Scapegoating a Muslim peer?

Muhammad Abdul Bari

Media and political pressure has been piling on Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the Conservative Party co-chairman and minister-without-portfolio in the coalition government. Unpopular with the Tory Right, the guns have turned on her following the Conservative Party’s dismal electoral performance in last month’s local elections.

Lady Warsi is already being investigated by a parliamentary watchdog over reports she claimed accommodation allowance while staying with a friend rent-free. She has referred the allegations to Lords Commissioner for Standards Paul Kernaghan, but in the meantime is facing calls to quit cabinet. There is barely a week that goes by without someone, usually a Tory, calling for her head. The Labour Party has seized upon her plight and called for her to step down.

In the latest twist, Lady Warsi was alleged by a Sunday Telegraph article to have failed to declare that she and her business partner Abid Hussain, who was on a ministerial trip to Pakistan in 2010, had stakes in the same business firm. Lady Warsi has apologised to the prime minister for any “embarrassment to the government”. David Cameron spared no time to ask his independent adviser on ministerial interests to look into the case and ordered an inquiry into her foreign trip.

Fading star?

Lady Warsi is the UK’s most senior minority-ethnic politician. She was initially seen as a shining light in the Conservative Party, long-struggling to recruit from the black and minority ethnic (BME) communities. Is she going to be a scapegoat for the sliding unpopularity of the Conservative Party? Will Lady Warsi, the first Muslim woman to be a Cabinet minister, survive this political storm? Will David Cameron cave in to her powerful detractors?

These questions are not only being asked in the Westminster village, but in the minds of many across the BME communities. Some are asking whether there is something more sinister in this campaign to oust her. Her departure will be a loss to British politics, argues Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote. Many, even her political opponents, are wary of the nature of attacks on her.

Lady Warsi is not a political maverick. She is sharp, charismatic and she speaks her mind. As such, she has brought a distinctive appeal to the Conservative Party, traditionally viewed as led by a white middle (or upper) class elite. As co-chairman of the party and with the wide-ranging government job of minister-without-portfolio, she has brought a breath of fresh air into frontline politics. She arrived at her first cabinet meeting in May 2010 dressed in a pink-and-gold shalwar qameez, distinct in look and dress.

But it appears she has made many enemies in the right-wing media and political spheres, after wading into the muddied waters of race and religion. In a wide-ranging interview with Mehdi Hasan in The New Statesman in October 2010 Baroness Warsi said: “If you have a pop at the British Muslim community in the media, then first of all it will sell a few papers; second, it doesn’t really matter; and third, it’s fair game.” She then added: “If you go back historically - [and] I was looking at some Evening Standard headlines, where there were things written about the British Jewish community less than 100 years ago - they have kind of replaced one with the other.”

Representing the Muslim community?

In a later speech at Leicester University in January 2011 she said that prejudice against Muslims had “passed the dinner-table test” and become socially acceptable in the UK. Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator, supported her saying that hatred of Muslims was one of the last bastions of British bigotry. Muslim individuals and groups which were known as beacons of moderation in modern Britain are now seen as “non-violent extremists”, thanks to a political shift in the UK which has seen neo-conservatives enter the ranks of government. There are many rumours about the battles that have taken place within the Coalition, regarding policy towards Muslims and British Muslim organisations. The Leveson Inquiry was told about this negative portrayal of Muslims in media last January. One wonders if Baroness Warsi has now herself fallen foul of these same powers.

Warsi is a politician, of course. She has not always been popular among some in the Muslim community. Recently she spoke out strongly about the Pakistani community. She has worked with Pakistan’s Ministry of Law on a project to fight forced marriage. Being a Muslim, she vehemently defends Christian values for Britain. Has this proved too much for the Tory hierarchy, or the right-wingers who are reportedly biting at their leader David Cameron’s heels right now?

