State suffering penalties (9)
I believe the answer is:
palestine
'state' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both locations as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps there's an association between them I don't understand?
'suffering penalties' is the wordplay.
'suffering' indicates anagramming the letters.
'penalties' is an anagram of 'PALESTINE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for palestine that I've seen before include "The historic Holy Land in neat piles" , "Middle-East area" , "Region deriving its name from the Philistines" , "Penalties on region once known as Canaan" , "territory under dispute" .)