December 16, 2005:
The government has instituted a mandatory "peace training" program for all males between 14 (more or less) and 23. Moslem elders, and many parents, oppose the program. But it is going on anyway. Government officials are under tremendous pressure to "do something" about the Islamic terrorist violence in the south. Thousands of addition police and troops have been sent south, as well as hundreds of officials. The "peace training" is just one of several efforts underway to try and deal with the problem, which has left about a thousand dead in the last year. There has been a decrease in terrorist violence in the last month.
December 15, 2005: Because of a top, police raided the home of a religious teacher and found six firearms, several thousand rounds of ammo and bomb making materials.
December 10, 2005: In the Moslem south, 137 men turned themselves in to government officials, and said that they had been lured into Islamic radicalism, and violence, and wanted to go straight.