Some are already comparing the prime minister’s over-enthusiasm in initiating an inquiry on Lady Warsi to his disinterest in doing the same on with his Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt and his over-close connections to the Murdoch family. Does this mean the first Muslim woman to sit in the Cabinet lacks friends among the Conservative high command, in a way Jeremy Hunt does not?

Whatever Lady Warsi is, or was, we need more Muslims represented in our political processes. With hundreds of local councillors and now quite a few parliamentarians in both houses of parliament, Muslims’ growing presence in politics is indeed encouraging - despite a continuous negative media portrayal on anything linked with Islam and Muslims, from halal slaughter, to forced marriage and sexual grooming. In his powerful article on halal hysteria last month, political commentator Mehdi Hasan said that the British “debate” about meat, animal cruelty and ritual slaughter has become “a proxy for deep fears about Muslims in our midst”.

Politics, the noble profession to serve people, has sadly become too short-termist at the expense of principles and values in our time. It has turned out to be a profession of the privileged who have failed to stand up for people, especially for white working class and BME communities. In the absence of a level playing field many people, particularly the youth, are apathetic about our democratic processes. The Warsi debacle is just another sign that politicians are getting it wrong when it comes to Muslims in the political sphere.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari is a parenting consultant. He is a founding member of The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO), Chairman of the East London Mosque Trust and former Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain (2006-10).                

Myth of the drone war ‘successes’

PATRICK COCKBURN

As the US and its allies ponder what to do about Syria, one suggestion advanced by the protagonists of armed intervention is to use unmanned drones to attack Syrian government targets. The proposal is a measure of the extraordinary success of the White House, CIA and Defence Department in selling the drone as a wonder weapon despite all the evidence to the contrary.

The attraction of the drone for President Obama and his administration five months before the presidential election is self-evident. The revelation that he personally selected targets from the top ranks of al-Qaeda for assassination by remote control shows the president as tough and unrelenting in destroying America’s enemies. The programme is popular at home because the cost appears not to be large and, most importantly, there are no American casualties. The media uncritically buys into claims of the weapon’s effectiveness, conveniently diverting voters’ attention from the US army’s failure to defeat puny opponents in two vastly expensive campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Republicans cried foul, alleging that the administration is selectively leaking highly classified secrets to portray Obama as a man of decision untroubled by liberal qualms in the Defence of his country. The White House expressed itself deeply shocked by such a claim of political opportunism, and last week the US Attorney General, Eric Holder, appointed two lawyers to track down the leakers, though without giving them special powers to do so.

Almost unquestioned in all this is the utility of the drone strikes and whether they really are the wonder weapon they are claimed to be. After all, air forces have been over-selling precision bombing as a way of winning wars on the cheap since Lord Trenchard ran the RAF in the 1920s. Politicians of all nations have been attracted by new war-winning armaments or commando-type organisations. Examples include Churchill in the Second World War and President Kennedy, who favoured the Green Beret special units and helicopter-borne forces in Vietnam. The media has traditionally gobbled up and publicised tales of magically effective arms or the derring-do of elite detachments, often ignoring their lack of long-term military success.

The most striking but understated feature of the drone strikes in the northwest frontier districts of Pakistan is that they could not take place without the co-operation of the Pakistani Army. Some government co-operation is essential in Yemen, too, though less so than in Pakistan because of the weakness of the Yemeni state.

The problem is that high-precision weapons still need ground-based intelligence to identify targets. The difficulty for those guiding the drones from command posts far away has not changed much since “precision bombing” in the Second World War or the far more accurate missile strikes in Iraq in 1991 and 2003. Large, immovable facilities or power stations are easy to identify; individuals are not. In 2003, President Bush brought forward the start of the bombing and missile strikes because US intelligence believed it knew the exact location of Saddam Hussein in south Baghdad. This was destroyed by missiles, but research after the war showed that Saddam had never been near the place.

Up-to-the minute intelligence about who is in what house, and when they are there, requires a network of local agents who can communicate their information immediately.

