August 2009 - Posts
An all-female Iraqi wrestling team is on a mission to enter the ring -- and change the way women are viewed in Iraqi society. NBC News' Ghazi Balkiz reports.
By Tom Aspell, NBC News Correspondent
TRIPOLI, Libya – The Egypt Air supervisor boarding our flight from Cairo to Tripoli waved a sandwich in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. It was shortly after sunset and devout Muslims were breaking their Ramadan fast for the day after going without food or water for 14 hours. Our flight was departing on time, he said, and we should hurry aboard.
By the time we arrived at the Tripoli airport it was nearly midnight, yet the Libyan capital’s streets were jammed with cars. Restaurants and coffee shops were crowded and shops were doing a brisk business. During the month of Ramadan countries in the Middle East work shorter daylight hours and do most of their business at night.
It was quickly apparent that Tripoli has changed quite a bit since my last visit in the 1990’s. Many of its old houses and shops are being torn down and replaced with modern high-rise apartment buildings.
Awash with money from its rich oil reserves – the largest in Africa and the ninth largest in the world – Libya’s leader Moammar Gadhafi has embarked on an ambitious modernization program.
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| Imed Lamloum / AFP - Getty Images |
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Libyans walk past festive lights and pictures of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi on Friday ahead of celebrations for the 40th anniversary of his coming to power in Tripoli planned for Sept 1. |
Gadhafi has opened up his country to foreign investment. The rush is being led by oil companies, but breathtaking construction contracts have also attracted foreign developers as Libya hurries to make up for decades of sanctions which left Tripoli looking like a desert version of Eastern Europe before the fall of communism.
Its buildings were crumbling, its sewer systems were leaking and its roads were potholed tracks. But now, accepted back into the fold, Libya is rushing to catch up to the outside world.
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By NBC News' Warangkana Chomchuen
BANGKOK, Thailand – Street vendors along a major intersection in downtown Bangkok are familiar with Sgt. Nitat Saisa-ard. Not only is he a good-natured traffic cop who enjoys iced cold fruit juices, but his chubby figure is hard to miss.
The 45-year-old sergeant weighs almost 300 pounds, more than half of which he gained over the past two decades since he graduated from police academy.
"I know I’m fat," said Nitat. "It’s hard for me to move around, dodging the cars, but I don’t feel like working out after a long day at work. I’m just so exhausted and I want to go to bed."
He’s going to have to change. And that’s an order.
Nitat is among 340 overweight traffic police officers in Bangkok told to shed at least 10 pounds and get into shape in three months.
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By Erika Angulo, NBC News Producer
MEDELLÍN, Colombia – The 18 hippos are the biggest attraction at the ‘Hacienda Napoles’ amusement park, 99 miles from this Andean city.
Their home was created by Pablo Escobar during his reign as Colombia’s most notorious drug lord.
He built the luxurious ranch with 20 man-made lakes, six pools, an airport, a hydroelectric power plant and a zoo filled with zebras, hippopotamus and other exotic animals.
Nowadays, the once highly secured hacienda is visited by 50,000 tourists annually, underlining the change in the city and province that was once ground zero for a bloody war between powerful cocaine magnates and the state.
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| Hugo Angulo / NBC News |
| Children play in the fountains of a Medellin park. |
Almost two decades later, business is thriving and most Medellinenses remember almost daily explosions as nightmares from the past.
The former textile capital of South America is again making clothes for companies such as Diesel, Naf Naf, Levis, Tommy Hilfinger and DKNY. The growing transportation system is another source of pride for many in Medellin, the only Colombian city with a metro and an aerial cable car network that connects downtown to its hilly suburbs.
And the United States is committed to helping Colombia continue to achieve greater security across the country. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced the new "Defense Cooperation Agreement," reached on Aug. 14 and expected to be signed in a few weeks. It is aimed at helping strengthen security and tackling the illegal drug trade.
(Some South American nations fear that the U.S. is using the agreement as a way to create military bases in Colombia – a charge Clinton was quick to deny. Still a group of Latin American leaders will meet this Friday, Aug. 28 to discuss the Washington - Bogotá agreement.)
