October 2009 - Posts
By Nightly News staff
It was supposed to be a week devoted to reporting on the military and political situation in Afghanistan, where a runoff presidential election is scheduled for Nov. 7.
Yet even as “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams was still in the air, making his way toward his first visit to the country in more than a year, assignments were being overturned. It would turn out to be a week looking for stories amid extraordinary violence that NBC’s Richard Engel reported has reached record levels.
First came the crashes of three helicopters on Monday, which killed 14 Americans, making October the deadliest month for U.S. forces since the war in Afghanistan began eight years ago. Then came the Taliban attack on a U.N. guesthouse Wednesday in Kabul, the capital, which killed eight people — five of them U.N. workers — plus the attackers.
In Kabul, the vibe has changed “literally overnight,” Williams observed in an e-mail interview with the Huffington Post.
“Kabul has hardened and tightened — it’s much more about security now that the Taliban has ‘entered the battle space’” with its attack Wednesday, which has prompted a reassessment of the U.N. role in promoting the election, Engel reported.
After the blast, "there was nothing here to salvage," Chris Turner, a truck driver working as a contractor for the U.S. Defense Department, told Williams, who toured the devastation afterward.
CONTINUED >>
ANALYSIS
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
I’ve spent much of the past two weeks – some in New York and the rest in Los Angeles – listening to the pundits and experts talk about the war in Afghanistan. From the Sunday morning network round tables to the Saturday evening interviews on National Public Radio, I’ve enjoyed a lot of good debate, from both sides of the issue. I’ve also heard quite a few jaw-droppers.
Here are five popular ideas on the war, the strategy, the nation and the people of Afghanistan – which those of us who spend years reporting from the region find a little misguided.
1) Afghanistan is like Vietnam. It will turn into a quagmire, and lead to another ignominious defeat for the U.S.
This is a favorite argument among left-leaning pundits, but while Afghanistan’s remoteness may smack of Vietnam, there is a big difference: This is no war of national liberation, embraced by a whole population.
If there’s a national "idea" sweeping Afghanistan it isn’t freedom from Western colonialists, its freedom from 30 years of conflict.
Many Afghans will no doubt continue to sit on the fence until they can see a clear victor – coalition forces or the Taliban. But the vast majority of Afghans do not want a return to the hellish years of the Taliban regime.
They’re willing to give coalition forces a chance if that can bring peace to their lives, without fear of revenge attacks or recrimination by the Taliban. That yearning for something other than the Taliban, is one key plus for those who argue that the war is still "winnable."
CONTINUED >>
By Stephanie Gosk, NBC News Correspondent
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the spokesman for Pakistan’s military, calls South Waziristan the "center of gravity" for terrorism in this country and a sanctuary for both Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.
The Pakistani military took foreign and local journalists on a guided tour of South Waziristan on Thursday, the first look inside the lawless area since the military launched a major ground offensive there in mid-October.
During the tour, journalists were shown two passports with alleged links to 9/11 suspects that the military says were recovered in a small Taliban outpost in the town of Sherwangai.
One passport allegedly belonged to German citizen Said Bahaji who is thought to have lived with 9/11 leader Mohammed Atta in Hamburg. Another Spanish passport had the name of Raquel Burgos Garcia. She is believed to be married to Amer Azizi, a Moroccan terrorist suspect who has been linked to both the September 11th attacks and the Madrid bombings.
U.S. officials regularly criticize the Pakistani government for not aggressively pursuing al-Qaida within its borders and on her first trip to Pakistan as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has been blunt about voicing that criticism. She told a group of local reporters on Thursday, "I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to."
But Pakistani officials say the ongoing battle in South Waziristan is proof of their determination to confront the terrorism threat directly. It follows a similar and successful operation launched last May in the Swat valley.
CONTINUED >>
BEIJING – Ahead of President Barack Obama’s first visit to China next month, American and Chinese officials and scholars are engaged in intense discussions on how the world’s two biggest polluting nations should manage their responsibility to address climate change and clean energy issues, which are expected to be high on the president’s agenda.
With the U.N. Copenhagen Climate Change Conference scheduled for December, China and the United States, which account for a combined 40 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, are under pressure to cut down their production of greenhouse gases.
“China is doing a lot and we are doing a lot,” declared U.S. Energy Undersecretary Dan Poneman, refuting talks of China taking the leadership on clean energy technology.
“We are investing significantly across a whole range of clean technologies,” he said, adding that the U.S. is comfortable with China’s ambitious nuclear energy program.