Of course, an assassination target might be stupid enough to give away his or her position by using a mobile, satellite phone or some other form of electronic communication. But few insurgent groups today are likely to give away their position so easily.

It means allowing the US to kill or capture members of al-Qaeda in Pakistan, successes that have important electoral benefits for any administration in Washington. At times, Pakistan may look to the US to eliminate a troublesome member of the Pakistan Taliban such as its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who over-reached himself in the eyes of the authorities and was killed by a drone strike in 2009. Over the years, the White House or the CIA has been able to claim successes, such as the elimination of the second in command of al-Qaeda or the killing of most top al-Qaeda commanders, as if Bin Laden’s old organisation were the same size as the Pentagon.

What we have not seen is the effective use of US drones against the Afghan Taliban and its allies. It is here that the Afghan Taliban’s leadership is based, and its ability to retreat into Pakistan has ensured the US military failure in Afghanistan, just as it ensured the Soviet Union’s inability to wipe out the insurgents fighting its forces in the 1980s.

The lack of good US intelligence on the Afghan Taliban leadership is striking. How else, as happened a few hears ago, would a shopkeeper from Quetta be able to extract a large sum of money and pose as a Taliban leader in peace negotiations in Kabul?

Unmanned drone strikes are all about American domestic politics rather than about the countries where they are used. They cater to illusions of power, giving Americans a sense that their technical prowess is unparalleled, despite the Pentagon’s inability to counter improvised explosive devices, which are no more than old-fashioned mines laid in or beside roads. The drones have even been presented as being more humanitarian than other forms of warfare, simply by claiming that any dead males of military age killed in a strike must have been enemy combatants.

The downside to these exaggerated successes is that the White House and the US security agencies believe more of their own propaganda than is good for them. Ramshackle insurgent movements in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen are not like regular armies, in which the elimination of officers or senior cadres might be a crippling blow to the organization. Just as important, in the long term, assassination campaigns do not win wars, and they create as many enemies as they destroy.                –Counterpunch

Israel stripped nearly 250,000 Palestinians of residency

JERUSALEM  - Israel revoked the residency of nearly 250,000 Palestinians between 1967 and 1994, according to Israeli military figures obtained by a human rights group and shown to AFP on Tuesday.

A letter sent to Israeli NGO HaMoked shows Israel stripped the residency of more than 100,000 people living in Gaza and about 140,000 people living in the West Bank after it occupied the Palestinian territories in 1967. Palestinians lost their residency for various reasons, including tens of thousands for failing to respond to a census.

Others saw their residency revoked after travelling overseas for a number of years and failing to periodically renew their permits.

But rights groups say the renewal process was never explained to many Palestinians who travelled abroad to study or work only to discover they had missed the renewal deadline and therefore lost their residency. And the total number affected by the revocations is believed to be higher than the official figure because entire families were sometimes forced to leave their homes after one member had their residency revoked. Ido Blum, head of HaMoked's legal team, said the policy, which was in force for 27 years until the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994, was a violation of international law. "It is a clear violation of law for the occupying force to reduce the local population by revoking their residency rights, especially through an administrative procedure," he said.

The policy did not take into account whether the individual affected had residency or nationality elsewhere, and likely left some Palestinians stateless, he said. In 1994, when the Palestinian Authority took administrative control of parts of the West Bank and Gaza under the Oslo agreement, some Palestinians were allowed to return.

Israeli figures show about 12,000 Palestinians were able to get their residency reinstated, but others have long since died without having their residency restored.

While the policy of revoking residency no longer applies to the West Bank and Gaza, it is still implemented in east Jerusalem.

Palestinians unable to provide documents including utility bills or school enrolment forms indicating Jerusalem is their "centre of life" risk losing their permit to stay in the Holy City.

Meanwhile, Israel's mass round-up of mainly African immigrants passed the 200 mark on Tuesday and immigration authorities said that 43 people had agreed to be voluntarily repatriated.

