Refugees Daily - Internal Global Press Review

The most important and effective fighting partner in the global coalition against Islamic State is facing economic collapse. Through no fault of its own, the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) is unable to pay the salaries of its employees, including the famed Peshmerga fighting force.

The Peshmerga, who are holding the front line in the global effort to defeat Islamic State, have now gone without paychecks for three months. According to Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the KRG representative to the U.S., the Kurdish "economic situation is grim."

Much of the blame lies with the Iraqi central government in Baghdad. For the past few years, that government has refused to pay the KRG the requisite negotiated 17% of Iraq annual oil income, a pact enshrined in the Iraqi Constitution. Only some $2 billion of the $12 billion a year owed by Baghdad has been released to the regional government in 2015.

The U.S. and its coalition partners also bear some responsibility, since the Baghdad government's refusal to honor its obligations to the KRG is no secret. International pressure on Baghdad should have been brought to bear long ago.

The problem becomes more urgent every day because Islamic State now controls 30% of Iraq. The Peshmerga maintain a 700-mile front against the Islamic jihadists and in mid-November liberated the Islamic State-held city of Sinjar in an operation that was expected to take weeks but instead was accomplished in two days. Thousands of Islamic State fighters have been killed by the Peshmerga, in coordination with U.S. and coalition airstrikes and targeted U.S. Special Forces operations.

What's more, the Peshmerga are fighting and beating Islamic State even while they are vastly outgunned. Although promises of upgrades are being made, the Kurds typically fight with 40-year-old Kalashnikovs and standard-grade civilian trucks, while Islamic State is using the thousands of U.S.-supplied modern armored Humvees, tanks and howitzers looted from Iraqi military barracks they have overrun.

The battle against Islamic State isn't the only drain on KRG coffers. An estimated 1.8 million refugees – mainly from other parts of Iraq and Syria – have fled for their lives into the Kurdish region since Islamic State swept into Iraq in 2014. The United Nations and various nongovernmental organizations have assisted the KRG in this refugee crisis, but the majority of the burden has fallen on the Kurds.

In reports this year on the impact on Iraq of the Syrian civil war and Islamic State, the World Bank predicted that the KRG would have a funding shortfall of at least $1.5 billion in 2015. The World Bank has warned that the KRG is desperately in need of a $2.4 billion bridge loan to remain afloat.

The Kurds aren't asking for a handout. In a last-ditch effort to fund itself, the KRG has stopped sending its own oil through Baghdad and has been exporting the oil via a new pipeline through Turkey. But as the price of oil falls, the KRG is falling further behind in its struggle to fund its operations, including the Peshmerga, and to help feed, house, educate and police the continuing influx of refugees.

Because the KRG is a nonsovereign entity and not an independent government, organizations such as the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Bank aren't options for financing a long-term, low-interest loan. So U.S. leadership is needed to prioritize and organize emergency financial assistance to the Kurdish region to keep the Peshmerga on the battlefield.

"We have been briefing our allies and they are up-to-date on our need for financial assistance of some sort," says Ms. Rahman, the KRG representative.

If it leads the fundraising effort to support the KRG, the U.S. wouldn't need to be the source of the funds. Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates could lend the money. The Saudis may even welcome an opportunity to very publicly ride to the financial rescue of the Iraqi Kurds, given the international criticism they have received over the documented financial support of Islamic State and al Qaeda by some Saudi citizens.

The Kurds proved themselves able U.S. partners in the 1990 and 2003 Iraq wars. The world-wide value of their contribution today is incalculable but certainly worth a loan: Every day that the Kurds take the fight to Islamic State on its home turf, they weaken the jihadists' ability to strike abroad.

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Ms. Glover, a corporate consultant, served on the senior staffs of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Vice President Dick Cheney and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
 

Amman, Dec 21, 2015 (Radio Dabanga/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) – A number of Sudanese asylum seekers sustained various injuries on Thursday evening in clashes with a delegation from the Sudanese embassy in Jordan.