Professor Ken Lieberthall of the Brookings Institution, was also very positive about the prospects for collaboration.
“I think the Chinese are actually very serious about cooperation on clean energy,” said Lieberthall. The Brookings Institution recently sponsored a forum in Beijing on U.S.-China clean energy efforts with the China Institute of Strategy and Management. The event gathered over 300 guests, including Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore.
“The whole world is looking at the U.S. and China,” said Lieberthall. “But there are many obstacles, politically and technically, to overcome that simply require a lot of work.”
Poneman and Lieberthall spoke at length to NBC News in Beijing about the prospects of the United States and China working together in the clean energy arena. See the attached video to hear more of their views.
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Correspondent
HERAT, Afghanistan – We watched a teenage girl die last Friday.
Seventeen-year-old Shirin had been brought to the Herat Regional Hospital Burns Unit a few days before we met her. Ninety percent of her body was covered in third-degree burns.
Her mother-in-law said Shirin had burned herself by accident. The girl was preparing a meal in the kitchen but somehow confused cooking gasoline with petrol, she said.
But Dr. Mohamed Aref Jalali, the director of the burns unit, said Shirin told him in private that she had set herself on fire deliberately after fighting with her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law.
Many girls in Afghanistan think self-immolation is the best solution for family problems, according to Jalali.
"[For these girls], it’s no good to solve the problem with the father-in-law, with the mother-in-law," said the doctor. "They think self-immolation will solve the problem."
It’s a "solution" that appears to be a major problem in Afghanistan, particularly among young women between the ages 13 and 25.
In the first seven months of this year, medical staff at the Herat’s burns unit – the only one of its kind in the entire country – said they have seen 51 cases of female self-immolation. Only 13 have survived.
The practice comes from Iran, where many Afghan refugees had fled to during the decade-long war with the Soviet Union (1979-1989) and the era of mujahedeen fighting that followed in the 1990s, said Jalali. But its popularity has spread among Afghan women, often from poor, uneducated backgrounds, where the tradition of child or forced marriages runs strong.
"The forced marriage is the best reason and the important reason, and it starts from the economic problem," said Jalali.
Often in arranged marriages, women are viewed in very stark terms.
"She is here only to wash, to clean, to give baby … and nothing more," said Marie-Jose Brunel, a French volunteer nurse at the burns unit who was full of Gallic warmth and purposeful seriousness. "If they have no freedom, no possibility to study, to be considered like nothing, it’s very, very difficult."
CONTINUED >>
By NBC News' Emily Wither
LONDON – It’s a gift they’re sure to treasure.
Customers flocking to Britain’s most prestigious department store, Harrods, this holiday season will now be able to add gold bars to their basket while shopping for the perfect present.
This latest arrival to hit the shelves comes in a range of sizes, from just under one pound to 27.5 pounds. There’s also a range of coins on offer, from British sovereigns to South African Krugerrands to American gold eagles.
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| AFP - Getty Images |
| A selection of gold ingots and coins for sale in Harrods department store. |
With new figures out last week showing Britain’s current recession as the longest on record, the strategy could be a successful one as up-market customers look for somewhere safe to put their money.
Chris Hall, head of Harrods’ bullion department, said the store saw a gap in the market.
"Up until now, London has had no well recognized name serving this market," he said. "Harrods saw the opportunity to help individuals buy physical gold in a prudent manner."
But the glittery metal probably won’t be flying off the shelves through the festive season. At today’s market prices, 2.2 pounds of Harrods gold will set you back about $35,000. And the top-of-the-line bar, which weighs in at 27.5 pounds, will cost you $429,482.
But Hall said sales had been promising, with several pieces of gold having been snapped up in the week or so it has been on sale.
CONTINUED >>
The moment of impact when two blasts struck near Iraq's Ministry of Justice on Sunday, killing at least 147 people, was caught on tape. The twin suicide bombings, the deadliest bomb attacks in Iraq in two years, has sparked questions about Iraq's security. NBC's Steve Wende reports from Baghdad.
By NBC News' Bo Gu
BEIJING – Thirty-three years after his death, Mao Zedong is still a god to many in China. And you can see him everywhere.
He's mostly standing, in a military uniform or a long buttoned-up winter coat, sometimes wearing his symbolic little red-starred army hat, usually waving his right arm high up to the air as if giving a victory gesture or ordering his army to march forward. Occasionally you see him posed as a deep thinker with his hands behind the back, or even sitting on a chair looking into some mysterious future.