A statement from the Population and Migration Authority said on Tuesday, "66 illegal residents - most of them South Sudanese - were arrested. In addition, another 43 signed a request to leave the country of their own volition."

Immigration officials had earlier put the number arrested on Tuesday morning at 73.

Authority spokeswoman Sabine Haddad told AFP later that some of the 43 volunteers came to immigration offices spontaneously and some were visited in their homes but none who signed were taken into custody.

The 66 who were detained joined 140 people arrested on Sunday and Monday in a series of raids aimed at rounding up and deporting illegal immigrants.

On Sunday, raids saw police round up some 25 immigrants, around a third of them from South Sudan, and the campaign gathered speed on Monday, when 115 people were arrested, many of them in the Red Sea town of Eilat, close to where they crossed into Israel from Egypt.

Those who agree to leave Israel voluntarily will receive free airline tickets and a grant of 1,000 euros ($1,250), but the offer is "only on the table for one week," Haddad said.

Official figures show there are 60,000 Africans living in Israel illegally, most of whom live in run-down neighbourhoods of south Tel Aviv. Interior Minister Eli Yishai estimates that another 6,000 or so may have slipped into the country undetected.

Around a quarter of the total are living in Eilat, where an AFP correspondent saw immigration police stopping African passers-by and asking for identification.

"For the time being, I feel good. I'm not sure they can find anything on us," said 32-year-old Anthony Christiano from South Sudan.

"I don't blame them (the immigration police) - it's the state that wants us out," he told AFP.

Nearby, native-born resident Yusef Khuri sat at a small table gathering signatures to urge the authorities to rid the city of its African immigrants, flanked by posters reading: "Free conquered Eilat."

"They have wrecked our country and have taken over every aspect of our lives," he spat. "They are border jumpers, they should be shot."

Last week, an Israeli court decided that the lives of an estimated 1,500 South Sudanese were no longer at risk in their homeland, clearing the way for their mass expulsion.

It was not immediately clear when the deportations would begin, although a report in Israel's Maariv newspaper suggested that the first flight would leave for Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on Sunday.

The interior minister, who has frequently tried to expel non-Jewish immigrants, sparking accusations of racism, on Tuesday said the raids were "just the beginning."

"At the moment we are permitted only to deport citizens of South Sudan and the Ivory Coast," Yishai wrote in the Israel HaYom newspaper.

"The next stage is the removal from Israel of all the infiltrators from Eritrea and Sudan."

Allowing them to stay would mean "the end of the Zionist dream," he warned.

Rising tensions over the growing number of illegal immigrants entering Israel exploded into violence last month when a protest in south Tel Aviv turned nasty. Demonstrators smashed African-run shops and property, chanting "Blacks out!"

Israel, which reportedly backed South Sudan through its 1983-2005 war with Khartoum, recognised the new nation and established full diplomatic relations with its government shortly after it declared independence in July last year.

The Jewish state does not have relations with Sudan, which it has accused of serving as a base for militants.

UN names 52 perpetrators of grave violations against children

UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations has named 52 parties on its annual ‘list of shame’ of those who recruit and use children, kill and maim, commit sexual violence or attack schools and hospitals, including four new parties in Sudan, Yemen and Syria.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s yearly report to the Security Council on children and armed conflict gives an overview of the grave violations committed against girls and boys in conflict zones, the main perpetrators as well as measures taken for the protection of children.  “2011 shows a mixed picture,” the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, told a news briefing Tuesday.

 “While new crises erupted with a heavy toll on children such as in Syria, and also in Libya, violations against girls and boys have come to an end in other parts of the world,” she noted. The report said a worrisome trend is the growing use of children as suicide bombers and “victim” bombers – those who do not know that they are carrying explosives and are detonated from distance. In 2011 alone, at least 11 children in Afghanistan and another 11 girls and boys in Pakistan were killed while conducting suicide attacks, some as young as eight years old.

