LONDON – For decades, speculating on who will top the music charts on Christmas Day has been as much a part of the holiday build-up for many Brits as decorating the tree or wondering if there will be a white Christmas. 

There's endless discussion in the media, bookmakers offer bets on the outcome and people gather around the office water cooler discussing what song they think will win the  much-coveted number one prize. 

However in recent years, the game has been somewhat spoiled. For the past five years, the song released by the winner of the popular British talent show the "X-Factor," a TV show as popular as "American Idol" in the U.S., has topped the chart.

With guaranteed TV exposure and the guiding hand of the show's omnipotent host Simon Cowell, the ballad (it's always a ballad) sung by a pretty face, inevitably outsells all its rivals.

This year it seemed no different as Joe McElderry, an angelic-looking 18-year-old with a toothy smile who has been favorably compared to the American actor Zac Efron, released his song, "The Climb." It's the kind of soaring ballad that could provide the soundtrack for many a Disney film.

Music fans however said enough was enough and launched an Internet campaign to end The "X-Factor" and Cowell's dominance over the Christmas charts. 

The plan cooked up was to get the expletive-ridden song, "Killing in the Name," by the American band Rage Against the Machine, to the top spot.

A tall order, especially since the song was originally released in 1993 and had only reached number 25 at that time. But, the band willingly supported the idea and was ready for the challenge. 

Given the band's name, it should come as no surprise that they are not strangers to acts of iconoclasm. The band has had a long tradition of political activism – playing protest concerts outside both the 2000 Democratic National Convention and the 2008 Republican National Convention.

The band also caused a ruckus when it tried to force its way into the New York Stock Exchange while shooting a music video with Michael Moore in 2000. And the members got kicked off the set of Saturday Night Live for trying to hang the American flag upside down during an appearance on the show when Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes was  hosting the program 1996.
 
For his part, Cowell was clearly irked by the campaign and described it as "stupid" and "a cynical campaign geared at me."

Still, on Sunday, an estimated 5 million listened tensely to Radio 1, a national pop station, to hear which song topped the music charts. And the winner was … "Killing in the Name!" 

The song had sold 500,000 copies, all via downloads, and 50,000 more than "The Climb."

Band leader Tom Morello described the victory as an "anarchy Christmas miracle." While Jon Morter, who had led the Internet campaign to end the X-factor monopoly, said, "We've given the Christmas Number One back to everyone else." 

Rage Against the Machine plans to play a free gig in the U.K. next year to thank their fans.

Meantime, McElderry said he was "disappointed" by the loss. Nevertheless, the screams of his adoring teenage fan base should surely help ease the pain.

HAVANA – No record store here has ever sold their music, and before Sunday, no one in the country had ever seen the band live. Yet for decades Cubans have loved Kool and the Gang, seemingly unconditionally.

Cuba filmmaker Gloria Rolando said the band's funky sound provided the soundtrack for her generation's coming of age in the late 1960s and 1970s. And even though there was a brief period in the 1960s when the communist government outright banned American music and frowned on it during the subsequent decade when it was rarely heard on government airwaves, Rolando remembers K&G's music "playing everywhere."

"It was a period of time that we didn't listen openly, in public, but the people never stopped listening to good American music. There were always underground ways."  

VIDEO: Kool and the Gang celebrate good times in Cuba

She recalls exercising at home to K&G and dancing to the music at teen parties. "The music made you happy when you were down, told you to celebrate life," Rolando said.

Sunday afternoon, Kool and the Gang played in an open-air concert to a crowd of 100,000 jamming Havana's iconic seawall drive, proving to fans like Teresa Contreras that good things come to those who wait.

Decades ago, then-16 year old Contreras started a Kool and the Gang fan club. Over the years she's done more than hold the club together. Today, her club has 148 members – one requirement is that you have to be at least 35 years old to join. 

"Just imagine how much we love them. We meet on the last Saturday of every month at my house to dance to their music," said Contreras.

Many of the fans at Sunday's one-time concert were like Contreras – middle-aged with their children and even grandchildren in tow. Spectators not only packed the plaza and public roads; they danced and gyrated on nearby balconies and rooftops.

High-school reunion
Some fans transformed the concert into a high-school reunion.

Repairman Frank Gonzalez and his buddies opted for an all-guy's outing, leaving the wives and kids at home. Waving a couple of hand-made signs that read "Kool – Finally Ur Here," the friends spent two hours singing along with the music. One fellow even drove 18 hours to be there.

Band leader Robert "Kool" Bell dedicated the concert to the "fraternity and unity" of the people of Cuba and the United States, emphasizing that the band did not come as politicians but as musicians. The inspiration for this visit, he said, was his father, who visited Cuba in the 1950s as a boxer and admired the island's music.

The admiration flows the other way too, said American musician Pablo Menendez, who made Cuba his home after attending one of the island's prestigious music academies.

"Ordinary Cubans know that the U.S. government restricts Americans from traveling here, so people from the U.S. are given more of a welcome 'cause they're seen as people who have to jump through hoops to get here," Menendez said.

CAIRO – Once upon a time, Mohamed ElBaradei was Egypt's favorite son. He was extolled in the media as his achievements mounted.

The nation looked on proudly as he was elected three times to the post of director general of the powerful International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), admired his courage when he publicly disputed the U.S. rationale behind the invasion of Iraq, and applauded his success as a national victory when he and the IAEA won the Nobel Peace Prize for striving to prevent the spread of nuclear energy for military use. In recognition, he was awarded the highest accolade in Egypt, the Nile Medal.

