Word: south
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...recent months, the steep escalation in targeted and random killings has turned Kandahar, the largest city in the south, into a cauldron of violence. A drive through the dusty streets is a chronicle of Afghanistan's never-ending war. Buildings across the city are scarred by shrapnel and pocked with bullet holes. Concrete roads are riddled with gaping holes in the ground where improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have been laid. And blackened divots are visible where suicide bombers - or 'human IEDs,' in colloquial parlance - blew themselves up. The streets of Kandahar, once a thriving business hub, go empty at sundown...
...Robert transformed the ceiling in his home, in the south of France, into a horizontal all-weather artificial climbing wall where he trains by spending up to 20 minutes at a time upside down...
...country's southern tip is Muslim, peopled by descendants of a former Malay sultanate that was annexed by what was then known as Siam in 1902. Over the past five years, a steady stream of bombings, shootings, beheadings and other terror attacks in the country's deep south have claimed roughly 3,500 lives, both Muslim and Buddhist. Most of the killings have been blamed on separatist Muslim insurgents, while others are thought to be the work of Buddhist vigilantes. All in all, it's something that Thai tourist authorities would prefer to gloss over in their posters touting palm...
...Unlike with many other Muslim terror groups, the insurgents in Thailand's deep south don't tend to claim responsibility for their actions, nor have they publicly stated the reasons for their violent handiwork. Nevertheless, there's no doubt that Muslims in largely Buddhist Thailand have faced decades of prejudice, even on an official level. In a particularly tragic incident in 2004, hundreds of Muslim protesters in the village of Tak Bai were rounded up by security forces, stuffed like sardines into trucks and left to roast in the heat during a drive to an army detention center in Pattani...
...contrast to Thaksin's iron-fisted approach, the current government led by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has adopted a far more conciliatory attitude toward Thai Muslims. He has unveiled a $1 billion-plus economic stimulus plan for Thailand's deep south in an effort to counter deep-seated Muslim antipathy toward the central government. But despite the rubber-plantation and road projects, these three southernmost provinces have also turned into a giant militarized zone over the past couple years. Some 60,000 Thai military and police forces patrol the region, a troop surge that has frightened many locals who complain...