 “The world should unite against this inhuman and perverse practice of child suicide bombers,” the Special Representative said.  Children in Syria – where more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began some 16 months ago – were victims of killing and maiming, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, by the Syrian armed forces, the intelligence forces, and the Shabiha militia.

Young people between 8 and 13 were forcibly taken from their homes and used by soldiers as human shields, placing them in front of the windows of buses carrying military personnel into the raid on villages, according to a news release issued by the Special Representative’s office. Schools have been regularly raided, used as military bases and detention centres.

In detention, girls and boys were beaten, blindfolded, subjected to stress positions and to electrical shocks, as well as whipped with heavy electrical cables.

 “The world is keeping a detailed account of the violence committed against civilians in Syria and I am confident that these crimes will not go unpunished,” said Ms. Coomaraswamy.

Meanwhile, the report notes that parties to conflict in Nepal and Sri Lanka have been de-listed after their successful completion of Security Council-mandated action plans to end the recruitment and use of children.

In 2011, five more parties in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad and South Sudan entered into similar agreements with the UN. Also in 2011, releases of children associated with armed forces and armed groups have taken place in CAR, Chad, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Myanmar, South Sudan and Sudan.

 “The progress is continuous but the list of parties to conflict who harm girls and boys will always be too long,” Ms. Coomaraswamy said.

The report for the first time ever, thanks to a Security Council resolution adopted last year, lists parties responsible for attacks on schools and hospitals in addition to those who recruit, kill and maim, or commit sexual violence.

They include armed groups in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq, as well as the Syrian Government forces who regularly shell, burn, loot and raid schools, as well as assault or threat teachers, students, and medical personnel.

Ms. Coomaraswamy called for stronger action against the growing list of persistent perpetrators of grave violations against children – those who have been listed for at least five years – which has doubled since last year to 32.

 “We must put more pressure on these parties through sanctions, other Security Council action, and closer collaboration with national and international courts,” she stated.

Iran confirms agreement on nuclear talks content

TEHRAN  - Iran's top nuclear negotiator on Tuesday confirmed an agreement had been struck with the EU official representing world powers negotiating with Tehran on the content of upcoming talks in Moscow.

Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton had a telephone conversation late on Monday, Jalili's office said. According to the statement, the talks in Moscow on June 18 and 19 will focus on points made by Iran and by the P5+1 group (the US, Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) in a previous round in Baghdad late May.

Jalili told Ashton he "will explicitly talk about Iran's five-point proposals" in Moscow and that "an appropriate response by the P5+1 to the (Iranian) proposals can help advance the talks."

 On Monday, Ashton said she had reached an agreement with Jalili on the content of the Moscow meeting after the hour-long phone conversation.

The two "agreed on the need for Iran to engage on the E3+3 (P5+1) proposals, which address its concerns on the exclusively peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear programme," Ashton's office said in a statement.

She also conveyed the group was ready to respond to the "issues" raised by the Iranians in the Baghdad meeting, the statement said, without elaborating. The announcement was preceded by a meeting in Strasbourg of the political directors of the P5+1. The Western nations in the P5+1, and the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, suspect Iran has conducted research towards developing nuclear weapons.

Iran denies that accusation and claims it is being unfairly treated by the West under the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It says its activities are solely for peaceful purposes.

The Moscow round follows two earlier unproductive meetings since early April, in Istanbul and in Baghdad which failed to yield results in efforts to curb Tehran's nuclear activities.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that world powers will outline to Iran a "very clear path" to resolve the impasse over its suspect nuclear program at talks in Moscow next week.

"There is a unified position being presented by the P5+1 that gives Iran, if it is interested in a diplomatic way out, a very clear path that would be verifiable and linked to action for action," Clinton told a US think-tank.