Asylum seeker Habib Mohamed Adam told Radio Dabanga, that Jordanian police accompanied a delegation from the Embassy of Sudan in Amman that came to force the asylum seekers to sign a statement that they would return to Sudan. They refused to sign and clashed with Sudanese Embassy delegation. The Jordanian police intervened using tear gas and batons to break up the clash. He said the clash resulted in about 50 refugees injured, especially children and women.

The Jordanian government spokesman Mohamed El Momani said that 430 Sudanese were deported on Friday, and have arrived in Khartoum.

As previously reported by Radio Dabanga, a number of Sudanese asylum seekers were injured – some seriously – in clashes with police in the Jordanian capital on 16 December, when they were transported to the airport to be returned to Sudan.

One of the deportees said that the deportation procedure of about 500 asylum seekers has been completed – the Jordanian security imposed tight security on the rest of the asylum seekers.

A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Mohamed El Hawary said that the Jordan authorities only gave them two hours' notice of the deportation decision. He explained that the number of those who were seized to be deported is more than 950 people, mostly from Darfur.

Speaking of the fate of the deportees after they arrive in Khartoum, Mohamed El Hawary said they are currently conferring with the Jordanian authorities to halt the deportation process, especially as the majority of the deportees from the Darfur region could be at risk if returned there.

The Sudanese refugees consider the decision by the Jordanian authorities to expel them as contrary to international treaties and conventions. They appealed to the international community to intervene and compel the Jordanian authorities to respect and implement international refugee conventions and norms.

Human Rights Watch said in a statement that what was done by the Jordanian authorities is in violation of international law, which prohibits governments to return persons to places where they risk persecution or torture, or treatment or inhuman or degrading punishments.

Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali El Sadig denied that the Jordanian authorities dealt improperly with the Sudanese asylum seekers.
 

On exploring the refugee experience through theatre.

Beirut – On a cold December evening in the main reception room of a grand, run-down 1930s villa in west Beirut, a group of Syrian and Syrian Palestinian actors sat huddled on the floor, surrounded by their audience.

Another actor stood over the group, gently asking a series of questions in different European languages – German, English, French and Russian – meant to mimic the feeling of a language classroom that many refugees attend after arriving in a new country.

As the questions were answered, the lights dimmed, and moments later the performance shifted to different area of the room.

Suddenly, the actors began stamping on imaginary cockroaches on the old villa's marble floor, a scene designed to reflect the dismal living conditions faced upon arrival from Syria at Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps.

Terrestrial Journeys, an exploration of the refugee experience directed by British-Iraqi Dina Mousawi, was performed this month in the Zuqaq el-Balat neighbourhood of west Beirut. Mousawi is hoping to launch a similar show in the United Kingdom.

"Last year it was rare for the topic of emigration, the possibility of leaving Lebanon for Europe and elsewhere, to come up in conversation," Mousawi told Al Jazeera. "[But] when I arrived in September, it was all anybody wanted to talk about.

"Once, during rehearsals, I gave the group some sticks and asked them to improvise a scene from home. After a couple of minutes they had created a boat, and acted out this scene paying a smuggler $1,000 to board a boat that then capsized at sea. It wasn't a scene from home – it was tragic."

Many of the actors in Terrestrial Journeys live in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra, Shatila and Burj el-Barajneh in Beirut. Living conditions in the camps are notoriously poor; Shatila was originally built in 1949 for 3,000 people, but is now home to more than 22,000. Electricity supplies are unreliable, access to safe drinking water is limited, and poverty is endemic.

Thousands of Syrians have settled in these areas since the start of Syria's war, due to the availability of relatively cheap rents compared with other areas of the Lebanese capital. But this year, many have travelled onwards to Europe, dissatisfied with life in Lebanon.

Wessam Sukkari, a 38-year-old Syrian Palestinian and mother-of-two from Yarmouk camp in Damascus, said her husband travelled earlier this year to Germany from Turkey via Hungary.

"I want to join him," Sukkari, one of the actors in Terrestrial Journeys, told Al Jazeera, "but I refuse to travel by boat."