Caren Firouz / Reuters file

Mohamed ElBaradei speaks during an agency press conference in Tehran on Oct. 4, 2009.Â

But once he stepped down from the IAEA and stated publicly he would be willing to run for president in Egypt's 2011 election, a position held by President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak for the past 28 years, his most vocal supporters began a campaign of vilification. 

In a November press statement, ElBaradei, 67, threw down the gauntlet. He said he would respond to the calls coming from a segment of the Egyptian public who "wish to usher Egypt into a new era of reform and comprehensive change based on true democracy and social justice." He said he would run for president, but only if the government would guarantee free and fair elections monitored by the judiciary and international observers and if they would change the constitution to open the presidential race to all Egyptians, not just party members. 

The pro-government Egyptian newspapers immediately went into overdrive in an effort to tarnish ElBaradei's once sterling image. Leading the charge was the Al Ahram newspaper, which had once called him "an icon for the modern era" after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. 

The editor-in-chief of Al Ahram, Osama Saraya, described ElBaradei as a foreigner and a U.S. lackey. "ElBaradei's remarks were tantamount to a constitutional coup and opened a door for George W. Bush's policy of constructive chaos into Egypt," wrote Saraya.  He called the former head of the IAEA "ill-informed and an American stooge" and claimed ElBaradei holds dual citizenship.  "A presidential candidate must be fully Egyptian and not, like ElBaradei, hold a Swedish passport." 

Saraya also invoked the politics of fear by writing, "ElBaradei's remarks open the door for Islamist fundamentalists to have access to power and this in turn opens the gates of hell in Egypt." He was presumably referring to the fact that the largest opposition party in Egypt, the religious Muslim Brotherhood, is banned from elections and its candidates have to run as independents. Other semi-state sponsored newspapers followed suit with their own attacks and one even ran a cartoon portraying him as "Uncle Sam."

But the media frenzy caused a backlash. Editors had underestimated ElBaradei's credibility and widespread popularity. A Facebook group dedicated to his election has attracted over 24,000 members, many of whom have professed their support for his candidacy on the site.

"ElBaradei showed that his love for his country and his commitment to his principles were greater than any personal consideration or interests…The moral integrity puts ElBaradei above many men in Egypt who would never dare to oppose President Mubarak or anyone from his family," enthused one Facebook fan. "We want to show him that his inspiring message has reached us and, that we love and respect him and that with him we will do our utmost to bring about a renaissance in Egypt," the supporter added. "Democracy is the solution."

Opposition parties rushed to support ElBaradei as Egypt's first credible and unimpeachable candidate powerful enough to run against Mubarak, and some have invited him to join their ranks, an offer he has declined in favor of running as an independent. 

After the semi-state run media launched their campaign of attacks, the opposition press focused on the 180-degree shift in views. In the Wafd newspaper, journalist Magdy Salam wrote an article titled "ElBaradei has Unveiled the Schizophrenia of Government Newspapers" comparing previous generous praise to the current vilification of the Nobel Prize winner.  "I have said that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are ruling the government newspapers," he concluded.

Even some Mubarak supporters were disappointed by the personal attacks on ElBaradei. Maged Helmy, a security firm employee and his 22-year-old son Ahmed, trust Mubarak's economic policies and will vote for him in 2011, but they resent the press campaign.

"The press attacked ElBaradei because he wants to run for president. It's a crime in Egypt. I don't like to attack someone because he wants to run for president. It is not a crime. It is democracy," said Ahmed. His father agreed. "The press campaign is not right. They must say he is very good and famous man and a genius. We must not attack him. It is wrong."

Taking a different tack
The pro-government press appears to have taken note of public disapproval. Now the official media suggest that ElBaradei's demands for democratic reforms do not make him an agent of change but rather, a source of instability who is cynically manipulating Egyptian law for his own gains. 

"If we are to take ElBaradei seriously, we must also ask him to take Egyptians seriously and not ask them to dismantle our existing constitution and institutions so as to tailor new conditions to permit his nomination for the presidency, without him taking part in the necessary reform process," Abdul Muneim, the CEO of Al Ahram newspaper wrote in the newspaper's week English language edition.

Muneim also took issue with the idea that ElBaradei was some sort of hero coming into save Egypt writing, "This is not the Egyptian way. Egypt is not a damsel pining for her knight to race home from Vienna on his white charger. Nor is it the type of country where change is made by the stroke of a pen or at the behest of a single individual, even if that individual is a Nobel Prize laureate." 

Rania Al Malky, chief editor of the independent Daily News, a Cairo-based English language newspaper, commented on how the mainstream media has changed course. "Now the 'Constitutional Coup' is in the headlines. They are spinning what [ElBaradei] said in a way that is negative. They try to take one word and use it against him in a way to make it look like he is destabilizing the country, [that he is] a western imperialist agent." 

Still, at the end of the day, most Egyptians believe the current regime and its restrictive election laws will dash the hopes of an ElBaradei candidacy. 

"I think this whole thing will never happen.  He has no chance of running considering constitutional changes in March. He cannot secure the 250 endorsements needed to run," said Al Malky, referring to Article 76 of the Egyptian constitution which sets out the conditions which candidates must meet in order to run. As a result of the 2007 amendment, candidates must secure 250 signatures from two legislative houses, both of which are controlled by the ruling party.

