Word: thai
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...doughy, broad-shouldered 41-year-old Russian whom Thai police paraded before the press on Friday in an orange golf shirt is a monstrous example of entrepreneurial business acumen gone over to the dark side. He is believed to have supplied arms to the warring factions in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, as well as the perpetrators of some of the worst violence in Africa's interminable civil wars. Experts believe he has shipped AK-47s to every corner of the world. He even appears to have used U.S. airbases in Iraq in 2004 as part of his arms trafficking...
...Russian-made Ingla surface-to-air missiles to be air-dropped into FARC territory inside Colombia. After meetings in Curacao, Copenhagen and Bucharest, the DEA, through confidential sources, arranged for Bout to travel to Bangkok, Thailand to finalize the deal on March 6. That's when the Royal Thai police, working with the DEA, arrested him on charges of providing material support of a foreign terrorist organization, a designation slapped on FARC...
...just a noodle-soup vendor, with a heroin addict for a son. Still, after watching her boy stick needles in his arms for a decade, what harm could there be in sending then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra a note identifying her son's dealer in the northern Thai town of Chiang Rai? A billionaire tycoon turned politician, Thaksin had just launched a war on drugs. The campaign would be assailed by human-rights activists for claiming more than 2,000 lives in just three months in 2003. But for this single parent, tough action was just what was needed...
...strongest in Thailand's rural north, where Thaksin grew up. Bangkok residents may rattle through a litany of Thaksin's alleged faults - corruption, a disregard for human rights, even an attempt to build his reputation at the expense of Thailand's beloved King - but, for people upcountry, as the Thais like to call it, Thaksin's populist health-care initiatives and village funds were manna. "When the soldiers took over, people were scared to say they liked Thaksin," says Nuntana Sommun, a teacher of Thai dance in Chiang Rai. "But in our hearts we still supported him." Such sentiments propelled...
...Even so, the government's survival isn't assured. On Feb. 26, Thailand's election commission found the PPP's deputy leader, Yongyuth Tiyapairat, guilty of vote-buying in Chiang Rai. Under Thai electoral law, the ruling could lead to the PPP's dissolution. Nor can Thaksin run for office, since he was banned from politics for five years by the junta. Any attempts by Samak's government to ease Thaksin back into politics could ignite protests by upper- and middle-class Bangkok residents, who took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands shortly before the former...