Restrictions against Syrian refugees in Lebanon have increased in 2015 as the Lebanese state has grappled with the influx of more than one million refugees into the country.

Many Syrians living in Beirut's Palestinian camps say they rarely leave their homes, except to look for work, as they fear being detained by authorities for faulty paperwork.

"Now, wherever I go, I take my rental contract and identification papers," Nidal Daher, a 28-year-old actor from Damascus, told Al Jazeera.

"There are more checkpoints. If I want to go to another area of the city, then someone there must vouch for me. In Yarmouk we were besieged; here we are also surrounded."

Part of Mousawi's inspiration for Terrestrial Journeys was her own experience of migration. In 1986, at the age of eight, Mousawi emigrated from Baghdad to the UK to escape the Iran-Iraq war. It is a topic she has explored previously in her work.

"When I arrived in the UK, I idolised Saddam Hussein. Growing up in Iraq, the propaganda would portray [Ayatollah] Khomenei in this terrifying way; by contrast, Saddam was handsome, neat, and good-looking. When I had nightmares, he would protect me," Mousawi recalled.

Mousawi's own experiences helped to establish empathetic bonds between the actors and director in Terrestrial Journeys, cast members told Al Jazeera. Their daily rehearsals also provided a break from daily stresses.

"I wake up excited to come to rehearsals," Daher said during one of the show's rehearsals earlier this month. "We have fun, we laugh, we joke – but we also cry and reflect on difficult experiences."

Fadwa Awayti, 58, the oldest member of the cast, came to Lebanon from Yarmouk camp more than four years ago, near the beginning of the Syrian conflict. One of her sons who remained behind was killed by a sniper, she told Al Jazeera, while one of her daughters has relocated to Sweden.

Awayti says she has fantasised of opening an Arabic bakery and pastry shop in Sweden, but with an aging husband and a brother to look after inside Shatila camp, she is not optimistic that it will happen. She still dreams of one day returning to Syria.

"Before the war, I had a nice house with three shops. Here, I can barely afford rent," Awayti said. "I am happy to perform, to relay our experiences. I am not just a refugee; I am a Syrian, and this is a human story that people should hear."
 

Women from Syria suffer from a myriad of abuses in the workplace and at home as they struggle to support their families following the death or abduction of the men in their family. Mat Nashed reports from Beirut.

Holding her son in her arms, Nora recalled the last time she saw her husband in Syria. A 22-year-old Palestinian refugee from Yarmouk, a now devastated district on the suburbs of Damascus, she watched her husband kiss their child goodbye before going to his fabric shop.

"It was dangerous for him to work. He had to go through three regime checkpoints to get to his shop. He always said that he had to make money so we could survive," Nora, a woman with dark golden skin and a grey headscarf, told DW. "I know they [the regime] took him. I know, because he always promised to come back to us."

Nora's husband disappeared on June 24, 2013, a month before the regime imposed a brutal siege on Yarmouk that trapped and starved thousands of civilians. She fled two years later to Shatila refugee camp, a destitute Palestinian enclave in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

She is now one of thousands of refugee women struggling to provide for her household, alone. According to the UN refugee agencyUNHCR, #_ga=1.75131026.1447773810.1450699498:nearly one in four women# from Syria have been forced to do so following the death or disappearance of their husband. And while some have persevered, most have suffered from sexual abuse, exploitation and depression.

Randa Haddad, a social worker for Najdeh, a local NGO in Lebanon dedicated to helping women in the Palestinian camps, areas where many Syrians have also taken refuge, said that widowed women who enter the workforce are very susceptible to sexual harassment, especially if an employer discovers she doesn't have a father, husband or brother behind her.

"Syrian women working in Lebanon suffer from discrimination because of their gender and their nationality," said Haddad. "Those without husbands are obliged to work, and many are doing so for the first time. But if their boss finds out that they don't have a man in their life then he might try to sexually abuse or blackmail her."