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Analysis
Richard Engel, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent
KABUL – When I saw the headlines today that both President Hamid Karzai and his rival Abdullah Abdullah are claiming victory in the Afghanistan election, I was somewhat surprised. I thought that this could be an issue of major concern because you don’t want to have a situation here like we had in Iran where there is a disputed election and both sides are claiming victory as the results are still coming in.
So I wanted to make sure what exactly the candidates were saying.
I went over to Abdullah’s house – he is the former foreign minister and main challenger in the race against the incumbent Karzai.
We spoke in English, and he speaks very good English, but I think some of the situation here has to do with language.
I asked him, "Do you think you’ve won the election?"
And he said, "Yes."
I asked him, "Are you claiming victory?"
He said, "No, the results are still coming in."
So I said, "Well then, what do you mean exactly? You think you’ve won, but the results are still coming in?"
He said, "Yes, exactly.
"But you’re not claiming victory?" I asked.
He said, "No."
So there is a big, big difference. I asked him to explain to me what he thinks the situation is now.
Abdullah said, "Indications are now that I’m in the lead and that I have won the elections outright and there will be no need for a run-off; but the final results are not in. But those are the indications we have at this point."
So, I called Karzai’s people because he is also quoted as saying he’s won and it’s over.
But his people said, "No, no, no. We are confident that we’ve won, but the results aren’t all in yet. But we think it will go our way."
So basically, you have both sides saying, "We think we’ve won" – but not quite claiming victory.
Now it’s a fine line. Could this escalate and tomorrow both sides harden their positions?
Yes, that could happen. We could be headed down a dangerous path here. But both sides at this stage are trying to not delegitimize the process and not put themselves onto a confrontational path.
Both sides are saying they’re confident and their own internal polling and fact-finding shows that they have won, but it’s not settled yet. They think they will have a much clearer idea by the end of the weekend.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
BEIJING – For most of August, it’s been hard to imagine China leading the charge down a low-carbon path.
On my Blackberry, headlines about how the country is seeking to ramp up development of alternative energies such as wind and solar power and rolling out electric vehicles have been competing all summer with relentless Tweets from BeijingAir telling us the obvious: That air quality in the Chinese capital is "unhealthy" or "hazardous."
(BeijingAir is a Twitter feed published by the U.S. embassy in Beijing, which monitors the air in the central downtown area, on an hourly basis, using U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards.)
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| BeijingAir publishes hourly tweets on the capital's air quality. |
Last weekend’s weather was so foul (BeijingAir: "very unhealthy") that I stayed indoors, engrossed in reading a political thriller that pits the U.S. against China over climate change.
"Ultimatum," a novel that came out earlier this year, is set in the year 2032, when a newly elected American president discovers that the effects of global warming will be far more catastrophic than anyone realized.
With huge swathes of America’s coastline – as well as those of every other continent – destined to go under water, forcibly relocating hundreds of millions of people, the U.S. realizes any viable solution requires a coordinated effort with the world’s biggest emitter, China. And so begins a secret, high-stakes diplomatic game of cat and mouse…
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Japan has some of the world's toughest recycling laws. It also has the most rapidly aging population, who are leading the way to create a zero-waste community. NBC's Ian Williams reports.
In a country where women have few rights, thousands will head to the polls on Thursday to vote in Afghanistan’s elections. NBC’s Richard Engel reports on women’s roles in the high-stakes election.
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By Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Miangul Aurangzeb excused himself for being a little hard of hearing, and smiled wistfully.
"I’m happy I am not the ruler today," he said. "It was a no-win situation."
Aurangzeb, an affable octogenarian, is still affectionately known as the "Wali," or ruler, of Swat, even though it has been 40 years since his family was in power.
In 1969, when the Swat Valley was incorporated into Pakistan (more than 20 years after the partition of British India), Aurangzeb’s family kept their hereditary title and their homes – but lost their right to rule.