Aly Ibrahim, a Cairo plumber, insisted that he won't bother voting in the next election. He insisted that even if ElBaradei does run, election rigging would prevent his victory.

"He won't win. Those who are on the seat will only leave when they are dead, like in all the Arab countries," said Ibrahim. He added that the hallmarks of election abuse in past elections will likely occur again. "The president gets 98 or 99 percent of the vote. The results are known beforehand. The ones they want to win will win. In Egypt, the dead vote," he laughed, alluding to a practice of registering deceased voters.

TEL AVIV – You read about African refugees all the time in newspaper headlines: students jailed in Eritrea, maimed in Somalia, beaten in Sudan, but who pays attention? It's so far away.

They pop up again in news reports along the route – rotting for years in refugee camps from which they finally escape, seeking work in Egypt where they are attacked, crossing the Sinai desert where Bedouin abuse the men and rape the girls. Some die at the very last moment, shot dead by Egyptian soldiers on Israel's border. And finally the young survivors reach their last hope for refuge, the end of the line: the Holy Land.

Israel would throw them out, if it could. But thanks to the law and social pressure, around 20,000 Africans, mostly young men aged between 20 and 30, get a last chance when they arrive here.

And slowly life is improving for them. They've moved on from a 150 jammed into one large room in south Tel Aviv to 10 in a small room, living off charity and odd jobs. Individuals help them and aid groups try to provide legal advice and teach them English, Hebrew and math.

Now six of them are back in the news, and this time they do get my attention. Zumharat, Ephraim and Yakilu from Eritrea, Muhalidin and Adam from Sudan, Daher from Somalia, were recently profiled in a story for Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper and could be seen forcing a smile for a photographer. Somehow they are putting themselves through college at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, a private Israeli university. 

Zumharat got his chance while cleaning table at IDC's cafeteria. "A business lecturer sat down for coffee," he said, "and asked me why I was working instead of studying." That brief encounter with a sympathetic man made Zumharat take stock: why indeed?

He registered to study communications. The school pays half his tuition, and he works 12 hours a day to pay the rest, as well as rent, food and transport. It was the same for all of the students – evenings and nights cleaning houses, sweeping floors, washing dishes and days studying. I thought to myself, it's all I can do to get my son to tidy his bedroom.

"We hate being dependent on other people," Ephraim said. "We came here because of genocide, or political instability, or to escape a totalitarian regime. We didn't come here in search of a better life, but to preserve life itself."

Today two of them are helped by Israelis who have pooled resources to pay their tuition. But otherwise, the rest of the group are on their own: survivors thirsting for education and a future, yearning for home, making the best of a lousy lot.

Each dreams of finding the scattered remnants of their families; each wants to return home as proud graduates and help rebuild his shattered nation.

Their horizon is limited to three months though, which is the length of their renewable visas. Israel, afraid that thousands more refugees will arrive, doesn't want to encourage them.

But Israel shouldn't worry, promises Muhalidin, we don't want to stay: "Every one of us dreams of returning home," he said, smiling wanly. "Advanced education is one of the best things Israel can do for us. An education will give us the promise of a better future, it will give us hope."

They're only six out of thousands. Their stories may inspire other refugees to try to go to school. Israel is still deciding whether to let them stay or not, but while they are here has decided to treat them decently.

And inadequate as it may seem, the little that Israel is doing for these young North Africans is much more than the North African countries through which they passed: they didn't help at all.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Doctors, nurses, family members and an NBC cameraman fanned out across the hospital in an all-out search for Aden. But the 6-year-old managed to evade us as she flitted from patient to nursing station, the hospital staff shouting out her location in the hospital atrium: "She was just here, but I think she's gone to visit pre-op!" 

Aden Eshetu had made lots of friends during her two-week hospital stay and seemed bent on seeing each and every one before her check-up. Suddenly she appeared in the corridor, strolling hand-in-hand with a nurse, an exuberant smile on her round face. She greeted her doctor with a big kiss on the cheek before hopping onto the examining table. 

Incredibly, Aden had not always been so full of vigor.

VIDEO: Medical surpluses save lives worlds away

"Before the treatment she couldn't run properly," explained her mother, Namestsigye Bire. "She couldn't play with her friends. But now she is OK. She can play as long as she wants."

"If she had not been treated at this hospital she would have suffered more and died," said Bire, her eyes filling with tears.

Bire proudly recounted how Aden was finally able to attend school, and won the top academic award in her kindergarten despite a late start. Aden happily told me she no longer sits on the sidelines of life. "I used to watch my friends while they were playing their games, but now I can join them."

Aden suffered from a congenital heart defect. She is just one of an estimated 50,000 Ethiopian children who suffer from a similar condition. In addition, every year about 10,000 children contract rheumatic heart disease from untreated strep throat infections, an illness impoverished Ethiopian children are especially vulnerable to, according to medical experts.

With a population of about 85 million, the number of young people in Ethiopia is particularly high. The median age for the entire population is 16.9 years, and 46 percent of the population is under the age of 15, according to the CIA World Factbook. Many children are struck by a variety of illnesses and don't make it to adulthood.  

Mohamed Muslemany / NBC News

Aden Eshetu and her mother, Namestsigye Bire, healthy and happy after her successful heart surgery.

Aden received a rare second chance. Her heart was repaired in a free, life-saving procedure at a new state-of-the-art heart clinic, the Children's Heart Fund of Ethiopia. "She would have died if she wasn't treated and I could not afford to get her treated outside of the country," said her mother, who works as a cleaner. 