Nora, for one, says she worked in a yogurt and cheese factory when she came to Lebanon, but soon quit because of how men would behave around her. "They [male colleagues] stared at me every second," said Nora. "I felt afraid. I felt they were going to touch me at any time."

Had Nora been sexually assaulted, lack of legal status would have deterred her from seeking help from authorities. In Lebanon, most Syrian refugees reside without legal papers due to rigorous and sometimes impossible visa renewal requirements.

To protect themselves in the workplace, some women lie to their employers to convince them they do have a man in their home.

Coping mechanisms

The loss of a father figure has also complicated family dynamics in households where notions of conventional gender roles remain typically strong. Haddad says that in some broken families, the eldest son may feel pressured to assume the role of his father by abusing and controlling the women in his family.

"We have faced cases where boys begin beating their mother because they think that this is the way to assume the role as 'the man in the family,'" said Haddad.

Women pushed to work have also expressed fear of losing their "femininity," resulting in depression and anxiety. Some starve themselves in the hopes of ensuring their children have enough food. Those unable to work may resort to even more desperate measures.

Roula El-Masri, a social worker with ABAAD, a Lebanese NGO that engages men to stop violence against women, says that many widowed women push their children to perform child labor or marry their daughters off to collect their muqaddam, a sort of dowry that the groom provides to the bride's family. And while early marriages are a common practice in some parts of the region – especially in households coping with extreme poverty and war – El-Masri says that ruptured families are more likely to give their daughters away sooner.

"Early marriage is a cultural coping mechanism, so of course families in precarious situations may turn to that 'solution' sooner," said El-Masri.

Becoming the father, mother, sister, best friend

Yet according to a report released by Save the Children last year, widowed mothers are much more reluctant to do so. Umm Nada, a 43-year-old Palestinian mother from Syria, says she came to Shatila with her three daughters after her eldest son disappeared. Working as a cleaner for a domestic NGO, she has refused seven requests from men wanting to marry her 15-year-old daughter in the last two years.

"I'm not going to give her up," said Umm Nada, as she poured a cup of Arabic coffee for her youngest daughter. "I'll make sure that we survive. We'll be okay if we just stay together."

Manar, a Palestinian social worker in Shatila, says Umm Nada has not only assumed the role of the breadwinner in the family, but she's also remained emotionally present for her daughters.

"Umm Nada has become the father, mother, sister and best friend for her daughters," said Manar. "She has become their everything."

Nevertheless, most women have found it difficult to head their household under such precarious circumstances. Some have even prostituted themselves for money and aid. Despite exploitation and abuse, the greatest battle for many is coming to terms with the loss of their husband or children.

Staring at her fingers, Nora says she sold her wedding ring for $100 to feed her son. She now has little left to remind her of life before the war. Confined to the darkness of her home, she often tells her son stories about his father and the once bustling district of Yarmouk.

"I feel empty without him," said Nora, tilting her head down. "I miss how he used to play with our baby."
 

UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) — Since 2011, Syria has been in a state of civil war, with the government forces fighting several opposition factions and a number of extremist groups.

According to UN estimates, the conflict has forced some 4 million Syrians to flee their home country.

"Syria is experiencing a massive brain drain. 86% of those [refugees] we interviewed have a secondary education. Almost half have gone to university. One can only imagine the disastrous consequences of such an exodus on the future post-conflict reconstruction of Syria," Guterres told the Security Council on Monday.

Guterres also said it was necessary to achieve the ceasefire foreseen in the Vienna talks and in the Security Council Resolution adopted unanimously on December 18 in New York.

The resolution supports a ceasefire, sets a target of six months for a government transition, while elections in the country are planned to be held within 18 months.
 

BBC News

Today the tourists come to view the magnificent ceramics. There is a special section devoted to the treasures of Mesopotamia.

But the visitor will find no evidence of the moment which made the museum at Sevres briefly famous.

It was one of those times in history where separate events became inextricably and tragically linked.

On 10 August 1920 the victorious Allied powers formally abolished the Ottoman empire with the signing of the Treaty of Sevres outside Paris.