He mainly stands in big cities’ center squares, overlooking senior citizens doing tai chi in dawn light or children running around in a park; many times he stands in military barracks or factory blocks, supervising his soldiers in exercise and workers on the assembly line; sometimes he waves his big hand in universities, reminding the students of his renowned remark “you youth are the sun at 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., you are the future of the country"; now and then, he makes surprise appearances in a dingy local clinic, a small Sichuan restaurant, or in the middle of a rundown low-rise housing complex.
He’s mostly cement, gray and stiff, sometimes marble, white and spotless, occasionally bronze, yellow and shining.
There are hundreds of these statues of the late founder of the People’s Republic of China across the country. And Cheng Wenjun, an urban sculpture designer and photographer, made it his mission, which he began in 1997, to make a record of every one.
CONTINUED >>
By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
KAKUMA, Northern Kenya – They shuffle aimlessly in the dust: 50,000 refugees crammed into thousands of huts made from branches, leaves, mud and plastic in the
Kakuma camp in Northern Kenya.
Natives of Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, the refugees have fled wars aggravated by drought, yet even here the supply of water is sporadic. They eat once a day from supplies provided by aid agencies. Kakuma is one of the oldest and largest refugee camps in the world and some people have been here since 1991 when it was established.
They don’t like to talk to strangers about their problems, but the roads are lined by placards, erected by aid agencies, with slogans and exhortations that are like windows into the refugees’ pain.
The most graphic reads: "STOP FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION – IT IS A HEALTH HAZARD (RISK)." The signs are in English, Kenya’s official language, but since the camp’s residents speak a wide variety of regional and native languages, the words are incomprehensible to most refugees.
However anyone can get the message from the disturbing illustration of a woman kneeling with a razor while a mother offers up her infant girl. Female genital mutilation is almost universal in Somalia and common in neighboring countries.
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| Martin Fletcher / NBC News |
| A poster in Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp tells people to "STOP FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION IT IS A HEALTH HAZARD (RISK).” |
CONTINUED >>
By NBC News' Carol Grisanti in Islamabad and Mushtaq Yusufzai in New York
The negotiations took weeks. The tribal council was called to try to convince Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the 42-year-old militant commander of North Waziristan, not to send his fighters to support the Taliban militants in the south.
Elusive and cunning, Gul Bahadar would be a key government ally in any effort to dislodge Taliban militants from the region. The army needed the consent of this bearded, religious scholar before taking on the Mehsuds, a neighboring, but rival tribe, who are loyal Taliban supporters. Without him, there could be no hope of a military success in routing out the militants.
In early September, 27 elders of the Wazir tribes, along with aides of Gul Bahadar, sat down with government representatives in Miranshah, the administrative capital of North Waziristan to work out a deal. Later, the talks moved to Peshawar in the Northwest Frontier Province.
In the end, the government agreed to most of the tribe’s demands for cooperation; prisoners were exchanged and Gul Bahadar was compensated for losses suffered from U.S. drone attacks and military action in his areas. The tribal council was satisfied, an earlier peace agreement from 2007 was restored, and a feast of roasted goat, rice and sweets was served, according to centuries-old tribal traditions.
"We will not intervene in the Mehsud’s wars," said Maulana Sadiq Noor, deputy to Gul Bahadar, referring to the rival Mehsud tribes of South Waziristan from whom the Taliban militants in Pakistan draw most of their support. "Our people have suffered enough at the hands of the U.S. and the Pakistani governments. We want peace in our lands," he said
Gul Bahadar brought on board his tribal ally, Maulvi Nazir, the commander who holds sway over the border areas of South Waziristan, which encircle the Mehsuds’ strongholds in the center.
"If the government attacks me and my people, then I will reply in the same manner, but I have no interest to intervene between the government and the Mehsuds," Nazir told NBC News.
The Mehsuds were squeezed. The tribes had switched sides. The Wazirs, led by Gul Bahadar and Nazir to the north and west, and the Bhittani tribes to the east, would remain neutral and not prevent the Pakistani Army’s long planned offensive to attack the Taliban militant’s stronghold.
The Wazirs, in contrast to the Mehsuds, have never attacked the state outside of their own lands of Waziristan. Their focus has always been to send fighters across the border to fight the U.S. and NATO in the Afghan jihad.
CONTINUED >>
By Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News Correspondent
Afghanistan's presidential elections, marred by allegations of widespread fraud, appear headed for a runoff, but no matter what the outcome there appears little chance it will change the government's pervasive culture of corruption and crisis of confidence.
