Word: northern
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Bomb scares: two words that Northern Ireland had long consigned to the linguistic trashcan. But this week, bouts of public violence - both real and threatened - made a foreboding return to news bulletins and everyday conversations in the province. On April 1, two men were shot in the legs in so-called "punishment attacks" in Belfast and Londonderry. The day before, petrol bombs were thrown at a historic Orange hall in Belfast while a meeting of the Protestant Orangemen was taking place inside (nobody was injured). And security alerts at schools, leisure centers and gas stations - all hoaxes so far - continue...
...This spate of security disruptions is widely believed to be the work of dissident republican terrorists - such as the Real IRA and Continuity IRA - and their supporters, who are all opposed to Northern Ireland's power-sharing government. It was these same groups who claimed responsibility for the murders of two British soldiers and a police officer in March. Three men - including a 17-year-old - have since been charged with the killings, and on April 2 a 19-year-old man was arrested in connection to the soldiers' murders. (See pictures of the British Army leaving Northern Ireland...
...difficult to say for sure if this week's events are part of a sustained dissident campaign of civic disruption or simply acts of sporadic, copycat violence. Either way, the individuals behind this new threat to Northern Ireland's increasingly fragile peace have clearly studied their history books. A similar campaign of low-level, civic disruption by the Provisional IRA in the late 1960s and 1970s led to the mass deployment of British troops on Northern Irish streets and triggered one of the bloodiest periods in the 30-year sectarian conflict known as the Troubles. (See pictures of new hope...
...know that what the dissidents really want is British troops back on our streets, a huge security clampdown and retaliation by loyalists", says Dolores Kelly, a moderate nationalist member of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Retaliation by loyalist paramilitary groups - who carried out bomb attacks and shootings on Catholic civilians and republican terrorists during the Troubles - could spell disaster for Northern Ireland. A return to the tit-for-tat killings of the past would almost certainly spell the end of the power-sharing government that the dissidents oppose. (Read: "Policeman Shot Dead in Northern Ireland...
With less less than a week to go before national elections, snarled logistics and accurate voter rolls could spell disaster for the more remote regions of Indonesia. But Aceh, a province of four million people on the northern tip of Sumatra, is facing security challenges as well. After a string of attacks by unidentified gunmen over the past three months, the central government is planning to send an additional 1,000 soldiers and 260 national police to join an estimated 9,000 local police officers to help stabilize the restive province. At least 16 people have been killed in shootings...