It would be superseded by other treaties. But it was the international document in which the territories that are now Syria, Iraq and Palestine would be carved up and controlled by outside powers.

Negotiators from Britain and France had already drawn the frontiers of the territories they coveted.

Just eight months previously, also in Paris, the League of Nations – the forerunner to the United Nations – was founded with the aim of preserving international peace.

Greatest challenge

Ninety-five years later it is the unfolding horror in the old Ottoman lands that provides the United Nations with the greatest peacemaking challenge of our time.

I have followed the stories of Syrians forced from their homes since the beginning of the conflict.

In the early days they would express the hope of going home.

But as seasons of war accumulated, as foreign powers poured weapons and money into Syria, as extremists gained in strength, the possibility of return ebbed away.

Now, nearly five years after the conflict began, the UN is preparing to sponsor peace talks.

But could the existing international structures of peacemaking have saved the country from disaster?

One of the UN's leading diplomats, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, told me there had been a "criminal" failure on the part of the international community.

"It is a disgrace...and I am ashamed that the international community has allowed the Syrians to keep on killing each other."

Ahtisaari is a veteran of peacebuilding in Namibia, the Balkans, Iraq and Indonesia. He is now a member of the "Elders", a group of eminent statesmen and women who devote their energies to resolving conflict.

They are part of a global movement which emerged in the wake of the tragedies of Bosnia and Rwanda in the early 1990s when the international community was seen to have dramatically failed vulnerable civilians.

Ahtisaari welcomes the forthcoming Syrian talks and insists "there are no conflicts which cannot be resolved".

Chance missed

But he believes a chance for peace was missed back in early 2012 and that the European refugee crisis might not have happened had the West taken up Russian suggestions that President Assad be allowed an "elegant" way out.

"It could have been avoided. It was an opportunity lost because now at least talks are taking place...[but] millions have had to leave their homes and save their families and become refugees."

There is no way of knowing how sincere that offer was, or whether negotiations then would have achieved an end to the conflict.

But according to Ahtisaari the UN envoys eventually realised they were getting no support from the major powers on the Security Council.

The disunity on the Security Council reflects changed world realities.

Western military interventions in Iraq and Libya, and the chaos they engendered, drained public support for Middle Eastern entanglements and contributed to the divisions at the UN.

One of the founders of the aid agency Medecins San Frontieres, Rony Brauman, has observed numerous conflicts and points to interventions in Sierra Leone and Kosovo as positive examples.

But interventionism demands extreme caution he says.

"We can't just say interventions are worth nothing. This is not entirely true. In some cases, yes, it is worth something.

"But in most cases it produced more harm than good...so let's be aware of intervention as a political solution."

Russian intervention

Russia by contrast is now in strong interventionist mode in Syria and increasingly confrontational elsewhere.

Vladimir Putin's Russia has annexed Crimea from Ukraine and sponsored a war in the country's eastern Donbass region.

His forces are directly involved in fighting on the side of the Assad regime.

In contrast to Western inconsistency and incoherence he has appeared to be dictating the agenda on Syria. So far.

With no unity of approach on the Security Council the conflict spiralled out of control. Regional forces were free to use Syria as a proxy battleground.

Sectarian divisions deepened and extremist forces gathered strength. And all the time civilians continued to be bombed, tortured, uprooted and driven into exile.

There is now the appearance of concerted action by the international community.

But this has only come about because of the threat of terrorism from the so-called Islamic State, and the arrival of large numbers of refugees in Europe.

Pragmatic considerations provide the impetus for these peace talks. And the obstacles to a settlement remain formidable.

The future of President Assad has been ignored, at least for now.

All of this infuriates Orabi Hamdan. I met him at a refugee reception centre in Stockholm.

He comes from Deraa, where the first anti-regime demonstrations began, and is waiting to be re-united with his wife who is living in another centre.

He feels he and his family are pawns of the big powers.

"They play and we pay. It is a game. But a bad game and a bloody game. Our children play. You see every day a lot of kids killed without any reasons. You find the kids as pieces without legs, without heads, without arms...why?"

