absolutely] no deliberate plan to strengthen the dollar rate,” he said, and promised to announce “a plan to manage the market” soon.

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Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Launch of an Opposition?

A woman with a Bahrain flag and then other protesters defy security forces, who respond by firing tear gas

See also Syria Video Special: The Protests of Eid Al-Adha

Syria 1st-Hand: A Motorcycle Ride to Homs
Syria Video and Transcript: The Speech by Opposition Leader Ghalioun
Saturday's Bahrain, Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Running Down a Protest

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2040 GMT: A special video from Syria today, with tens of thousands of people turning out for a protest rally in Jebel el Zawiya in the northwest:

1720 GMT: Activists have raised today's death toll at the hands of Syrian security forces to 11 --- nine in Homs, one in Hama, and one in Idlib Province.

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Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The "New Normal"

1756 GMT: Semih Idiz offers an analysis on whether or not a visit by Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu to Syria will be effective. His conclusion is that Turkey has little recourse, and Assad is likely trying to bide time for his reforms to kick in (and I would add, he is attempting to discourage the opposition by killing it, a tactic which seems to be failing thus far). However, Idiz offers this interesting paragraph, hinting that even Assad will find it difficult to change Syria:

Regardless of his talk about reforms, Assad is not in a position to allow this even if he wanted to, given the privileges the Alawite minority has secured for itself over the decades and which it is unlikely to give up without a fight. The question for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan then is what happens if Assad does not comply with Turkey’s demands.

1747 GMT: The international human rights organisation Avaaz is reporting that 2 people have been killed today in a renewed military campaign against the city of Hama, Syria.

1743 GMT: US President Barack Obama and Turkey Prime Minister Erdogan conferred today, over the phone, about the ongoing crisis in Syria:

The White House says that in a call Obama made to Erdogan Thursday, the pair agreed that the violence in Syria must stop and the demands of the Syrian people for a transition to democracy must be met. Obama and Erdogan agreed to consult closely in the coming days as the situation in Syria develops.

1709 GMT: The LCCS is reporting that 12 people have been killed today in Syria, 11 in Qussair, outside of Homs.

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