"Corruption? Corruption? The entire Karzai regime is corrupt!" Dr. Wadir Safi bellows in a fit of anger and frustration. Outside Kabul University were Safi is a long-standing professor of International Law and Politics, a large crowd of students gathers as Safi delivers an impromptu lecture on what many here see as criminal behavior by President Hamid Karzai and his administration.
CONTINUED >>
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Early on a recent morning we were driving to a shoot when an astonishing sight loomed up ahead of us. NBC News cameraman Steve O’Neill exclaimed, "It’s the Great Wall of China!"
The "wall" snaking before us, easily several miles long, was made of Hesco sandbags and circled a camp for Chinese workers. Though not permitted to enter the site, we could see rows and rows of neat white buildings with blue trim; the temporary structures looked exactly like the migrant workers’ housing at construction sites all across China.
Size apart, it was all somewhat unremarkable, except for the fact that we were in eastern Afghanistan.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| "It's the Great Wall of China," said NBC cameraman Steve O'Neill when we saw the Hesco sandbags surrounding the Chinese workers camp at the Aynak copper mine in Afghanistan. |
The Chinese workers – several hundred technicians – are part of a multibillion-dollar Chinese investment in Afghanistan’s largest-ever infrastructure project, the Aynak copper mine.
Discovered in 1974 but virtually dormant since the start of the Soviet War in 1979, the Aynak mine is believed to contain the world’s second-largest untapped copper deposits and could propel Afghanistan into the ranks of the world’s top 15 copper producers.
After wooing Afghan officials from as early as 2001, a Chinese mainland joint venture finally won the rights in 2007 to develop the site over 30 years. So far, it has sunk more than $4 billion into the project.
The joint venture – between majority partner China Metallurgical Group Corp. and Jiangxi Copper Corp. – expects production to begin by the end of 2011 with an initial annual output of 180,000 tons of copper that will eventually grow to 320,000 tons. China will have rights to half that output, which it needs to fuel its own massive economic growth.
But the mine is just outside Kabul, in Logar Province, where there has been heightened insurgent activity. Some 1,500 Afghan police are stationed on site with a new police barracks in the works. And although they say they are not attached to the project, the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division occasionally sends units to patrol the area. China – of course, not being a member of NATO – has no troops on the ground in Afghanistan.
It’s this set-up that’s feeding a percolating debate about China’s role in Afghanistan.
CONTINUED >>
The U.S. Army is working on returning the loot Saddam Hussein stole from the Iraqi people. The stolen goods include guns, antiques, vintage cars and boats. NBC's Steve Wende reports from Baghdad.
BEIJING – "Abnormal" weather phenomena will have a devastating impact on the world's agricultural production and food supply – which could lead to food shortages and food riots, warned a top U.N. expert.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News in Beijing, American-educated Dr. Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, painted a future scenario of "chaos, rioting and crazy migration" due to the severe impact of climate change.
A 30-year champion of poverty alleviation through agricultural development, Nwanze is appealing for decisive steps at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December to spare humanity from what he calls impending "catastrophe."
By Mike Taibbi, NBC News Correspondent
Aengus Finucane, April 26, 1932 - October 6, 2009
It’s been a season of notable deaths – Cronkite, Kennedy, Swayze, Jackson, Fawcett, Hughes, Hewitt, Novak, and other so-called bold faced names. But there’s a great man who died at age 77 in a Dublin hospice last Tuesday, Oct.6 and if Americans knew this Catholic priest who loved their country as well as his Irish homeland, their hearts would be as burdened by grief as are the hearts of thousands around the world.
His name was Aengus Finucane, and for nearly 50 years he roamed the world with a single purpose: to live among and lift up "the poorest of the poor," is the descriptive he always used, so they might have at least a chance at the life and prospects seemingly denied them by war, famine or sudden disaster.
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| Courtesy of Concern Worldwide |
| Father Aengus Finucane with former President of Ireland, Dr. Mary Robinson. |
He had the full tool kit for that kind of work: a missionary’s zeal fueled at times by righteous anger and sometimes by that peculiarly Irish stubbornness; humor and the right kind of humility, as well as enormous charm and personal charisma; and a wonk’s need to know how the often arcane details of assistance programs could be manipulated to serve very simple human needs – food, water, health services, shelter. As a young man he looked like a movie star yet moved naturally among desperate populations who seemed to quickly see him as someone who understood their lives and challenges and who could find the best route to the nearest solution.
