High in the forbidding Himalayan foothills, the half-century-old struggle for control of Kashmir is entering a new and unpredictable phase. Islamic fighters have crossed the line that divides the state between zones of Indian and Pakistani control, and the Indian army is waging a bloody campaign to drive them back.

It is the latest battle in a conflict that has taken tens of thousands of lives over the last decade, and the fact that both contending nations are armed with nuclear weapons lends it an apocalyptic urgency.

"We're facing a small war, but it can escalate," one of Kashmir's wise men, Sufi Ghulan Mohammed, editor of the Urdu-language Srinagar Times, said. "Escalation means devastation. It does not have to be planned. Anything can happen at any time."

The Kashmir conflict is perhaps even more complex than those that have shaken the Balkans. Kashmir is about 75 percent Muslim, but when India and Pakistan were created in 1947, the maharajah, a Hindu, chose to lead it into Hindu-dominated India rather than Islamic Pakistan.

Pakistan has never accepted Kashmir's accession to India, and has waged two wars to seize it. The last one, in 1971, ended with a cease-fire that left two-thirds of the state in India and the rest in Pakistan.

When the disaster struck, its effects were devastating. In a very short time thousands were killed and many more maimed, tortured or raped. Hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes.

Humanitarian agencies estimated that, all told, the conflict had produced from 700,000 to a million refugees, whose presence was deeply destabilizing to neighboring countries, and almost 500,000 internally displaced people, whose condition was, if anything, far worse.

Is that a description of Kosovo? It could be, but it is not. Those horrors come from another brutal internal war, the one going on in Sierra Leone.

The disasters now taking place in Sierra Leone, Angola, Burundi, Liberia and Afghanistan never get the kind of attention that the Kosovo crisis has received. The point is not that what happened in Kosovo is less awful than what is going on in Africa. But the Kosovars can count on the world's attention, whereas in sub-Saharan Africa it is almost a foregone conclusion that only a minimal effort will be made.

QANA, Lebanon -- Morning mist was still rising from the silvery leaves of a hillside olive grove when nine Shiite Muslim guerrillas set about their task: positioning a 106 mm recoilless cannon and preparing to fire a few quick rounds at an Israeli army outpost just across the ridge.

So the passing group of UN peacekeepers patrolling the rugged valleys of southern Lebanon did the only thing they could: They approached the guerrillas--bearded, edgy, brandishing AK-47 rifles--and very, very politely asked them to go away.

"I shook hands with each of them, and talked quietly and reasonably," recounted Maj. Jerry Tuikoro, gesturing toward the grove where he and his small contingent of peacekeepers from faraway Fiji had come across the guerrillas from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah a few days earlier. The UN troopers, who are allowed to use their weapons only in self-defense, must rely under such circumstances on persuasiveness. This time, it worked.

Since its creation in 1978, the nine-nation UN force has had the same mission: to verify an Israeli troop withdrawal, help the Lebanese government reassert sovereignty, and establish a secure area. The peacekeepers are the first to admit none of the goals has been achieved.

"We've been fighting for our own survival, sandwiched between the warring parties," said Timur Goksel, a senior UN adviser. "Peacekeeping? You have to have peace to keep it."

In the 390-square-mile UN-patrolled zone, Israeli troops and their allied Lebanese militia do daily battle with the guerrillas of Hezbollah, along with fighters from other Islamic groups. Over the years, 222 peacekeepers have died in the crossfire.

But the UN troops, who provide services to villagers ranging from medical care to generator power, are reaping a goodwill dividend after long years of service.

Strong bonds were forged during the Qana shellings, when blue-helmeted Fijian soldiers wept in the ruins as they tended the wounded. In the town's streets, the "tawareh"--the word for peacekeepers in the local Arabic dialect--are often trailed by a crowd of children.

"The ones who are fighters now knew other Fijians back when they were kids," said peacekeeper Semisi Kama. "So we can talk to them, try to cool them down."

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia--It would seem like the simplest of questions, one that could be settled with a few good maps and maybe a cheap global positioning device: Where on Earth, quite literally, is the town of Badme?

