Iraqi insurgents kept their homeland in turmoil during 2004, yet Iraq's interim leaders just as determinedly pressed ahead toward national elections early in the new year.
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The Middle East's other conflict took a turn with the death of Yasser Arafat, revered by Palestinians as a symbol of their resistance, but disdained by Israel as a terrorist. Both sides hope a Jan. 9 election to pick his successor will open the way to negotiations.
Diplomats worked out power-sharing accords in several of Africa's conflicts, leaving their people waiting to see if elections promised for 2005 cement calm. But a series of truces failed to halt ethnic fighting in Sudan's Darfur region that brought allegations government supporters waged a genocide campaign that killed thousands and drove 1.8 million from their homes.
The year closed with Iran pledging to cease controversial uranium enrichment, at least for a while, but the international effort to persuade North Korea to give up its atomic weapons program made no head way.
A year ago, U.S. planners expected their troops in Iraq to be in the background by now, with Iraqi forces shouldering the burden of quelling guerrillas. Instead, U.S. troops are fighting major battles in insurgent strongholds like Najaf and Fallujah, and the Pentagon will have 150,000 soldiers there by mid-January - more than were used to oust Saddam Hussein in March 2003.
The step-up in military operations aimed to increase security before National Assembly elections planned for Jan. 30. While insurgents sought to disrupt preparations, and undermine the vote's legitimacy, Iraq's interim leadership and other political groups began campaigning as the 2004 wound down.
But Arafat's death in November, to be followed by elections in January, had analysts and politicians talking optimistically about a possible new beginning. Mahmoud Abbas, the front-runner to succeed Arafat, began calling for an end to the Palestinians' four-year-old uprising, and Israeli leaders indicated they were open to dealing with a new leadership.
U.S. officials hope the new atmosphere would revive the peace process, a step that Arab governments have long argued is the only way to reverse anti-American sentiment in the region.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, saw an upsurge in attacks on foreigners blamed on al-Qaida members or sympathizers during the year. The government answered by cracking down on Islamic extremists and by allowing unprecedented and sharp public debate on religion's role in the kingdom.
Al-Qaida also struck in Spain last spring. Bombs on commuter trains in Madrid killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800, and helped the opposition to an election victory over a government that supported the Bush administration's war in Iraq. However, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch Bush ally in the war on terrorism, was easily re-elected later in the year.
Islamic terrorists hit in Indonesia, and Muslim separatists were active in southern Thailand and the southern Philippines. Terroists linked to Islamic rebels in Russia's Chechnya region were blamed for bombings that downed two airliners on the same night and for a three-day school siege in Beslan that ended with 338 people dead, many of them children.
An alleged Muslim extremist stunned the Netherlands on Nov. 2 by assassinating a Dutch filmmaker who had criticized Islam. The slaying of Theo van Gogh touched off a reassessment of Dutch immigration policies and worsened ethnic tensions in a country long known for toleration.
Not all was violence in 2004. Millions of Asians peacefully cast ballots across their vast continent.
Protected by U.S. and allied troops, Afghans flocked to their country's first democratic election despite unfulfilled threats of attacks by Taliban rebels. They chose Hamid Karzai as president to oversee recovery efforts three years after a U.S.-led campaign toppled the Islamic hard-line Taliban regime.
In Malaysia, secular rulers trounced the Islamic fundamentalist opposition, and the president of the Philippines won another term with a promise to fight terrorism by Muslim groups. Indonesia elected a new parliament in April and a new president in September - the first time the country's voters chose their leader directly.
India's Congress party and allies returned to power with an election triumph over the governing Hindu-nationalist party, swept to power by millions of poor voters angered over being left out of the country's economic boom.
Europe closed out the year with a raucous attempt in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine to elect a president. A Nov. 21 faceoff ostensibly won by Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych over Western-leaning opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko touched off weeks of street protests charging fraud by the government. After the Supreme Court threw out the results, a new vote was set for Dec. 26.
Criticism of the first round by the European Union strained its relations with Russia, which considers Ukraine to be in its sphere of influence. The Kremlin already was upset that the EU expanded eastward on May 1 by adding 10 former communist states as members.
As the year closed, the European Union prepared to open what was expected to be years of negotiations that could lead to Turkey becoming the bloc's only predominantly Muslim state.
Latin America's voters continued to turn toward leftist politics in reaction to the region's economic problems.
Venezuela's populist president, Hugo Chavez, easily defeated an August referendum designed to remove him from office, capping a nearly two-year conflict with his political foes that included bloody street battles.
In Uruguay, voters participating in the first elections since a devastating economic crisis two years ago chose the country's first leftist president. Municipal elections in Chile in October handed a strong victory to the center-left governing coalition, boosting its hopes of retaining power in national elections next December.
Cubans were reminded President Fidel Castro is in his waning years after the 78-year-old leader stumbled after giving a speech Oct. 20 and broke an arm and a kneecap. The fall came as his government was in the midst of phasing out the use of U.S. dollars by Cubans in an effort to reassert state control in the economy.
