Word: mai
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Shaking behind her black chador, or veil, 18-year-old Makhutar Mai stood before a jury made up of men who hated her. Mai is a dairy farmer's daughter, a Tatla Gujjar, and the council members before her were all from a higher, landed caste group, the Mastoi Baloch. Mai's brother had dared to romance a girl from the higher caste, and in the dusty mid-day sun of rural Pakistani Punjab, a rowdy crowd gathered to demand eye-for-an-eye-style justice. The six seated elders finally delivered their judgment. To restore the caste's honor...
...Mai's life began to unravel in late June, when her 14-year-old brother Abdul Shakoor was seen walking with his lover, an older girl from the more powerful caste. According to police, the girl's uncles kidnapped Shakoor, beat him up, sodomized him and held him captive in a family compound. The next day, Shakoor's uncle tried to get him released by proposing a formal panchayat. A council was formed by three members of each clan group. After hearing testimony it came to a decision: that Shakoor should marry his girlfriend, and one Tatla girl should...
...Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf condemned the incident and ordered $8,200 to be given to the family for immediate relief. On receiving the money, Mai said she wanted it to be used to build a school in the village. "For the girls," she told a government minister, "because they must no longer remain enclosed in darkness...
...Thai army platoon fanning out around the village of Wiang Haeng in northern Chiang Mai province was expecting a routine patrol. That overcast afternoon in late March, the soldiers were securing the area for a special visit by Thailand's Queen Sirikit. But along the Thai-Burmese border?where insurgents, smugglers and drug dealers hold sway?little can be taken for granted. Suddenly, the Thai troops were under fire. The enemy: a unit of the United Wa State Army, a tribal force from Burma. Allied with the government in Rangoon and notorious for its dominance of the narcotics trade...
Most travel correspondents can't do much more than find a palatable mai tai. But Alex Perry, who joined TIME ASIA primarily as a travel writer last year, turned out to be different. He not only asked to cover the Afghan war but became one of the first journalists to reach Mazar-i-Sharif after it fell. He was the only reporter to stay at the Qala-i-Jangi fort when prisoners rioted. Now the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund has named Perry the first recipient of its War Correspondents Award. Perry deserves a vacation, and he surely knows where...