Badme is a place of no particular consequence in the highlands between Ethiopia and its much smaller kin, Eritrea, two nations of great promise on the Horn of Africa. But lying on the battlefields near this town are the corpses of perhaps 10,000 soldiers--maybe less, maybe more--who died over the last month because each nation claims Badme and the surrounding area as its own. (For comparison's sake, 3,200 people have died in Northern Ireland's sectarian conflict in the last 30 years, according to the U.S. State Department).

None of the Badme region has much value or historical or emotional resonance. It is merely undefined. And that tells the story of many conflicts in modern-day Africa: The colonists of a century ago, in this case Italy and Britain, buried a time bomb in the treaties that marked off their ambitions. The treaties are wildly complicated and laughably imprecise, using tribes and river junctions and obscure mountains as reference points.

"They did not think of the borders," said Professor Mesfin Wolde-Mariam, a retired geographer, of those who planned Eritrea's independence in 1993. "So, hurriedly, they were independent. Now we have no idea what on earth is happening. And mind you, these are the same people on both sides. They speak the same language, have the same culture. It's very depressing."

MOSCOW--No single event in the past 50 years has provoked such fierce emotions in Russia as NATO's bombing of Serbia. Polls here show that 95 percent of Russian citizens condemn the Western alliance's actions in the Balkans.

Hundreds of Russian volunteers are already in Serbia; thousands are en route; and several thousand more are prepared to follow them. Not only former paratroopers and officers, but also generals and commanders of military districts say they are prepared to defend Serbia. Col. Gen. Viktor Chechevatov, commander of Russia's largest military district, recently announced that he is ready to lead the expeditionary corps to Serbia if necessary. What has produced this howl of rage, supported both by opposition and pro-Western politicians?

Nobody here believes talk about the determination to prevent a "humanitarian catastrophe." The bombs and missiles have simply hastened and deepened the humanitarian tragedy and strengthened doubts about the advantages of Western civilization. If Western civilization proves itself by such methods, what can the Arab world, Africa, China or India think of it?

Some analysts here have tried to explain the conflict by arguing that the United States and NATO want to try out their new, precise weaponry under military conditions. Other more serious theories assert that NATO, having lost its purpose after the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union disintegrated, is simply looking for new ways to justify its existence. Geopoliticians argue that the war in the Balkans is intended to show the world that only one military superpower--the United States--remains.

The reasons for indignation on the part of ordinary Russians are various:

* The strong strike the weak. Nineteen powerful countries are striking targets in Serbia and even in Montenegro, which is not in conflict with anyone. This spectacle is unacceptable to the Russian understanding of justice.

* The armed strike the unarmed. The Serbs are practically defenseless against NATO's missiles and bombs. There are hundreds of dead and wounded on the Serbian side; Serbia's industry is destroyed. But there is not a single dead or wounded NATO soldier. From the point of view of Russian people, this unequal conflict isn't even a war, it's a massacre.

* A Slav, Orthodox country is being destroyed. It was Russia that helped Serbia attain its independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. In all the European wars of the past 300 years, Serbia has been Russia's ally. It was because of Serbia that Russia went to war against Austria-Hungary in 1914.

* Serbia is being beaten to humiliate and teach Russia a lesson. There is a strong conviction among Russians that the senseless destruction of Dresden by the Western allies in 1945 and the use of atomic bombs against Japan later that year were demonstrations of strength to Moscow above all. The campaign against Serbia is often seen from the same point of view. Many Russians believe that the destruction of Serbia was conceived as a demonstration of the West's strength and invincibility.

* The West deceived and robbed Russia. Our people were told over and over again about the benefits of democracy and the market economy that the rich Western countries would help Russia construct. That illusion has long since disappeared. In the minds of the impoverished, there is a conviction that the West not only deceived us, but that it robbed Russia. New wealthy Russians, stock market gamblers and financial speculators carried billions of dollars away to the West. Life in Russia became worse, and the country's debts to the West grew several times over.

Russian citizens are not impressed by NATO talk about the despotism of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Compared with our dictators, Milosevic seems a pragmatist. He was elected by the Serbian people.

