We are not a rebel province, not really.

Aráoz threatened to regain the rebel province by force, and after the failure of an attempted revolution in Tucumán, in early 1821, invaded Santiago.

Beijing still regards Taiwan as a rebel province and still threatens to retake it by military force.

There was no evidence of a Russian pullback by mid-afternoon in and around Zugdidi, near Georgia's border with the rebel province of Abkhazia.

Adding to the tension is President Bush's recent decision to sell 150 F-16 jet fighters to Taiwan, which China views as a rebel province.

There are an estimated 100,000 heavily equipped Russian troops in Chechnya, more than twice the number the Russians used in the 1994-1996 war against the rebel province.

On the one hand, that was good news--there was no complaint about the continued political independence of what Beijing deemed a rebel province.

The intervention in the rebel province of Chechnya got under way in December 1994 and from the start went horribly wrong.

Hong Kong, now part of China, and Taiwan, branded a rebel province by Beijing, named intermediaries to improve their cooperation.

The government of China has long regarded Taiwan as a rebel province since the Nationalist army fled there after losing a civil war in 1949.