More than 80 feared dead in Afghan earthquakes

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters/AFP) - An earthquake in Afghanistan triggered a landslide which buried mud homes in a mountain village and rescuers feared at least 80 people had been killed, provincial officials said on Tuesday,

Two quakes with magnitudes of 5.4 and 5.7 struck mountainous northern Afghanistan on Monday, bringing a slide of mud and rocks down on the remote settlement.

The governor of Baghlan province said 22 homes were buried but the bodies of only two women had been recovered. Twenty people were in hospital with injuries. "We don't think we will be able to take out the other bodies," Governor Abdul Majid said. A rescue team only had one bulldozer to try to clear the rubble, he said. "We will hold a prayer for the victims."

The United Nations said it was working with authorities in the area to determine what aid was needed. In Burka district, the worst-hit area in the province of Baghlan, people in the village of Mullah Jan said 71 people had been trapped. An official who asked not to be named described the chances of survival as "very slim". Officials have so far confirmed that only three bodies have been recovered, while six injured people have been rescued.

A bulldozer was at work digging through the rubble at Mullah Jan, according to Rafiullah Rasoolzai, spokesman for the disaster response agency, who said emergency supplies of food, water and shelter had been brought in. "Villagers told Afghan government representatives that 71 people are missing," he said. "They're buried in their home under between 30 and 100 metres of dirt and earth."

Provincial governor Munshi Abdul Majeed earlier said the sheer volume of soil made digging work very difficult.

"They might be dead as there is a lot of soil and removing this is very, very hard," he said.

"We have sent excavators to the area but I don't think they will be able to do much."

Baghlan Police chief Assadullah Shirzad said around 100 security forces were helping the search.

The first quake on Monday, with a magnitude of 5.4, struck at 9:32 am (0502 GMT) at a depth of 15 kilometres (10 miles) with the epicentre around 160 kilometres southwest of the town of Faizabad. A more powerful tremor, measured at 5.7 magnitude, hit around 25 minutes later in almost exactly the same place, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. Buildings were felt shaking slightly in Kabul, around 170 kilometres to the south, during both quakes.

Northern Afghanistan and Pakistan are frequently hit by earthquakes, especially around the Hindu Kush range, which lies near the collision of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.

A 7.6-magnitude earthquake in Pakistan in October 2005 killed 74,000 people and displaced 3.5 million.

‘Dozens dead' in Myanmar religious violence

SITTWE, Myanmar- Dozens of people have been killed in a surge in sectarian violence in Myanmar, an official said on Tuesday, as international pressure grew for an end to the bloodshed.

A state of emergency has been declared in western Rakhine state, which has been rocked by a wave of rioting and arson, posing a major test for the reformist government which took power last year.

"About 25 people have been killed during the unrest," a senior government official told AFP, requesting anonymity. He did not give details of how they died or whether they were Buddhists or Muslims.

A further 41 people were wounded in five days of unrest, he said. The death toll does not include 10 Muslims who were killed on June 3 by a Buddhist mob in apparent revenge for the rape and murder of a woman, which sparked the violence in Rakhine. Rights organisations fear the number of people killed could be much higher than the official figure.

AFP reporters have been unable to visit many of the affected areas for security reasons.

Gunfire rattled the state capital Sittwe on Tuesday and there was a heavy security presence, according to an AFP reporter. Plumes of smoke rose from fires dotted around the area.

Separately, police in neighbouring Bangladesh said a Muslim died in a hospital there after he was allegedly shot by Myanmar security forces before escaping across the border.

Rakhine, a predominantly Buddhist state bordering Bangladesh, is home to a large number of Muslims including the Rohingya, described by the United Nations as one of the world's most persecuted minorities.

More than 500 Rohingya, many of them women and children, have attempted to get to Bangladesh by sea in rickety fishing boats to escape the escalating violence, but Dhaka has been turning them away.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) urged Bangladesh to let them in.

"On these boats are women and children, and injured people," UNHCR representative Craig Sanders told AFP in Dhaka.

