It was meant to be a crowning moment in which Iran put its own Islamic stamp on the Arab Spring. More than a thousand young activists were flown here earlier this week (at government expense) for a conference on "the Islamic Awakening," Tehran's effort to rebrand the popular Arab uprisings of the past year. But there was a catch. No one was invited from Syria, whose autocratic president, Bashar al-Assad, is a crucial Iranian ally.

Formed days after Vladimir Putin's announcement in September that he intended to return to the presidency, the band has become the latest symbol of young Russian discontent. The mid-January performance on Red Square, brazen in its choice of location and lyrics, catapulted the all-female punk band into the pantheon of Russia's increasingly creative protest movement.

Ammar Cheikh Oma, the son of Syrian parents who immigrated to Germany in the 1950s, is still trying to make sense of his unlikely transformation from a dutiful German student to a killer for the brutal Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and, ultimately, a defector. Human rights groups and Syrian activists said he was one of thousands of Syrians who had inadvertently found themselves deployed as foot soldiers for a government that the United Nations estimates has killed more than 5,000 people since the crackdown on demonstrators began in March.

In a conservative Syrian town where women are discouraged from going out alone, young women are knocking on doors to recruit others to the resistance. They estimate a couple hundred women have joined a struggle that, nationwide, just claimed over 100 lives in 48 hours. Damascus may be less than five miles away, but for women here it's far from the relative autonomy of the capital city where women, with or without headscarves, freely move around. Here, by contrast, women risk harassment for going out alone or without a headscarf.

Last week, the Ethiopian High Court delivered harsh sentences to five dissident journalists, including an exiled editor living in the United States, on vague charges of terrorism. Critics call the charges trumped up and accuse Ethiopia of using so-called anti-terrorism laws as a tool of oppression.