The Taliban would not have gained control of the idyllic Swat Valley, once known as the Switzerland of Asia, if Swat had remained sovereign and the Wali still ruled – at least that’s Aurangzeb’s view.
Nonetheless, he blames former President Pervez Mushrraf and the United States for the bulk of Pakistan’s troubles with the Taliban.
"They should not have involved Pakistan in Afghanistan’s affairs. If they (the U.S.) wanted to bomb Afghanistan, they could have done it from America," he said.
"Pakistan produced the Taliban to help America throw the Russians out. And then Musharraf stabbed them in the back to please the Americans. Now the Taliban are taking revenge," said Aurangzeb, with a raised voice for added emphasis. "Revenge is a very important factor. They (the Taliban) have been let down by Pakistan."
He claims Musharraf allowed the Taliban to grow in strength in order to frighten President George W. Bush into giving him more money and weapons.
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By NBC News' Ed Flanagan
BEIJING – In the past few years, China's Internet vigilantes have mobilized to root out, expose and shame people they perceive to be exhibiting corrupt or immoral behavior.
Marked for their unfettered zeal, the literal translation of the Chinese term for this ad hoc group of sleuthing online activists is: "human flesh search engine."
Nevertheless, while the stature of this group of online watchmen continues to grow, a new Chinese movie may force the Internet phenomenon out of the online sphere and into the country's public dialogue.
"Invisible Killer," produced and co-written by Xie Xiaodong, is the first movie to broach the subject of Internet vigilantism and dramatize the pitfalls of having a mobilized and motivated online mob administering its own brand of justice.
In the film, the main character, Gao Fei, is accused online of seducing a married woman. In response, his online "judges" mete out justice by digging up and posting personal information about him on the Internet. Branding him a "fugitive" online, the cyber assault on Gao’s character turns even nastier when his home is attacked and a manhunt sponsored by a Web site to locate and interview him turns violent.
Swift Success
The events portrayed in "Invisible Killer" may be fiction, but the story line is not far from reality.
China’s online vigilantes have been active for several years, but their first big breakthrough came in 2006. At the time, the Chinese media and what were seen as "amateur sleuths" began a national manhunt to discover the identity of a Hangzhou woman who appeared in gruesome videos crushing cats under sharp stiletto heels.
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NBC News' Jim Maceda just returned from several weeks of reporting in Afghanistan.
Watch the video below to see a behind-the-scenes tour of how U.S. troops cope with the extenuating circumstances of living in what Maceda calls a booby-trapped ghost town in Afghanistan's 130 degrees Fahrenheit heat.
After years of reporting on military embeds in Iraq and Afghanistan, Maceda calls this particular trip the "embed from hell."
By Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The guessing games over the fate of Pakistan’s Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud, continue as government officials and Taliban militants exchange verbal duels – challenging each other on national TV to prove that Mehsud is alive or dead.
Accusations on both sides swirl: Top Taliban militant commanders, loyal to Mehsud, allege that Pakistani government officials have known for weeks that Mehsud is seriously ill and under a doctor's care in North Waziristan. So they say that now is a convenient time for the Pakistani government to declare him dead and remove U.S. pressure to go after him.
The government counters that the Taliban are just buying time. They have, they argue, irrefutable intelligence that Mehsud was killed in a U.S drone attack on Aug. 5 in South Waziristan, along with his wife, a brother and some aides at the home of his father-in-law while receiving medical treatment.
Mehsud, 35, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was Pakistan’s enemy Number One. Charismatic and ruthless, he was practically unknown until 2007, when he teamed up with al-Qaida, and banded together at least 13 separate militant groups operating in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas.
Mehsud declared himself the leader of an estimated 20,000 fighters and hundreds of suicide bombers, and ruled unopposed until last week, when the drone fired two hellfire missiles and allegedly took him out – or maybe not.
Mehsud had a long history of poor health. Plagued by kidney problems and diabetes, he was reported to have died last year from illness, only to surface again and marry for a second time. Mehsud kept a low profile and rarely spoke to the media. Last week, the news of his death unleashed a flood of rumors, conspiracy theories and media mania.