CONTINUED >>
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
KABUL, Afghanistan – I hadn’t planned on writing about kites in Afghanistan; the subject just seemed too obvious after the runaway success of the novel, "The Kite Runner." But then a Western acquaintance who’d just moved to Kabul told me about an afternoon he spent shopping for colorful kites to decorate the walls of his new home, and it sounded like something I just had to do.
I’m no kite-flyer, but having lived through a couple of summers in Beijing, I’ve seen the Chinese-made stuff – brilliant, elaborate and intricate – and have grown to appreciate their design. So off I went to the Jadeh Maywand neighborhood in central Kabul, where kite shops line the sidewalks – dragging along my Afghan colleague, Iqbal Sapand.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| A boy shops for new kite parts in Kabul. |
We had been tasked by our bureau chief, Sohel Uddin, to "buy the biggest kite possible." For weeks now, we’d see from our bureau rooftop kites flying high above our heads almost daily at sunset. Sohel was determined to try his hand.
Faced with a row of narrow, open-faced shop fronts crammed with string, spools, and of course kites, we poked our heads into one owned by Zalgai. The poker-faced 45-year-old, who goes by just one name, had caught our eye simply because he happened to be leaning on his counter. He welcomed us into his shop, beckoning to the raised carpeted area behind his counter, and Iqbal promptly sat down. On cue, a glass of simmering tea followed.
Zalgai’s family has owned this shop for 38 years (even through the Taliban years, when kite flying was banned and their business was forced underground). And like his grandfather and father, Zalgai was trained as a kite-maker. But five years ago he stopped producing kites to focus on selling them.
"I can make a lot more money this way," he said. Making kites takes too much time, he added, all that fussing with delicate paper and the bamboo frame. Moreover, the kites he carries in his shop bring him a brisk enough business.
CONTINUED >>
By NBC News' Bo Gu
BEIJIJNG – One week after China celebrated 60 years of communist rule, several hundred representatives from more than 100 overseas media groups and 40 Chinese media are gathering in Beijing for the World Media Summit to discuss major shifts and challenges in the news industry.
The summit, which opened Friday, is sponsored by nine media giants including The Associated Press, Reuters and BBC, and hosted by Xinhua, China’s official press agency. Its theme is "Cooperation, Action, Win-Win and Development."
Participants included News Corp. Chairman & CEO Rupert Murdoch, AP President & CEO Thomas Curley, Reuters News Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger, BBC Director-General Mark Thompson, Special Consultant to NBC News Jeff Gralnick, and NBC Foreign News Director Chris Hampson. (MSNBC.com is a joint venture of NBC Universal and Microsoft Corp.)
The gathering of media industry bigshots is another notch in China’s ambitious plan of displaying its soft power on world stage – not only with a speedy economic growth and colossal military might but also with a prodigious media empire that can compete with other international press giants.
Underscoring the importance of the event, Chinese President Hu Jintao attended the opening session.
Apparently addressing the issue of perceived unfair coverage of China by Western journalists, Hu appealed to the world's media to "uphold social responsibilities … objectively report the reality of the multi-polarity of the world, economic globalization and diverse civilizations."
For some, the summit offered a platform to urge China to further push media reforms."The policy then was called ‘the Open Door,’" said Murdoch. "China now has a chance to open its digital door."
CONTINUED >>
NBC News correspondents and producers around the world share some of the local reactions they heard to news that President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
KABUL, Afghanistan – News that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize came as a surprise to people we spoke to in Kabul.
At the Kabul Fried Chicken restaurant in the Shar-e Naw neighborhood, Obaid Alam congratulated us at first. "You are from America, yes? I should congratulate you," he smiled at first.
But when we asked whether he thought the U.S. president deserved the prize, he replied, "He just became the president. Things are just the same as the way they were by the administration of Mr. [George W.] Bush. Things are not better, things are worse and worse."
In fact, Alam said, as far as Afghanistan is concerned, "The number of U.S. Army [troops] has increased here. The number of terrorist attacks increased here. I’m kind of confused whether that Nobel Award [is] for all those things."
Similarly, another customer at the restaurant, who did not offer his name, said no one had seen any results yet from Obama’s efforts to bring peace to the world. "Since he is the president just for the last eight months, I think that’s too early."
