Word: airstrip
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...trouble goes back to 1959, when the British finished a jet airstrip on the southern island of Gan to link their Middle Eastern bases with Singapore and Australia. In the process, they accidentally subsidized an uprising; most of Can's labor force came from Addu Atoll, which had rebelled against the islands' central government at Male, 300 miles to the north. To protest taxation and "other repressive measures," the rebels had even formed an independent "Republic" on their little atoll...
...leader, one Abdullah Afif, get away to safety in the Seychelle Islands, 1,200 miles to the southwest. That infuriated Maldivian Prime Minister Ibrahim Nasir, who simultaneously functions as Foreign, Finance, Education and Public Safety Minister. In revenge, Maldivian saboteurs began to tear up a British mail and supply airstrip near Male. When the British (who hand out $50,000 a year to the Maldives) protested, Nasir decided he would act just like a great big emerging nation, demanded complete independence and the return of his old enemy Afif before he would even discuss the situation...
...jungle airstrip was hardly big enough, but a Colombian air force DC-4 touched down to unload a most unmilitary cargo: beds, trunks, dogs, chickens and 64 stony-faced peasants who had been strapped in the bucket seats. The peasants were homesteaders arriving at the outpost town of Florencia to start a new life in Colombia's rich but remote southwest. By sunset, the air force plane was back in Bogota, 240 miles away, with a load of hardwood...
...commandos, had piled up 500 rebel dead, but was unable to break the siege. At Gungu, another government outfit mowed down 100 guerrillas who staged a suicide charge with bows and arrows, spears and pangas. But the troops were cut off when rebels dug trenches across the local airstrip. Hardly had the commandos ar rived at Kikwit when one of their top officers, Army Chief of Staff Lieut...
There was a dirt airstrip but no commercial service. Fishermen caught mackerel and bonito from dugout canoes; farmers marketed vegetables in the central plaza. A couple of temperamental diesel engines generated electricity to light the four-block bay-front promenade, and the townsfolk got along fine without a proper bridge across the Cuale River that split the town. Pedestrians took a swinging footbridge, and Vallarta's five taxis just sloshed across the shallow stream...