"We are appealing to the Bangladesh government to keep open its border and provide emergency and other humanitarian assistance."

The United States urged an immediate halt to the deadly sectarian unrest, which has prompted the United Nations to evacuate more than 40 workers - including foreigners - and their families from Rakhine state.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday called for "all parties to exercise restraint", adding that "the United States continues to be deeply concerned".

The humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), one of the few international aid groups with a presence in the area, said that it had suspended its activities, disrupting essential treatment.

Warning that the violence was running "out of control", New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for international observers to be deployed in Rakhine.

"Why is the international community pulling out at this time? Is the threat at a level that warrants it?" said Phil Robertson, deputy director of HRW's Asia division.

"The government of Burma (Myanmar) has thrown a black veil over the situation in Rakhine state," he told AFP.

The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya to be foreigners, while many citizens see them as illegal immigrants and view them with hostility, describing them as "Bengalis".

Rioting has seen hundreds of homes set on fire across Rakhine.

An ethnic Rakhine fireman said some Rohingya villagers had been injured as they escaped burning homes near Sittwe.

"We all have sympathy for them (the Rohingya). We saw women and children running for their lives. We are all humans," he added, but asked not to be named.

The violence poses a serious challenge to Myanmar's reformist President Thein Sein, as the nation takes tentative steps towards democracy after decades of authoritarian rule.

Animosity between local Buddhists and the Rohingya appears increasingly intractable with both sides trading angry accusations over the surge in violence this month.

Experts say radical elements on both sides may be trying to benefit from the unrest.

"Some Buddhist hardliners probably want to see the Rohingya purged from Burmese soil," said Nicholas Farrelly, a southeast Asia expert at the Australian National University.

"On the other side there are Rohingya who want the world to pay much more consistent attention to their plight."

According to the UN, there are nearly 800,000 Rohingya in Myanmar, mostly in Rakhine. Another one million or more are thought to live in other countries.

Yemen army, in major victory, retakes two cities

ADEN (Reuters/AFP) - The Yemeni army drove al-Qaeda-linked fighters from two of their main strongholds on Tuesday after weeks of fighting, the Defence Ministry said, a major breakthrough for a US-backed offensive meant to secure stability in the wider oil-rich Gulf region.

Jubilant residents took to the streets of the provincial capital of Zinjibar and the strategic city of Jaar in spontaneous celebrations after militants from Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), who had held the two southern cities for more than a year, fled advancing Yemeni troops.

"I am now speaking from the local government headquarters in Zinjibar," Major General Salem Qatan, commander of the southern region, told Reuters by telephone. "The cities of Zinjibar and Jaar have been completely cleansed," he said.

The recapture of the two cities is the army's biggest victory against the militants in more than a year of political turmoil that has taken the country to the brink of civil war, raised questions about its territorial integrity, and fuelled fears about al Qaeda's presence in a country that is next door to Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter.

Ali Saeed Obeid, a military spokesman, told Reuters the fall of Jaar was "an astounding defeat for al Qaeda".

The Defence Ministry said the army, backed by local fighters from popular committees, had entered Jaar on Tuesday morning after heavy fighting that killed at least 20 militants, four soldiers and two civilians. At least 20 Yemeni soldiers were also wounded in the fighting, it said.

Under pressure from Washington to quell the militants, the victory is likely to be seen as evidence that the army - which was seen as split between an old guard loyal to the country's former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh and a new guard seen as closer to his successor Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi - is healing its divisions.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution threatening sanctions against groups seen undermining Yemen's political transition and staging attacks in the country.

So-called "spoilers" such as the family and supporters of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, though not named in the resolution, are a particular target of the warning in Resolution 2051, diplomats said.

The 15-nation council gave strong support to the efforts of President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi's efforts to reform the security and armed forces and launch a national conference of rival parties and factions.