One man's mission
It took a global village to save Aden's life and to create an institution that is giving other tiny heart patients a second chance. Doctors from Texas volunteered their time to repair Aden's heart using a catheterization lab donated by Colorado-based Project C.U.R.E. in the brand-new hospital, built by Saudi benefactor Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Al Ammoudi. 

But it took just one determined man with a dream to bring them all together in one place at one time.

Dr. Belay Abegaz refused to accept that Ethiopian children with heart defects deserve less care than their counterparts in developed countries. Twenty-seven years ago, the U.S.-trained cardiologist came back to Ethiopia and began his own free clinic in two large steel shipping containers. 

For the more than 1,000 patients he was unable to treat because of lack of facilities and expertise, he sought and secured free surgery abroad. Others died despite his best efforts. 

Mohamed Muslemany / NBC News

Dr. Abdgaz in front of the catheterization machine.

"I have had nightmares for 27 years," said Abegaz. "You know you have restless nights when you have something bothering you. I wished I had [the catheterization lab]; I could have done [the surgery]. But I didn't and I see the child dying." His ultimate goal was to build a heart clinic in Addis Ababa where well-trained teams of surgeons could perform surgeries on a daily basis. 

If it sounds like a modest proposal, it is not. In Ethiopia, there are only three doctors for every 100,000 citizens, one of the lowest per capita ratios of doctors in the world.  

Most leave to seek lucrative positions abroad, while those who stay can only hope to earn an average of $166 per month at a government hospital. Nurses earn $75 per month. 

Black Lion Hospital, the largest and best general hospital in the nation, has 800 beds and a staff of 500 doctors. Each day they treat 1,000 outpatients, who wait their turn outdoors in a packed courtyard. Hospitalized patients share shabby crowded rooms and lie on rusted beds covered by thin foam pads. Medical equipment is old and decrepit.

Although the hospital looks grim, but it is a lifeline for those who come from all corners of the country to the only place where they can be treated by specialists for nominal fees.

Medical miracle – a good hospital
The Children's Heart Fund of Ethiopia is just across the road, but it could be a world away with its white polished corridors and spotless rooms, world-class operating theaters, post-op ward and two of the three catheterization labs in the country. 

Abegaz, the director and guiding spirit of the hospital, calls himself a professional beggar. He has had to beg not only to build the hospital, but to equip it to the level that heart surgeries can be safely and routinely performed. He also has had to plead for foreign doctors to come and perform those surgeries and to train Ethiopian doctors. 

VIDEO: Project C.U.R.E. redistributes medical supplies around the world

A British-based charitable organization called Chain of Hope brings in a team of surgeons for about a week every two months. Other teams from the U.S. and Europe come less often. It's not enough said Abegaz. "I am a human being and we don't get satisfied. The more you get, the more you want. I want to get more. I want to give more … We have 10,000 to 15,000 children requiring heart surgery every year."

His immediate goal is to have medical teams come every month and stay for more than 10 days, training his staff while they save lives. Chain of Hope has already sent four Ethiopian cardiologists to the U.S. and the U.K. for training. Abegaz's dream is that within five years, his patients will no longer be obliged to wait for the rare visit of a foreign surgical mission, but would instead receive timely care by capable Ethiopian heart surgeons.

Nor is Abegaz satisfied with the existing catheterization labs. One needs repair and both need to be equipped with machines that can immediately diagnose whether treatment was successful. He wants to replace the old models with the latest labs. And with more patients, there is also a greater demand for the many different expensive and imported disposable products – like the catheters themselves and medical gloves – that are needed during and after surgery. 

Mohamed Muslemany / NBC News

Dr. Abdgaz with three of his young patients, including Aden, on the right.

Abegaz now works full time as the hospital administrator, traveling the world to solicit support for all his young patients. He has created not only an oasis of cardiac care but a place of joy and hope. Young patients vie with each other to sit next to him, hold his hand, kiss his cheek. 

Despite the day's many demands – a full waiting room of young heart surgery candidates, a prominent visiting British medical team and preparations for his multi-city fundraising trip to the U.S. – Belay still finds time to play.

Aden entered his office and made a beeline for the candy drawer. He took her small outstretched hand in his and raced down the hall with her, both of them laughing. 

More information about how to help:
The Children's Heart Fund of Ethiopia 
Chain of Hope
Project C.U.R.E.

COPENHAGEN – By protest standards, the crowd wasn't that big – about 2,500 people – but it was certainly loud and diverse. 

Anarchists, anti-capitalists, socialists and environmentalists all united to protest the fact that no deal has been struck yet among the 193 nations gathered in Copenhagen on how to solve the global climate crisis. 

Paul, a man who looked to be in his 20s and declined to give his last name, came from Germany. As we tried to chat with him, a few of his fellow protesters aimed some choice words at our NBC News team, deriding us as "corporate media." 

SLIDESHOW: Protesters try to get their voice heard outside the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen

Â

Paul was helping to carry a banner that said "It's our climate, not your business." It was a popular chant along the protest route. Paul's fervent belief in the message was also why he was walking through snow and cold and rain to deliver it.

He has no faith that government or big business can find a real answer to climate change. "No, they are the problem, they make the problems, why should we trust them?" he asked.

Crowd turns violent
The march was fairly peaceful en route to the Bella Center conference hall. The marchers locked arms hoping to keep the police out of their protest. But here in Denmark, police can detain anyone they even suspect of causing trouble. 

