"It isn't clear that a large and persistent insurgency was inevitable," Mr. Ricks concludes, adding that "the U.S. approach, both in occupation policy and military tactics, helped spur the insurgency and made it broader than it might have been."

Buttressed by more than $3 billion from the United States, most of it military aid, Mr. Uribe has fought Latin America's most persistent leftist insurgency while cooperating with an ambitious American program intended to eradicate drug crops through aerial spraying.

And Rummy admitted yesterday that his feelings got hurt when people accused him of being insensitive to the fact that he arrogantly sent his troops into a sinkhole of carnage - a vicious, persistent insurgency - without the proper armor, equipment, backup or preparation.

Buffeted by one of Asia's most persistent and ingenious insurgencies, Sri Lankans voted in large numbers on Tuesday in a presidential election whose candidates offered little real hope of peace.

Some of General Casey's aides have said that in developing troop withdrawal plans they were cognizant that the Bush administration had not taken any steps to expand the American military presence despite a persistent insurgency, and seemed to have little appetite for substantially expanding the war effort.

Because of the security imperatives faced by the Phnom Penh government in fighting a persistent insurgency, virtually the entire able-bodied population was organized into various military and paramilitary bodies.

Over the past two weeks, American troops have shifted to a more aggressive strategy to quell a persistent insurgency across the central and northern parts of Iraq.

From 1974 until 1982, different presidential administrations chose to focus on ending the persistent insurgencies that sought to undermine Colombia's traditional political system.

Despite the best efforts of our troops and their Iraqi counterparts, Iraq still faces a violent and persistent insurgency, and the chairman of the National Intelligence Council said in January that Iraq is now a magnet for international terrorists.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a whirlwind, previously unannounced trip, flew here on Monday for a day of discussions with American occupation authorities and military commanders about the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq and the stubbornly persistent insurgency.