Word: rebels
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...then 10, then an entire platoon of guerrilla soldiers, all armed and battle-hardened. Their tattered fatigues are muddy and cover tattoos they believe will ward off cold and deflect enemy bullets. This apparition is part of the Shan State Army (S.S.A.), one of a handful of rebel outfits still fighting the Burmese government. The S.S.A.'s goal?an independent homeland for the Shan, Burma's second largest ethnic group?is all but impossible to achieve. But this is still rebel country, with steep, jungle-clad mountains and plunging ravines, where for years the S.S.A. has used...
...S.S.A. possesses between 500 and 2,000 troops?no one knows for sure. Ask a rebel spokesman how many, and he tersely replies, "Enough." Many of the S.S.A.'s fighters were previously loyal to former opium warlord Khun Sa, who surrendered to Rangoon in 1996. Today they answer to plainspoken commander colonel Yawdserk, himself a former Khun Sa man, who vehemently denies any current S.S.A. involvement in the drugs trade. On these remote hills, poppies are still grown and opium is still traded, along with millions of methamphetamine pills called yaba, or crazy medicine...
...penalty for an S.S.A. soldier caught dealing is execution, and a senior rebel source claims credibly that the S.S.A. now collaborates with Thai border authorities on some drug busts...
...started late in January. Rybkin's election platform, published that month, made peace in Chechnya his top priority (he was involved in negotiations to end the first Chechen war in 1996, and since the second war began in 1999, he has regularly called for talks with the rebels, something Putin opposes). Shortly after it was published, a Chechen acquaintance proposed a secret meeting with rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov. Rybkin says he was told that Maskhadov would meet him somewhere in Ukraine, so Rybkin left for the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Once there, he says, unknown men took him to an apartment...
...Some 42 people have been killed in Haiti over the past week in open warfare that has pitched police and Aristide supporters against rebel gangs that have taken control of more than a dozen towns and a large civic opposition movement. The insurrection has sparked a humanitarian crisis by disrupting the distribution of food and clean water, and Florida is bracing for a new exodus of refugees. It's hardly surprising, given the fact that Haiti's economy has ground almost entirely to a halt, as poverty, AIDS and rampaging violence and criminality have reduced life expectancy to an average...