What the marchers didn't seem to realize was that in their midst were some undercover officers. Just blocks from the Bella Center, with amazing swiftness, we saw undercover officers grab one male protester by his shoulders and waistband, pick him up and run him full speed into a waiting police van.

VIDEO: Climate e-mails standoff rumbles on

By the time the marchers reached the Bella Center, police had reinforced the barriers with vans to prevent the crowd from making its way to the first security checkpoint. The crowd milled about, but soon got restless. Urged by one of the protest leaders using a megaphone from a flatbed truck, the crowd tried to push its way in. But the police held their ground and blocked their way.

However, within minutes, the situation was out of control. Police used pepper spray to subdue the angry crowd. To divide protesters, the police threw bikes to block their paths. (After years of reporting, I have to admit that's the first time I've ever seen that). 

Some of the demonstrators were forcibly removed from the scene, including Matt Hammer, who had come from Canada to protest.

"The police line kept moving forward and as they kept pushing forward, people kept getting moved around," said Hammer. "I don't know what was happening. I was just standing there. I didn't push back, I did not touch any of the police."

The pushing and shoving went on for what seemed like a half hour. Police arrested the leaders on the flatbed truck and removed the vehicle. In total, police said at least 260 protesters were detained.

Eventually things calmed down and the protesters and police just stood there waiting for the other to make a move. Finally, the protesters dispersed, their message delivered.

CAIRO, Egypt – Dr. Mamdouh Hamza stood on a salty, barren stretch of caked sand and pointed to a clutch of rich green date palms a few hundred yards away. "What you're looking at over there – that gives life to people." Then he pointed down, towards his muddied shoes. "And this is land which gives death to people. That's the difference – life and death."

For this 50-something environmental engineer, what is happening to his beloved Nile Delta is nothing less than lethal. The funnel-shaped ancient land of the delta, the most fertile area in the Middle East, is Hamza's birthplace, and home to some 60 million Egyptians.

But the delta is under attack from the Mediterranean Sea, which has risen one foot in about 70 years – some scientists believe as a result of global warming. The rising water has already crept into aquifers and lapped across fields of crops, turning them into marshland.

VIDEO: Could climate change spark conflict?

"It's terrifying," said farmer Mohamed Helawany as he pruned his few surviving guava plants. "We've built barriers with wood and reeds, but the water keeps coming on the plants and kills them."

Some scientists predict that, based on current data, the sea will rise another three feet in about 30 years. Hamza translated that projection into flesh-and-blood reality. "It will mean losing at least a quarter, perhaps 40 percent of our delta. It's not only agriculture, it's roads, it's railways, hospitals, schools, banks, government buildings – it will be an economic disaster."

Pentagon eyes conflicts over resources
But Hamza – and the worried delta farmers – are not the only ones who are watching the encroaching sea. So is the Pentagon.

In fact, the Nile Delta is a part of the Department of Defense's "table-topping," or war-gaming of extreme climate impacts around the world that could trigger conflict which, in turn, could require the use of U.S. forces as peace-keepers or even peace-enforcers.

For the past several years, Pentagon security analysts have looked anew at climate change, as if they were facing a potential enemy army or naval fleet. Global warming is now shaping their future military missions and nowhere more so than in places like Egypt, which is so dependent on its unique resource – fresh water.

Former CentCom Commander and retired U.S. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who co-wrote a groundbreaking report on the link between global warming and conflict in 2007, said that Egypt is on his list of "top ten" global climate hotspots.

"The Nile is Egypt and Egypt is the Nile. Historically, for millennia, they have defined their national interests around that, they've even said it would be a 'causus beli,' a reason for war, if the upstream resources were somehow controlled, dammed, polluted or whatever," said Zinni.

But that is exactly what is happening. Even as the Nile Delta is covered in rising seas, the Nile itself is 'shrinking' – with thirsty upstream neighbors like Ethiopia damming the Nile, in four places at last count, to improve its own water supply.

Meanwhile, Sudan is selling some 30 million acres of commercial land to China, which will require, according to Hamza, at least 180 billion cubic meters of water to irrigate, for the export of crops back to China.

Where will the water come from? Where else? "It's going to be a fight within the family, I think. But a big fight, if Ethiopia continues to dam, and Sudan continues to sell land," Zinni warned.

Hamza, swatting flies from his face and wiping tears from his eyes as he scanned the wasteland of rotting stumps that was a luscious date palm oasis, had no doubt that the next war in the Middle East or in Africa will be fought over water.

"We have to think that one day, the River Nile flow will drop so much that Egyptians will go hungry. In such a case we'll need not only scientists and diplomats and politicians – we'll also need a good military power."

Back at the Pentagon, Amanda Dory, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, spends her time gaming out that and many other scenarios, trying to figure out, with NATO allies and a number of other U.S. agencies, just how it will affect U.S. national security.

Dory said there is no longer any doubt that what happens to the Nile, or its delta, will have an impact on U.S. and NATO forces or materiel. "I would characterize the attitude within the Department of Defense as nothing short of a sea change in terms of our thinking about the importance of climate change," she said.

Hamza put it more simply – climate change should be looked at just like any challenge to national security, referring to the 1967 Six Day War. "Every country must protect their borders, protect their land, whether it's an invasion like when Israel took the Sinai, or like this invasion of nature into our delta."

