Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: As Dozens Die in a Kidnapping, Damascus Responds to Arab League

See also Syria Feature: Reflections on Razan Ghazzawi, Now Detained
Monday's Bahrain, Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Sorting Out "Shameless Acts of Terror"

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2110 GMT: Tonight's mass demonstration in Deir Ez Zor in northeast Syria:

2048 GMT: Yemen Prime Minister Mohammed Basindwa said today that an interim government will be formed in the next 48 hours.

The announcement came as forces of President Saleh and those of dissident military and tribes pulled back from some positions in the southern city of Taiz, after at least 20 people were killed in the last five days.

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Middle East Special: Will the Monarchies Survive? (Al Qassemi)

Monarchs at the Gulf Co-operation CouncilThe transformation of Arab monarchies into constitutional systems is a matter ofwhen rather than if. The alternative may be less appealing to those in power today. On a recent visit to Boston in which I met a number of Arab Gulf states students, the debate veered, as it tends to do nowadays, towards Arab constitutional monarchies. To my surprise it was a Qatari, a citizen of by far the richest county on earth often accused of political apathy who remarked to a friend and I, “I don’t agree with constitutional monarchies,” he paused, “I want nothing less than a republic.”

Without urgent non-cosmetic reform the Arab monarchies will simply be kicking the reform ball forward.

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Egypt Letter: Returning to Mubarak's Prisons (Alaa)

Alaa at Personal Democracy ForumI did not expect that the very same experience would be repeated after five years, after a revolution in which we have ousted the tyrant, I go back to jail.

The memories of being incarcerated have returned, all the details, from the skills of being able to sleep on the floor with eight colleagues in a small cell (2 x 4 meters) to the songs and discussions of the inmates. But I am completely unable to remember how I secured my glasses while asleep. They was trampled upon three times in one day. I realize suddenly that they are the very same pair I had when I was jailed in 2006, and that I am imprisoned, now, pending investigation under similar flimsy accusations and reasons of that incarceration, the only difference is that we have exchanged State Security prosecution with military prosecution: a change fitting to the military moment we are living.

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