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Reporter's Notebook
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
KABUL, Afghanistan – The ‘new’ U.S. strategy
in Afghanistan has a familiar ring to it.
"You can't kill your way to victory here, Jim," the U.S. Army Brigade Commander began, cocking his cap back off his forehead, as he often did before making a point. "You must protect the population, separate the enemy from that population, and then, quickly, bring good governance to the people so they reject the enemy when he tries to return."
The colonel called this a "new" strategy, fully supported by Washington, and based on proven counter-insurgency practice. He believed this would radically alter the course of war in Afghanistan and lead, hopefully, to a "tipping point" – shifting momentum away from the Taliban and towards coalition forces.
But, this comment wasn’t something I pulled out of my reporter's notebook from my recent trip to Afghanistan – although it could be. It's actually a quote from then-Col. John 'Mick' Nicholson, commander of Task Force Spartan, in Eastern Afghanistan, back in April of 2006.
Interestingly, Nicholson's boss at the time was Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the then-commander of U.S. and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
Now fast-forward more than three years. I am back in Kabul, but I kept flashing back to that earlier conversation as I listened to Eikenberry, now the new U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, define for me what he called "the conditions for success" here.
"First you must secure the area and separate the people from the enemy, Jim. But right behind that, steps have to be taken to help the government of Afghanistan..." My thoughts drifted as Eikenberry went on to describe the need for "good governance" and a "sense of justice." I was thinking instead about how I'd heard this "new doctrine" before, almost word for word.
My point: There's little really new about the Obama administration's "new strategy" in Afghanistan.
True, as reported in Monday's New York Times, there's been a clear shift in counter-narcotics tactics, away from indiscriminate poppy eradication – which hurt farmers, but not the Taliban – while going more aggressively after the drug lords and smugglers.
But the much touted "clear-hold-build" paradigm, and the need for both "military" and "civilian" surges, are ideas lifted right out of the U.S. military's counter-insurgency handbook, drawn up by Gen. David Petraeus himself.
This strategy was, in fact, formulated during President George W. Bush's administration and applied by Bush, despite resistance from his own advisors, in Iraq.
What is new – and a potential breakthrough – is the commitment that the U.S. government appears to have made to the strategy in Afghanistan.
Congress has allocated tens of billions of new dollars, not just to the fight, but, for instance, to turning Afghanistan back into the agricultural powerhouse it was before 30 years of war destroyed it.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
BEIJING – A debate over whether eating organic foods provides any nutritional benefit was sparked late last month after an independent study in the U.K. found that there were no significant nutritional differences between organic and conventionally produced food.
But, in China, a growing appreciation for organic food isn’t simply because of the perceived nutritional benefits; consumers have turned to organic food as a means of ensuring some measure of health and safety.
After all, this is a country where the challenges of maintaining food safety are regularly in the newspaper headlines – the melamine milk scandal in 2008; tainted cough syrup that killed more than 100 people in Panama in 2006; and pet food containing adulterated wheat gluten, which was blamed for thousands of animal deaths in the U.S. in 2007. Not to mention the myriad reports of food being tampered in local Chinese markets.
This year the Chinese government has taken numerous steps in an attempt to improve food safety. Chief among these is the country’s first food safety law, which went into effect on June 1, enacting tough penalties against producers of tainted food and consolidating oversight in one cabinet-level agency. And more recently, officials established a database keeping track of food manufacturers who have issued recalls in the past.
Still, consumers in Beijing are taking matters into their own hands. In fact, just as it has in the U.S. and other western countries, community supported agriculture – buying locally grown produce directly from farmers – has begun to grow in popularity in the capital.
A Taiwan-born New Yorker, Lejen Chen, explains to NBC News why she set up the Green Cow Organic Farm, a little oasis on the outskirts of Beijing.
An Israeli court order police to evict two Palestinian families from their homes, despite having lived there for 50 years, so Jewish settlers could move in. The evictions follow a long legal battle over the disputed ownership of the site. NBC's Martin Fletcher reports.