The Syrian talks may produce a settlement that allows Orabi to go home.

But the conflict stands as a testament to the failure of the international system.



Treaty of Sevres:

Pact between the victorious allies from World War One and the representatives of the government of Ottoman Turkey signed on 10 August 1920

Abolished the Ottoman Empire and obliged Turkey to renounce all rights over Arab Asia and North Africa

Britain effectively took possession of Palestine, while France took over Syria, Lebanon and land in southern Anatolia

Britain also took over Iraq

The Kingdom of Hejaz, part of modern day Saudi Arabia, was given formal recognition as an independent kingdom

Armenia was recognised as a separate sovereign state
 

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 21 (Reuters) – People who reject Syrian refugees are the "best allies" of Islamic State militants and other extremists, the United Nations refugee chief said on Monday after U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump proposed an entry ban on foreign Muslims.

More than 4.3 million Syrians have fled a nearly five-year civil war. U.N. High Commissioner for refugees Antonio Guterres told the Security Council they cannot be blamed for the terror they are risking their lives to escape.

"Those that reject Syrian refugees, and especially if they are Muslim, are the best allies of the propaganda and the recruitment of extremist groups," Guterres said in a swipe at Trump and some U.S. state governors and European leaders.

Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Saturday that Islamic State is using Trump's rhetoric to enlist fighters to radical jihad. Trump rejected her claim and called her a "liar."

Amid the chaos of Syria's war, Islamic State has seized swathes of territory and proclaimed a caliphate. The group claimed responsibility for the deadly Nov. 13 attacks in Paris and also said a married couple who carried out a mass shooting in Southern California on Dec. 2 were its followers.

The attacks sparked warnings from politicians in Europe and North America that countries could face big risks by admitting refugees without rigorously determining if any could be dangerous extremists.

Several U.S. states said they would close the door to Syrian refugees, while Trump – currently the Republican Party's front-runner for the November 2016 election – called for a ban on foreign Muslims entering the United States.

"We must not forget that – despite the rhetoric we are hearing these days – refugees are the first victims of such terror, not its source," Guterres said. "They cannot be blamed for a threat which they're risking their lives to escape."

"Yes, of course there is a possibility that terrorists could try to infiltrate refugee movements. But this possibility exists for all communities – and homegrown radicalization is by far the biggest threat, as all recent incidents have shown," he said.

He said a U.N. survey of 1,200 Syrians who had fled to Europe found that 86 percent of them had a secondary school education and almost half had gone to university.

"Syria is experiencing a massive brain drain," said Guterres, who will step down at the end of the year. "One can only imagine the disastrous consequences of such an exodus on the future post-conflict reconstruction of Syria."

(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Dan Grebler)
 

The United Nations is mulling "light touch" options for monitoring a possible ceasefire in Syria that would keep its risks to a minimum by relying largely on Syrians already on the ground, diplomatic sources said.

The U.N. Security Council on Friday unanimously called on Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to draw up within a month options for monitoring a ceasefire in Syria. It is the second time since the Syrian civil war broke out in March 2011 that the council backed a plan for peace talks and a truce.

The talk about the U.N.'s role as monitor has gained urgency along with a new push for a ceasefire in Syria to take effect as early as January, in parallel to talks between the government and opposition. More than a dozen major powers, including the United States, Russia and major European and Middle Eastern powers, have drawn up a road map for Syria peace talks.

U.N. planning for truce monitoring will seek to avoid repeating the "disaster" of a mission sent to Syria in 2012, diplomats said. That operation failed because the warring parties showed no interest in halting the fighting, they said.

Under the light-touch mechanism currently under consideration, the United Nations would rely on Syrian actors – "proxies" – on the ground to report violations. This could possibly involve a small group of non-uniformed U.N. officials in Syria to carry out investigations of ceasefire violations, diplomats said.

"There's the idea of proxy-ism, where they were going to look at who would be credible on the ground to get information and to create a reporting mechanism from them to the U.N.," a diplomatic source said.