No one in Russia defends ethnic cleansing, but it is obvious to all here that external aggression can only make the situation worse. In Russia itself, there are about 3 million refugees who have fled from the ethnic conflicts in Central Asia, Moldova, the Caucasus and Abkhazia. There are 1 million displaced people in Azerbaijan, 500,000 in Armenia, 300,000 in Georgia. But no one thinks that bombs are the best means of returning lost land to these people.

Although Russia is weakened, it is still strong both as a nation and as a state. Its army may not have enough food to feed its soldiers, but it is armed with modern weapons. If NATO ground forces and Serbia's neighboring countries are drawn into the war, Russia will certainly break the UN embargo against supplying arms to the Balkans.

Roy Medvedev, a Russian historian living in Moscow, is the author of "Let History Judge" (Columbia University Press) and "Khrushchev: The Years in Power" (Norton).

BUENOS AIRES--It's thousands of miles from Belgrade, and there's not a Serb in sight. But Gonzalo Etcheberry is passing a wall on a busy street here spray-painted with the words, "Yankee, out of the Balkans." He didn't write the slogan, but he couldn't agree more. "Your bombs in Yugoslavia are from the side of America that I can't stand," said Etcheberry, a 21-year-old medical student wearing a black Pearl Jam T-shirt. "I hate it when the U.S. plays judge and God."

Such feelings are common in Argentina--and in many other parts of the world far from the conflict over Kosovo. As the air war against Yugoslavia concludes its eighth week, and blunders like the bombing that reportedly killed nearly 90 ethnic Albanians at Korisa and the strike on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade grab headlines worldwide, NATO's warplanes are inflicting collateral damage of another kind--on the alliance's international reputation. And Uncle Sam, NATO's dominant power, is bearing the brunt of people's anger.

Here in Argentina, one of Washington's closest Latin American allies, a poll last week showed that 64 percent of the public opposed the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia. More respondents had a negative opinion of NATO than of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

In Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other regions with little direct interest in the conflict, opposition is surfacing in statements by elected officials, newspaper editorials, opinion polls, public protests, Internet banter and street graffiti.

"NATO is blindly bombing Yugoslavia," Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in a fiery political speech in India. "There is a dance of destruction going on there. Thousands of people rendered homeless. And the United Nations is a mute witness to all this. Is NATO's work to prevent war or to fuel one?"

While the plight of the Kosovo refugees has evoked widespread sympathy, with many countries offering financial and logistical support to the relief effort, there is also growing criticism that the allies were too quick to abandon diplomacy for war. The mistaken bombings of civilians and of the Chinese Embassy have intensified those feelings.

Taro Kono, a Japanese member of parliament, has said, "The United States and NATO have unilaterally decided that the Serbs are the bad guys. I'm not sure it's so easy to tell who's right and who's wrong."

For many Arabs, the NATO bombings have evoked disturbing parallels with the continuing U.S.-led air campaign against Iraq, whose sanctions-bound population is the object of widespread sympathy in the Arab world. Jordan Times columnist Rami Khouri wrote that the United States and Britain have now made the "perpetual bombing of a weak and defenseless target" something routine.

In Africa, "most ordinary people are too busy with the struggle of day-to-day life" to focus closely on Kosovo, "and there has been a feeling that it's white folks' business," said Babacar Toure, publisher of the Sud daily newspaper in Dakar, Senegal. But the regular accounts of errant bombs and dead civilians have raised debate, he said, notably on the way NATO has sidelined the United Nations.

In the Philippines, one of Washington's closest allies in Asia, protesters angered by the war have been marching daily against a plan for military exercises with the United States. Large anti-American protests denouncing the war are also being staged in Pakistan and India. Vietnam has condemned the NATO attacks, calling for the issue to be resolved peacefully.

The war is striking a particularly bitter note in Latin America, where Washington's support of repressive governments in decades past has left a legacy of suspicion about its motives. "I don't think Milosevic is a saint, but the United States is on an ego trip," said Etcheberry, the Argentine medical student.