These sentiments were echoed everywhere in local Afghan media, although there were extreme versions as well. On the one hand, President Hamid Karzai offered his congratulations. On the other, a Taliban spokesman condemned the award, saying Obama’s strategy has been to increase the number of U.S. troops on Afghan soil, which has increased violence and lead to the deaths of more civilians.
Palestinians and Israelis: Prize ‘for what?’
By Lawahez Jabari, NBC News Producer
JERUSALEM – The news that President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize was announced while his Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, was in the midst of meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
Despite the high level meetings on Mitchell’s agenda, both the Palestinians and Israelis have low expectations for any breakthroughs to come from this round of talks. Israel has refused to freeze the construction of settlements – and Palestinian leaders won’t meet with the Israelis until there is a freeze. So the peace process remains at an impasse.
Even Israel's powerful Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman declared Thursday that there is no chance of reaching a final accord with the Palestinians anytime in the near future.
So, in spite of the fact that Obama made the Middle East conflict a top priority upon entering the White House, there are no accomplishments that he can point to as signs of progress in the peace process. It is a goal that remains remote.
Still, both Israeli and Palestinian officials welcomed the news and offered congratulations.
But, in the street, the reaction was much different. The news that Obama won the peace prize was met with surprise. It was a shock for both sides and the major question is: "For what?"
Shlomit Tamir, a young mother from Tel Aviv who works in TV production, was shocked. "Peace prize? Obama? He didn't do anything yet. He has a nice wife, makes nice speeches and everything is very nice, but he didn't do anything yet. He just talks all the time. Am I right?"
In Ramallah people felt the choice of Obama did not represent any achievement. One woman said he was rewarded only because he was a symbol and not for accomplishing anything, because he's done nothing so far.
"He's the president and just a president," said Kuds, a student from Ramallah, who only gave his first name. "Yes he's a black president, which is great, but you don't accomplish something by the color of your skin. So no, he didn't deserve it."
Even Obama acknowledged in his statement today that he didn't feel he deserved the prize. So people here are now asking: "Why didn’t he refuse it?"
Chinese netizens ask: ‘Is today April Fool’s Day?’
By Bo Gu, NBC News Producer
BEIJING – A few hours after the news came out that American President Barack Obama won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the online forum of China’s biggest Internet portal, SINA.com had over 10,000 comments on the subject, mostly sarcastic and suspicious, some even furious.
"Since when has Sweden learned to kiss America’s a$$?" one angry comment said. It was followed by another one, "Isn’t it ironic that the leader of a hegemony country wins Nobel Peace Prize?"
Very few people applauded the president’s honor on the comment thread. After any comments that say something like, "I think Obama deserves the prize," the comment was immediately followed by angry replies. Comments like, "Yeah the whole country and Iraq and Afghanistan are laughing at you!" Or "Why don’t they just give it to Adolf Hitler?" Quite a few Chinese netizens raised the same question: "Is today April Fool’s Day?"
Before the announcement some Chinese were expecting that Hu Jia, an AIDS and human rights activist, who was put in jail under the charge of "subversion of state power and the socialist system" would win the prize. But just as last year, they are disappointed again.
The page on Chinese citizens winning the Nobel Peace Prize still remains blank, ironically, with the notable exception of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader, who won the Peace Prize exactly 20 years ago.
CONTINUED >>
By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer
NAIROBI, Kenya – Anena Hansen, a 32-year-old writer from New Hampshire, first came to Kenya last year for what was supposed to be a two-week volunteering stint just outside Nairobi. But she found the work she was doing with HIV-positive women so rewarding – she stayed.
"I didn’t have to have great medical skills, and I didn’t have to throw money at the situation," Hansen said. But she found that "just by being there and caring about them and interacting with them, these women who were very marginalized and shunned in this culture were feeling better because of the emotional psychological support."
She was hooked and found a job working with Africa Mission Services, an organization dedicated to community development among the Maasai tribe in South-West Kenya.
Africa Mission Services focuses on building infrastructure sorely lacking among the Maasai. A medical clinic built by the non-governmental organization has treated over 3,000 patients this year, and more than 1,000 students attend their two elementary schools.
Hansen is working on raising the funds (most funding comes from private donations) to build a secondary school and maternity ward for the clinic, while traveling to the Maasai community to implement an HIV prevention and treatment program.
VIDEO: Two-week vacation turns into mission of hope
But Hansen also wanted to do more for the women she worked with when she first came to Kenya. So she moved to Mlolongo, a truck-stop town on Nairobi’s outskirts which one resident described as a "center of prostitution for the whole of East Africa."