To make the proxy approach work, major powers would need to agree on who is considered a credible Syrian actor.

"Who is it who's responsible for the credibility of the information?" one diplomatic source asked. "The Syrians on the ground or the U.N., which receives the information?"

The U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations will likely present an option to put U.N. peacekeepers on the ground. But that approach likely will be ruled out immediately, given the brutal war that has claimed more than a quarter million lives.

Diplomats on the council, which would be asked to approve any monitoring plan, also say that option is impossible.

"DISCONNECTED FROM REALITY"

Diplomats say they want to avoid a heavy U.N. footprint in Syria. A large number of U.N. officials on the ground in Syria would require a large security detail to protect them.

"If we have a big security contingent, all of a sudden it looks like a full-scale mission," one diplomatic source said. "And any U.N. presence will be targeted in Syria."

The U.N. had to suspend operations once before in Syria. After deploying some 300 unarmed "blue beret" monitors in April 2012, it was forced by August of that year to end the mission after the moderators became the target of angry crowds and gunfire. The security council had sent in monitors after it endorsed then-U.N.-Arab League mediator Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan for Syria calling for talks and a truce.

At that time, death toll estimates for the Syrian civil war were around 10,000 – a fraction of today's estimate of at least 250,000.

"The U.N. team that went in back then were very courageous and pushed their mandate as far as they could," said Richard Gowan, a professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Another U.N. peacekeeping force called UNDOF, which still monitors the Israeli-Syrian border in the Golan Heights, has repeatedly seen its blue helmets under fire and even kidnapped by militants fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

"It is clear that the security situation in Syria will be far, far worse this time around, so Ban needs to be creative," Gowan said.

The planned Syria ceasefire would not apply to Islamic State, Nusra Front and other jihadist groups. That, one diplomat said, would make any truce "wildly complex" to monitor since its territory would be constantly shifting.

Adding to the danger, the U.S., French, British and other militaries are bombing Islamic State fighters and other jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq, and Russian forces are attacking a wide array of rebel fighters, many of them backed by the West.

One analyst said preparing ceasefire monitoring options was a pointless exercise since none of the parties actually wanted to end the fighting.

"All the discussion at the U.N. seems to me entirely disconnected from reality," said Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by David Greising and Leslie Adler)
 

Forces loyal to Yemen's government fought their way into the province surrounding the capital on Monday, tribal sources said, the closest they have advanced toward Sanaa since the Houthi movement seized it in September last year.

The advance comes despite a conditional agreement to extend a seven-day truce in Yemen, following a week of U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Switzerland in which the parties reached a broad framework for ending the nine-month-old war that has killed nearly 6,000 people.

"(President Abd-Rabbu Mansour) Hadi's forces took control of two mountains in the Nihm district in Sanaa province," one tribal source said. The area is about 60 km (37 miles) north-east of the capital.

A military alliance of mostly Gulf Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia began bombing Yemen's Houthi movement, an ally of Iran, in March to try to restore Hadi's government and roll back gains made by the Iran-allied Houthis.

Yemeni forces loyal to Hadi, backed by alliance air strikes, have made a number of gains against the Houthis in recent weeks. But the Houthis, a tribal militia that hails from the Zaydi branch of Shi'ite Islam, remain in control of much of the northern part of the country.

On Friday, Hadi loyalists captured the city of al-Hazm, the provincial capital of northwestern al-Jawf province.

Both sides have accused each other of violating the ceasefire that began with the start of the peace talks on December 15.

U.N. Special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed had voiced deep concern at "numerous reports of violations of the cessation of hostilities" and set up a mechanism to strengthen compliance, a U.N. statement said.

The peace talks are scheduled to resume on January 14. The location had yet to be set, although both Switzerland and Ethiopia are possible venues.

The parties also agreed to set up a military de-escalation committee and to develop a package of confidence building measures such as prisoner releases.

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Noah Browning and Sami Aboudi,; Editing by Dominic Evans)