Hadi was sworn in on February 15 following an uncontested election brokered as part of a settlement by the Gulf Cooperation Council. But Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has staged a growing number of attacks in the south of the country, Hadi has met major resistance to political change from various factions and the country is in the grip of a major humanitarian crisis with widespread malnutrition. The council condemned the Al-Qaeda attacks and said it "demands the cessation of all actions aimed at undermining the government of national unity and the political transition" after Saleh's departure.

It demanded a halt to attacks on oil, gas and electricity infrastructure and to "interference" in government efforts to name new heads of the armed forces.

The council expressed its "readiness to consider further measures, including under Article 41 of the UN Charter if such actions continue." The article allows for mainly economic sanctions, such as an assets freeze and travel ban. Diplomats highlighted how Russia and China had agreed to the sanctions threat, while they have so far blocked moves to step up international action against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

They also highlighted how the followers of Saleh, who stood down after a year-long mass uprising, were a major focus of international warnings.

"They should read this resolution particularly carefully," Britain's UN ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters.

The resolution "makes clear that any spoilers, those who are trying to disrupt the transition, disrupt the national dialogue, disrupt the national unity government, will be held accountable," Lyall Grant added.

Yemeni Nobel Peace prize laureate Tawakkul Karman welcomed the resolution and said the members of Saleh's family who still hold top jobs in the military must change.

"Some of the Ali Saleh family, they lead the army and the security forces and the resolution of the Security Council was clear that they must change," Karman told reporters outside the Security Council.

The resolution also called on Hadi's government, however, to quickly pass legislation on transitional justice to support reconciliation efforts. Hadi must also guide through legislation to allow for new national elections in 2014.

"The timeline for this transition is very tight and there is no time to lose," said UN special envoy for Yemen, Jamal Benomar, calling for the legislation to be quickly passed.

The UN Security Council also sought to rally international support for efforts to alleviate Yemen's humanitarian crisis.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East. The UN estimates that almost one million children there suffer from acute malnutrition and that more than one quarter of the population of about 19 million do not get enough food.

Syria now in full-scale civil war: UN

DAMASCUS - Syria is now in a full-scale civil war, UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said on Tuesday, as UN observers reported they were fired on as they tried to enter a town feared to be the target of a new massacre.

The news came as the Syrian government accused Washington of encouraging more massacres in the strife-torn country, which Damascus always attributes to "armed terrorists," and of meddling in its internal affairs.

Asked whether he believed Syria is in a civil war, Ladsous told a small group of reporters: "Yes I think we can say that. Clearly what is happening is that the government of Syria lost some large chunks of territory, several cities to the opposition, and wants to retake control."

"There is a massive increase in the level of violence," Ladsous said. On the ground, the UN Supervision Mission in Syria said observers trying to reach the northwestern town of Al-Haffe were driven back by an angry crowd of people who threw rocks and metal bars at them, and were then fired on by unknown assailants. "As they were leaving the area, three vehicles heading towards (northwest) Idlib were fired upon," the UNSMIS statement said. "The source of fire is still unclear." Earlier, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "residents of the pro-regime village of As-Sheer blocked the road and prevented the UN observer team from reaching Al-Haffe," also speaking of the observers being targeted with stones. The Observatory's Rami Abdel Rahman said people "lay down on the road blocking access to the vehicles of the observers," who then began looking for another route into to the town, in the province of Latakia.

 In its statement, the Syrian foreign ministry struck back by saying "the US administration is pushing forth with its flagrant interference in Syria's internal affairs and its backing of armed terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, the UN accused Syrian troops of using children as "human shields", as it branded Damascus one of the worst offenders on its annual "list of shame" of conflict countries.

Children as young as nine had been victims of killing and maiming, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, a report said.

At least 36 people were killed in shelling and clashes across Syria on Tuesday, 24 of them civilians and 12 soldiers, the Observatory said. More than 14,100 people have been killed in Syria since the anti-regime revolt erupted in March 2011, according to the Observatory.