Military Deployment

For weeks now, the men in black turbans have been coming. They travel in pairs or small groups, on battered motorbikes or in dusty pickups, materializing out of the desert with Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers slung from their shoulders. With the advent of warmer weather, villagers say, Taliban fighters are filtering back from their winter shelters in Pakistan, ensconcing themselves across Afghanistan's wind-swept south.

One in a series of articles about three teenagers and their wartime enlistment in the Marines. -- In the nine months after he graduated from high school, Lance Cpl. Daryl Crookston was trained to close and kill. The proper pursuit of the enemy was pounded into him during boot camp and combat drills. Last month, as his unit prepared to ship out to Afghanistan, some Marines in Crookston's platoon didn't think he was capable of killing a man. He's deeply religious.

The number of soldiers forced to remain in the Army involuntarily under the military's controversial "stop-loss" program has risen sharply since the Pentagon extended combat tours last year, officials said Thursday. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was briefed about the program by Army officials who said that thousands of new stop-loss orders were issued to keep soldiers from leaving the service after Gates ordered combat tours extended from 12 to 15 months last spring.

The southern Afghan province of Helmand, part of the Pashtun heartland from which the Taliban emerged in the 1990s, has become the most violent and narcotics-plagued region in the country by far, according to the first formal Pentagon report to Congress on the Afghan conflict. Security for Helmand is the chief responsibility of Britain, which has about 8,200 troops in the province. Since British forces took command of the province two years ago, 103 of their soldiers have been killed.

Anxious to avoid a U.S. intervention or cutoff of funds, Pakistan's government is proposing military and intelligence changes that both countries say are needed to counter the growing threat from insurgents, officials say. Pakistan wants to deploy a specially trained unit of its Special Service Group into tribal areas along its western border. The region has become a haven for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces that increasingly are attacking Western soldiers in neighboring Afghanistan, officials say.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Thursday accused Iran of "pushing very hard" to derail a security agreement that would authorize American troops to remain in Iraq past Dec. 31. Crocker also speculated that Iran may be tightening its ties to Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq and co-opting them from anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr, who for the last year has ordered his followers to largely refrain from violence.

The U.S. military handed security responsibility for Wasit province to Iraqi authorities Wednesday, putting Baghdad in full control of 13 of the country's 18 provinces, including all of those in the mostly Shiite Muslim south. U.S. and Iraqi forces have been jointly seeking to shut down arms smuggling routes from Iran that use Wasit as a transit point before the weapons are taken elsewhere in Iraq. The weapons are thought to be going to Shiite militant groups. U.S.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Friday that he would like to send more American forces to the war in Afghanistan before national elections scheduled for next year, and that grim depictions of the 7-year-old war are "far too pessimistic." Gates said additional forces would provide greater security and predicted that conditions would "be under enough control to allow the elections to take place" in the fall.

China signaled Wednesday that it may send warships to help fight pirates off the coast of Somalia, a sign of Beijing's increasing willingness to flex its military muscle. Although China has participated in United Nations peacekeeping operations in Africa, its navy has seldom left the Pacific region. The Global Times, a newspaper tied to the ruling Communist Party, called the possible deployment China's "biggest naval expedition since the 15th century."

As 2006 came to an end, the steadily rising toll of U.S. troops killed in Iraq hit another grim milestone -- 3,000. The latest marker came Sunday as President Bush prepared to lay out his proposals for changing U.S. strategy in Iraq. Bush has been meeting with advisors at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, and White House officials have said he could announce his plans this week. Bush appears to be leaning toward a troop increase. Some advisors believe more troops could allow U.S.