In the age of social-networking, it’s interesting how I found Hansen. I usually work out of NBC’s Moscow bureau, but got a last-minute assignment to help cover U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Nairobi. I decided to try to extend my trip by a few days and checked couchsurfing.org, a Web site that connects travelers who want to meet or stay with locals when they travel.
The idea is clearly an amazing tool for budget travelers, but as a journalist, I find it to be an invaluable way to meet people on the ground and get a more varied picture of a place than I might otherwise get in the State Department bubble.
Hansen’s profile mentioned the volunteer work she is involved in, so the day after Clinton and all the other foreign journalists left, I found myself in a car, navigating unfinished highways and waist-high potholes to go and see it firsthand.
CONTINUED >>
By Amna Nawaz, NBC News Producer
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – I came to Pakistan for the olives. I am on a fellowship from the International Reporting Project, and I am working on a story about an agricultural development project launching an olive oil business here.
Pakistan is not in a region normally associated with olives. The Mediterranean Basin comes to mind, as do parts of North Africa and the Middle East.
But olives, as I’ve learned, are a sturdy fruit. There are hundreds of possible cultivars that can grow in dozens of different climates. A little less rain won’t hurt them. A little extra fertilizer won’t ruin an entire crop. There is room for error and less-than-expert knowledge to manage an orchard.
Evidence suggests the olive tree was being cultivated as early as 2500 B.C. in parts of the Mediterranean. So this is a tree that knows how to stick around.
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| Amna Nawaz / NBC News |
| Boxes of olives from a recent harvest in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan sit on a table as personnel discuss the future of the olive project. Since the region is too unsafe for develpoment workers to visit the orchards, the fruit had to be brought to the meeting in Islamabad. |
In the far corners of Pakistan, this is something many people already knew. Wild olive trees have grown for centuries in some of the country’s hardest-to-reach spots.
A recently conducted national survey found the most olive-friendly conditions right along the Northwest Frontier Province and Baluchistan, two of the country’s most troubled regions.
In an effort to try to develop a Pakistan olive industry, a project was started by international investors and a Pakistan agricultural development agency – the Pakistan Oil Seed Development Board. And hope for a new indigenous industry with enormous potential for Pakistan’s economy was ignited.
For the last few weeks, I have been traveling to project sites, speaking with the dedicated agency personnel spearheading the work, as well as community farmers who are taking part in the project. There is cautious excitement at the early signs of success.
There are actually millions of wild olive trees in Pakistan, but they don’t produce the ideal olives for consumption. So farmers are using grafting techniques to create new seedlings using parts of the old trees. Much of the work is still done by hand – from planting, to picking the olives, to pressing them. Once the scale of the project grows, the work is expected to become more mechanized.
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By Stokes Young, msnbc.com Director of Multimedia
I've never been to Afghanistan – only looked at countless photographs and screened hours of video reports on the U.S.-led conflict there since 2001.
But over the past week, I dug into NBC News archival coverage of Afghanistan as we prepare for the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of the war-torn country on Oct. 7 and ahead of the launch of Richard Engel's documentary 'Tip of the Spear' on Sunday.
As I watched 50 years worth of highlights of NBC News coverage of the country, one feeling jumped out at me again and again in the pre-2001 segments: doesn't this look familiar? The texture and atmospherics of video coverage, the suffering of Afghans and statements like Tom Brokaw's "the Afghans have a fighting tradition," at the end of the Soviet occupation in 1989, struck me as being eerily reminiscent of reporting we often see today.
Obviously, the conflicts are not exact parallels. Afghanistan did not provoke the Russian invasion by hosting terrorists who attacked Moscow and our volunteer troops certainly aren't Soviet conscripts. But many of the complexities of a foreign army fighting a war in Afghanistan persist.
Here are just some of the reports over the years that stood out to me. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
1959: Chet Huntley reported on the state of Afghanistan in advance of a trip by President Dwight Eisenhower. Afghan culture at the individual level stands out in his narration: "The average Afghan's loyalty starts with his family and extends to his tribe...sometimes, he does what the national goverment tells him to."
1980: One thing that has definitely changed since 1980: the mujahideen fighting foreign forces are far better armed. Kalashnikovs and RPGs have replaced the colonial-era British rifles so prone to fail against Soviet troops.
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By Lee Cowan, NBC News correspondent
APIA, Samoa – Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of "Treasure Island" called the Samoan Islands home. He died here, at only 44 and was later buried on a hilltop overlooking the Pacific. But as gifted a writer as he was, even he might be at a loss for words to describe his beloved Samoa now.