But he lamented that, while Egypt went to war back then, and had so many casualties, the Egyptian government is doing nothing today about the flooded delta.

He says he's already proposed a relatively inexpensive $4 billion plan to save 200 miles of delta coastline with a system of reinforced berms, based entirely on current technology. "But the government doesn't answer at all. It's like a dead duck!" he said.

Hamza wouldn't even consider what might happen if nothing is done. He cut me off when I spoke of the potential for "climate refugees" in the millions. He'd rather focus on winning the "war" that resonates all the way back to the Pentagon. The war on climate change, he said, is a "good war."

"It's a good enemy because you don't really have to fight, or fire a weapon and kill people to get back your land. All you need to do is employ good brain power to protect your land without loss of life."

That may be true, some day, for the floods that are killing his precious delta. But as the former four-star Gen. Zinni might say, it may take more power than brain power to reverse the shrinking Nile River itself.

And the U.S. – a world away – is preparing for the worst-case scenario.Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London, who recently reported from Egypt on climate change and national security for the series "The perfect storm" on "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams."

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LONDON – There were times, I was told when I was a touch younger, when I could "cut the rug."

My moves on the dance-floor, if not quite spellbinding, had a certain charm verging on cool.

My forte was the jive and I'd learned the basic moves from my older brother. It was above and beyond filial duty, because it is a universal truth that the sole purpose of older brothers is to keep younger male siblings in their place: the dark.

But Terry allowed me to watch him practicing and – he will deny this – to rehearse the steps with him once or twice when my parents were out.

His twirls have left a lasting impression on me.

It is one of the mysteries of life, then, that such dexterity and skill ultimately, and invariably, leads to a phenomenon widely known as Dad Dancing. 

Sadly, you've all seen it.

Grown men who should know better hog the dance-floor at wedding receptions and indulge in cringe-worthy, awful antics that make other adults shrink away, and children wish they had eloped.

It is worse than those school pick-up moments when some spotty, gangling teenage child you have rushed to collect asks you to wait in the car because your very existence embarrasses them.

Dad Dancing is our revenge.

Explanation? Evolution
But now an academic in the U.K. has come up with another explanation. Evolution.

It seems that middle-aged wannabe "John Travolta dancing" is nature's way of warning lovely and nubile young women to look elsewhere. Who knew?

It is, according to Dr. Peter Lovatt, the psychologist behind the study, a way of sending out a message: "Stay Away. I'm not fertile." They then hurry off to look for a young man who is at his sexual peak, so they can have babies and save the species. 

Dad Dancing is, it seems, like fly spray – a repellant intended to kill off any sexual desire. 

Why you would need an academic study to tell you that I don't know. I have yet to hear of any lovely 18-year-olds who long to dally with middle-aged, balding, boring men who are several years older than their dad.

Lovatt has apparently compared the dancing styles and confidence levels of nearly 14,000 people – more even than the judges on Dancing with the Stars. (Where did he find the time?) It seems that men between 35 and their 60s typically attempt complex dance moves with limited co-ordination. Women gauge the males' testosterone levels by assessing the style and energy of their moves.

Then, according to this theory, they apparently make a dash for the nearest Boy Scout camp.

In a somewhat unflattering comparison, Lovatt explains: "It's like an apple that's going brown – you want a fresh green one instead."

A brown apple? Me?

Revenge waits…
But fellow Dad Dancers, wait! Do not throw your dancing pumps into the dumpster just yet. There is a ray of hope.

The learned doctor has found that when men reach 65, that old fancy footwork makes a comeback. Men of retirement age enjoy dancing more than ever – and regain some of their old charm verging on cool.

Unfortunately it coincides with a drop in testosterone levels and a diminishing sex drive, but you can't have everything.

No matter. Two of my kids are getting married next year; therefore I have not one, but two, wedding receptions to attend.

They say lightning never strikes twice. But the Revenge of the Dad Dancers most surely will.

I can't wait.

KABUL – By 10 a.m. this morning, the day looked bright. The sun was shining on Kabul, taking the chill out of the bones. I'd had my breakfast of cereal and tea and read through the rather routine on-line newspapers and news wires.

Convinced the rest of the day would be just as pleasantly quiet, I went to get ready for a TV shoot with a U.S. Army chaplain who gives group guitar lessons on the side – his way of boosting troop morale on base.

And then the day took a violent turn.

The sound of the explosion had that dreaded, deep thud that rocked our house and my spirits.

Dario Lopez-mills / AP

An Afghan national policeman gestures as he stands near the Heetal Hotel, not shown in the photo, after an apparent suicide car bomb was detonated in Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday.Â

To the roof
Instantly, Iqbal, our NBC News fixer in Kabul, grabbed a camera from inside the office and before I had found my fleece jacket, he was on the roof, videotaping the thick plumes of black smoke billowing in the distance.

By then, there were loud shouts and sirens wailing in the streets. The attack occurred in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, an area favored by diplomats and Western businessmen. We could see rooftops in the area brimming with the pointing and yelling of security teams attached to embassies and aid organizations based in the neighborhood. As the security teams are all too well aware, each and every house here is a potential target.

"It looks like the Tajikistan Embassy," Iqbal yelled, still taping the scene. Before I could digest that information someone else yelled up, "It looks like the house of the former mayor of Kabul."

I was not as fast as Iqbal as we ran out. I couldn't even find my flak jacket. And Mitya, our cameraman, had to run back for his helmet – that's what two weeks without violence will do to your news instincts.

