Guerrillas

In the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, people are accustomed to the hum of American drones overhead -- and don't like it. The drones kill civilians as well as militants, they say, and use of the pilotless aircraft also tramples Pakistani sovereignty. This summer in the Swat Valley, Pakistanis again heard drones whirring in the sky, but there was a difference. They were Pakistani-owned and operated, a toe-in-the-water foray into a technology that is revolutionizing warfare. They weren't missile-carrying drones like the ones used by the U.S., but unmanned aerial vehicles that sent images of targets back to Pakistani command posts.

Members of Colombia's largest rebel group live openly on or near several Indian reservations in western Venezuela with at least the tacit approval of President Hugo Chavez, indigenous leaders here charge.

Nine Colombian army soldiers were killed in a bloody confrontation with leftist guerrillas early Tuesday along a well-known transit corridor in southwestern Colombia frequented by drug traffickers and insurgents. Analysts believe the attack may be part of a campaign by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to step up its activities before next year's presidential election. President Alvaro Uribe, whose policies have set the FARC back on its heels since he took office in 2002, is expected to seek a third term.

A senior Pakistani official said Thursday that Islamabad has tightened the screws on Jamaat ud-Dawa, a charity created by the founders of the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India has accused of masterminding the Mumbai attacks. Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik told reporters in Islamabad that his government had shut down five training camps run by Jamaat ud-Dawa in Punjab province and the Pakistani-administered portion of Kashmir.

Sri Lanka's victory this week after a 25-year battle against the Tamil Tiger rebels represents a rare success story for governments fighting insurgencies. Even as leaders in Colombo, the capital, declared a national holiday and citizens danced in the streets, military planners and analysts around the world began scrutinizing the war for lessons on how to fight Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups.

Unarmed Kurdish rebels in combat dress marched into Turkey from northern Iraq on Monday in a show of support for peace with the Turkish government. The eight rebels, along with 26 other Kurds, were immediately detained by Turkish paramilitary police after crossing the border gate at Habur. They were moved to a military battalion's headquarters for questioning by prosecutors, the state-run Anatolian news agency reported. Earlier, Kurds in northern Iraq celebrated with music and drums as the group left from a refugee camp, the news agency reported.

The general with the easy smile has been here before. A little over a decade ago, Saddam Hussein dispatched him to this province where the oil wells belch orange flames day and night. Now another Iraqi Arab leader has sent him north, in a battle of wills over Kirkuk that has awakened the past and raised fear of new fighting in the territory that the Kurds consider their Jerusalem.

Restaurant owner Lyra Quitay is blind in one eye. Her arms, chest and legs bear painful black scars and her right hand is so gnarled that it resembles a claw when she signs her name. In October 2001, a terrorist's bomb ripped through the claustrophobic downtown market where Quitay runs a tiny kitchen, instantly killing her security guard and blowing a hole in her life. The guard had gone to investigate an abandoned duck egg cart; when he opened the lid on a pot, it exploded -- ripping off his head and leaving Quitay with injuries so severe that she still wakes up crying at night.

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Thursday fired a Katyusha rocket 10 1/2 miles into Israel, their deepest artillery strike yet, provoking some of the heaviest Israeli assaults in months. Nine Palestinians were killed in the day's fighting. The rocket landed harmlessly on the northern outskirts of the coastal city of Ashkelon.

Under cover of darkness Tuesday, American soldiers crept across a bridge where just days before insurgents had left a chilling warning: a severed head with a message identifying the Iraqi victim as a U.S. collaborator scrawled across the forehead with a black marker. Through the biting cold, the troops crunched down a winding gravel road, past frost-glazed reeds, empty storefronts and spacious homes surrounded by orange and pomegranate trees.