Once called Western Samoa, it is a dot in the South Pacific, barely the size of Rhode Island; a paradise rich in ancient tradition, natural beauty and peace and quiet.
Most of the island escaped last week’s tsunami, and life goes on almost without a care. Tourists are arriving, music is playing, and rum is flowing.
But along Samoa’s southern coast, once home to some of the most beautiful beaches in this hemisphere, the massive wave struck, creating an unimaginable scar several miles long.
The villages along the pristine coastline never stood a chance. The tsunami itself was described to me as a giant wall of black moving at some 30 miles an hour – which brought with it a sound, as terrible as its countenance.
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
PADANG, Indonesia – When I asked Peter, a young student, what it was like to live on just about the most active part of the most active fault line on the planet, the 20-year-old just smiled and shrugged.
"I can handle the quakes," he quipped as we gave him a ride through battered Padang. "It’s not a big deal. But I don't like tsunamis."
Wulan, who goes by just one name, took things in stride, too.
She was something of a quake connoisseur. She rolled her hand back and forth, then bounced it up and down to illustrate some of the earth tremors she'd experienced.
"But this one was different," she said of
Wednesday's 7.6 magnitude quake that rocked western Indonesia. "It was the worst I've ever seen," she said as her family sifted through the wreckage of their wooden house.
Sometimes it seems like Indonesia is natural disaster central. There are more active volcanoes here than anywhere else and floods are an annual event.
Recently, on the neighboring island of Java, they had a mud flow when a mining company breached a volcanic aquifer, sending steaming sludge to the surface. They can't stop the volcano from erupting, and several villages around Surabaya have disappeared under the mud.
The official death toll from this week's quake is now more than 700, and this is certain to rise – the health ministry says as many as 3,000 may still be buried in the rubble.
But natural disasters are viewed as a part of life.
I've always found Indonesia an incredibly good natured place. Maybe it’s something about living with such volatile and threatening geology, which many Indonesians imbue with mystical properties.
Perhaps that's why they can take disasters almost in their stride.
That does nothing to diminish the horrors of the past two days, but as Wulan said as we left her battered home, "What can you do?"
By NBC News' Ed Flanagan
BEIJING – A veil of secrecy and intense – some would say comically extreme – protective measures defined the lead-up to today's 60th anniversary celebrations in China.
The massive military parade on Thursday was the manifestation of months of highly choreographed, tightly managed planning – the calling card of mass events in modern China.
For the 12 million inhabitants of the capital, the massive security and traffic restrictions caused widespread inconveniences. But many brushed off the temporary annoyances.
"We should accept temporary difficulties," said Cao Jian, a Chinese cook whose restaurant had to shut down temporarily due to the celebrations. "When we see this rare display of modern weapons, we Chinese feel a sense of security, a sense of pride," he added.
The centerpiece of the parade was a display of China's military arsenal, although it seemed almost absurd that such a heavy police presence was required to guard the new, highly advanced war-fighting might of China's armed forces.
However, many military observers who were leaning in a little closer to their TVs in expectation of seeing as many as 52 new Chinese weapons systems were disappointed to find none of the new arsenal on display.
Yet, from the media position in front of the Forbidden City, the procession of modern weaponry achieved its intended effect. Throughout the day there were subdued awes and nods of respect from the assembled media and distinguished guests as we witnessed a mass display, which could only be described as awe-inspiring.
The roar of massive diesel engines from scores of brand new tanks, missile batteries and amphibious fighting vehicles provided a unique accompaniment to the soundtrack of the day, a selection of martial and nationalist musical scores that blasted throughout Tiananmen Square and the areas around it.
Equally impressive was the cadence of thousands of boots marching in step as perfectly dressed ranks of soldiers from every military branch goose-stepped past dignitaries and then cheered in perfect unison, "HELLO SENIOR LEADER!" to President Hu Jintao and later, "SERVE THE PEOPLE!" in response to Hu’s salutations.
Meantime, an armada of more than 150 helo and fixed-wing aircraft soared overhead. The first wave of fighter jets trailing colored streaks of smoke through the city were met with wild applause and cheers from the distinguished guests near us.
And the hundreds of schoolchildren sitting across from us in Tiananmen Square nearly lost their perfect discipline as they broke into cheers as well. (Not leaving any detail to chance, the schoolchildren’s colorful headdresses, from above, spelt out, "Guo Qing" or national holiday.)
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