By the time we arrived on the scene, the Afghan police had just cordoned off an area about 100 yards from where the bomb went off, leaving a crater – we were told – 6 feet wide and 3 feet deep. We could see the facade of a building collapsed on itself like a stack of pancakes.

Police and soldiers were running helter skelter, while some civilians, bloodied by flying debris, and perhaps in shock, were calmly getting into vehicles and driving themselves away.

Rumor mill begins
As Mitya videotaped the whole chaotic scene, I needed, more than anything, some reliable information to put into our "on-camera" report. And that's when another kind of chaos kicked in: the Afghan rumor mill.

"The target was a VIP's house," said one young man, his face cut by flying glass from his own home. "But I don't know the VIP."

"What did you see?" I asked him.

"I saw many people running with burned hands and faces."

By now I was getting news from the wire services on my Blackberry (yes it worked even here) from my producer, Yonatan, back at the office. The reports ran the gamut. Four civilians killed. It was a suicide bomber. The vehicle did a back flip in the air and came down between a hotel used by Westerners and a house owned by the brother of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the iconic anti-Taliban leader who was assassinated by al-Qaida operatives just days before the Sept. 11 attacks. 

A spokesman for the brother was adamant that Zia Massoud, a former vice president for Hamid Karzai, was the target. The wire report quoted him: "Before, the Taliban killed Massoud. Now, they tried to kill his brother."

I asked someone in the street, "Was it the house of Zia Massoud?" They replied, "No, it's the former police chief's house."

"The former police chief?  Not the former mayor of Kabul? Or the former vice president?"

Someone else butted into the conversation. "It's the small family guesthouse of Rabbani, the former president."

The confusion was dizzying. "You don't mean Karzai's former vice president?"

It was Iqbal's turn to weigh in. "Sir, I'm hearing that the target was the Heetal Hotel, used by foreigners. And owned by the son-in-law of Rabbani, the former president.''

For the report we filmed at the scene, I opted to talk about the damaged hotel – at least we could see the hotel on camera in the background. I said something generic about the strength of the blast ripping off the front of the hotel, and Mitya pulled out from a shot of the hotel with its pancaked façade, to me on the scene. But it ends up the site wasn't the hotel. We were in fact looking at Zia Massoud's house.

I tried to redo the "standup" report, but by that time the Afghan police – now in large numbers at the scene with nothing to do – started pushing cameramen and reporters and kicking at the tripods of anyone who continued to take pictures. So we headed back to our car, and I had a couple of shaky reports with wrong information to show for the effort.

A bad day all around
The carnage – as it always is – was worse than we had thought. In the end at least eight Afghans, including four women, were killed in the suicide blast, and dozens were wounded.

But as bad as that was, the incident was dwarfed by a series of car bombings in Baghdad that killed four people and wounded as many as 15. 

And another massive blast, which killed at least 20, in central Pakistan. 

Despite all the panic and chaos and missteps, the Kabul bombing would end up being just a blip on our New York and London news desk's radar screen.

So I thought I could return to the promise of the morning – and try to catch up with our Army chaplain whose group guitar lesson was still 40 minutes from ending.

But the suicide bombing, it turned out, was not only close to embassies and expensive villas. The attack happened near the very U.S. military base which housed our guitar-playing chaplain. Now that base was in lock-down. And so was my day.

TEL AVIV – A Palestinian student who was deported from the West Bank will not be allowed to finish her studies at Bethlehem University, according to a decision made by Israel's Supreme Court last week. 

Berlanty Azzam, 22, was on track to finish her degree in business management later this month. But she was stopped on Oct. 28 at a routine Israeli checkpoint near Ramallah in the West Bank, on her way to a job interview.  

When the Israeli guard noticed Gaza City on her ID card, she was immediately arrested for being in the West Bank without permission.Within hours, according to her attorney, Yadin Elam, she was blindfolded, handcuffed, and removed to Gaza by force – without any kind of hearing or access to a lawyer before she was deported. (Her story was reported in the World Blog several weeks ago, "A Gazan student's dream hangs in the balance." ) 

Azzam admits that she did not have the required permission to study in the West Bank – something that has been increasingly difficult for Gazans to obtain since Hamas, the Palestinian militant movement, took over Gaza in 2007 and the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that students from Gaza had to obtain a permit. 

But, according to her lawyer, those permits didn't exist when she initially enrolled in Bethlehem University back in 2005. At that time, Azzam received a four-day permit to enter Israel, traveled to Bethlehem to enroll and never went back to Gaza. She also said that she repeatedly tried to get permit-application forms, without success.

Tara Todras-whitehill / AP

Berlanty Azzam, a Palestinian student talks during an interview in Gaza CIty on Nov. 12.Â

Since she was deported, Azzam has been in Gaza while Gisha, an Israeli non-profit organization, took her case to Israel's courts. She was holding out hope that Israel's High Court would decide in her favor and was very disappointed at their final decision. 

"I am very sad today, the Israelis punished me because I am from Gaza, all what I wanted is to have my university degree," she said in a phone interview.

Israel said that it had no security concerns about Azzam, but that since she was in the West Bank illegally, they had no choice but to remove her. The judges said that since she was in the West Bank without a valid student pass, it left "the court no choice but to rule that she stayed in the West Bank illegally. Her schooling is not a sufficient reason for this court to rule in favor of her return," according to Ynetnews.com.

