Tijuana Cartel gunmen and fought a three-hour battle with Mexican federal police and army troops in the border city Jan. 17, using machine guns and grenades and firing on a helicopter. One gunman was killed and four police officers were wounded in the fight; one officer died in the hospital the next day. Authorities later found six more bodies in the house where the gunmen made their stand, believed to be local kidnapping victims.

Local Oaxaca activist Simon Sedillo in a Jan. 15 report that appears on the Enemigo Comun blog:

On January 15th, 2007, before the beginning of a youth march for the liberation of political prisoners, Urban Paramilitaries (porros) initiated a series of provocations to defame the social movement. Known urban paramilitaries (identified as "Aladin" and "Crusty") have occupied and burned at least two buses to provoke violence before the march, and other urban paramilitaries have begun to open fire at UABJO (Benito Juarez Autonomous University of Oaxaca). Students are being forced out of classrooms and clashes have ensued.

Refuting widespread media portrayal of the "erosion" (desgaste) of the rebel Zapatista movement, Jorge Santiago, director of the local group Economic and Social Development of the Indigenous Mexicans (DESMI), which has been working with Maya communities in the Highlands of Chiapas for 35 years, told Blanche Petrich of the Mexican daily La Jornada that 14 years after the armed uprising, "we are stronger, because we are linked" with social struggles across Mexico. "Our word has to do with the words of others. The people are beginning to have confidence in themselves as builders of relations, with the local base." He especially credits the Zapatistas' maintenance of the moral high ground—"The decision not to instigate confrontations with the local enemies, in spite of harassment and the onslaught on their territory." (La Jornada, Jan. 6)

With the world's attention elsewhere, unsettling signs of a re-ignition of the Balkan conflict are mounting. Former KLA commander Hashim Thaci was elected prime minister of Kosova on Jan. 9 and vowed: "I assure you that within a few weeks we will declare independence." (Reuters, Jan. 9) One week earlier, a bomb exploded at the offices of a Serb bank, the Komercijalna Banka, in the ethnically mixed southern Kosova town of Dragas, causing considerable damage but no injuries. Kosova's Serbs, backed by Serbia and Russia, pledge to resist any moves towards independence. NATO's 16,000-strong Kosova peacekeeping force is braced for unrest after Serb-Albanian negotiations ended in deadlock late last year. The US and most EU states are expected to recognize an independent Kosova, after Russia blocked its secession at the UN Security Council last year. (Reuters, Jan. 2) In an unlikely twist, New England's Green Mountain State has become at least a minor geopolitical football in the controversy. Russia Today newspaper Jan. 18 tried to stick it to Uncle Sam with a piece cheering on the burgeoning Vermont secessionist movement. Despite its clueless rendering of "secession" as "succession," it makes the point that the Vermont separatists view US support for Kosova's independence as a propaganda tool:

Israel's decision to completely seal off Gaza Strip crossings has intensified the suffering and privation faced by Gaza residents. Gaza hospitals say they are forced to bury Palestinians killed in IDF strikes draped in flags and bed sheets because of a shortage of burial shrouds. Cement is only available on the black market and its price leaped five-fold, bringing a halt to all construction. UN food aid cannot get through—leaving the more than one million Palestinians who rely on it, about two thirds of Strip residents, facing imminent hunger. The Strip's sole power station, already at 45% capacity—meaning frequent black-outs—has enough fuel to supply electricity only until Sunday morning.

Further evidence of the humbling of the neocons comes in George Bush's hailing of the new Iraqi law allowing former Baath Party members into public life. The party was declared illegal by the US-led administration after the invasion of 2003 when the noecons were riding high, and thousands of its members lost their jobs—contributing to the rise of the insurgency and the collapse of law and order. Now Bush says of the law reversing this policy: "It's an important step towards reconciliation. It's an important sign that the leaders of that country understand that they must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people." (BBC, Jan. 13) However, high-level Baathists are still barred under the new law. (NYT, Jan. 13) From clandestinity, Baath Party spokesman Abu Mohammad issued a statement dismissing the new law as just "changing the name of the first law" and "an attempt to beautify the nature of fascism... This will not change the objective of the Baath Party of continuing the resistance hand in hand with other resistance factions." (Uruknet, Jan. 12)

A woman carried out a suicide bombing near a Shi'ite mosque in Iraq's Diyala province Jan. 16, killing at least eight people. The attack provoked local Shi'ite militia fighters to use mortars against a nearby Sunni village in retaliation. Shi'ite worshipers in the village of Khan Bani Saad were preparing for Ashura festivities. (NYT, Jan. 17) On Jan. 17, a suicide bomber killed eight and wounded 14 near a Shi'ite mosque in Baquba, Diyala's capital. (Reuters, Jan. 17)

Hundreds of Islamic militants armed with mortars and rocket-launchers overran a fort at Sararogha, in Pakistan's tribal borderlands Jan. 15, killing some 20 paramilitary troops of the South Waziristan Scouts and taking several more captive. The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (Taliban Movement of Pakistan) issued a statement that it had carried out the attack. (NYT, Jan. 17) The following day, Canadian opposition leader Stephane Dion called for NATO "intervention" in Pakistan if President Pervez Musharraf's government failed to stop the cross-border flow of militants into Afghanistan. After a two-day visit to Afghanistan, Liberal Party leader Dion said: "We are going to have to discuss that very actively if they are not able to deal with it on their own. We could consider that option with the NATO forces in order to help Pakistan help us pacify Afghanistan." (Pakistan Daily Times, Jan. 18)