On the telephone, Azzam kept asking "Why?" and said she had been optimistic that she would be allowed to finish her studies. She will not be allowed to appeal the decision.

"We are disappointed that Israel's High Court of Justice chose to accept the state's refusal to allow Berlanty to complete her degree, despite the fact that the state repeatedly failed to provide any real evidence for their claims," said Keren Tamir, a spokesperson for Gisha, the human rights organization that brought her case to court.

"It raises a lot of questions about the Israeli insistence on preventing Palestinian young people, against whom it makes no security claims whatsoever, from accessing higher education," added Tamir.

Meantime, Bethlehem University is looking for a way to let her Azzam finish her bachelor's degree remotely, but has made no decisions yet.

NEW DELHI, India – Stray cows are no strangers to the streets of India's capital. Cows in all different sizes and colors are a common sight across the city munching garbage, lolling about on the sidewalk and mooing as they stroll through traffic. They are generally oblivious to what's going on around them.

But city authorities have ordered that all bovines must be removed from the roads. And city employees like Chandan Singh and Parveen Kumar have taken on a new role – cowboys herding street cattle.

Singh and Kumar don't wear hats or boots, but they do have two characteristics typical of a Western cowboy – lassos and will power.

"The danger is plenty in the job," Singh said. "Sometimes the cows get really mad and charge us. Many catchers sustain injuries."

  

Singh, 38, and Kumar, 37, are on the same team with about 16 other cow catchers. Singh said he was picked for this job because he's stout. "Perfect body to wrestle with cows," he said.

But if Singh resembles John Wayne, Kumar is more like Billy Crystal's character in the movie "City Slickers."

"Sometimes I still have a strange feeling that I'm doing a bad thing," said Kumar. "My family doesn't like what I do because cows are our sacred animal. But it's my duty. I just have to."

Sacred animals
The majority of Indians are Hindus and they consider cows divine animals. In Indian mythology, cows have been accorded the status of a maternal figure and are considered to be givers of wealth and prosperity.

Sending cows to slaughterhouses is unthinkable in India and cow slaughter is banned in most states. After they stop yielding milk, cows are abandoned and allowed to die naturally. If one stray cow is found slaughtered on the road, there are bound to be communal clashes. As a result, cows are often left to walk the city streets aimlessly.

But the wandering cows often cause traffic havoc and pose a danger to drivers and pedestrians alike. After frustrated residents filed complaints to Delhi's high court, judges ordered the city to clear stray cows from the streets in 2003. But there was no easy fix and the problem persists. 

The city employs about 180 full-time cow catchers and has divided them into 12 different zones. Regular cow catchers, like Kumar and Singh, receive about $330 a month. And catchers who get hired on a temporary contract basis get paid about $77 a month. The city estimates that approximately 100,000 cows have been taken off streets so far. But thousands are still at large. 

Prakash Singh / AFP - Getty Images file

Indian Municipal Corporation of Delhi employees catch a stray cow in New Delhi.

Mission: catch cows
Singh and Kumar started off one recent morning with their team in a hydraulic green truck. They combed the city's streets and hopped off when someone spotted stray cows, or even benign-looking donkeys.

One particular catch I saw happened in a rapid commotion. The cow set off when it saw catchers rushing toward it. Ropes flew in a whirl of dust.

A catcher tried to grab the panicked bull by the horns to break its resistance. They tumultuously dragged each other along the street until the cow was quickly loaded onto the hydraulic truck.

The catch was successful, but it halted traffic, causing agitated car and motorbike drivers to honk long and hard.  

Sometimes cow catchers are accompanied by club-armed police officers to protect them from enraged drivers or religious Hindus who disapprove of violence against the bovines. 

But the cow catcher's worst enemies are unlicensed cattle owners – those who operate illegal dairies. Kumar said sometimes the unlicensed owners get into serious fights with the catchers. "It's very common. But I feel angry at them too. If they are the owners, they should domesticate the cows and take better care of them."

Kumar said his team usually drives around looking for cows until their truck is fully loaded. Typically by midday, they unload the captured cows at a cattle pond – a temporary shelter where cows are tagged with microchips to prevent shelters from selling the cows back.

Afterward the cows are sent to seven different cow sanctuaries on the outskirts of New Delhi. The sanctuaries receive funding from the city to keep and feed the cattle. 

At the cattle pond we visited with Kumar, a slum-dwelling woman was pleading in tears with the shelter's staff to release her cow, which she said was her only source of income. "My husband is a drunkard and when he comes to know [the cow is gone], he will beat the hell out of me," she said.

The staff wouldn't listen to her, saying she lacked proper documents to verify ownership of the animal. Obtaining the proper documents is difficult; however, even without it, some people still get their cows back after they have been caught.

"Corruption is an issue. Some dairies operators are influential. Many captured cows are often returned to them. To streets," said Kumar.

Asked about his take on the city's vow to rid the streets of stray cows before Delhi hosts the Commonwealth Games next year, Kumar replied, "I don't think that's going to happen."

 KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Watching them feast was pretty unnerving. Their whiney buzz cut through the silence, a swarm of mosquitoes hovering and then settling in a dish containing a cocktail of human blood and the often deadly dengue fever virus.

VIDEO:  As temperatures rise, mosquito-borne disease spreads

Thankfully, this banquet was contained in a cage of fine netting inside a laboratory at Kuala Lumpur's Institute of Medical Research. The mosquitoes would later be separated, and kept at different temperatures. The results so far show that a rise of four degrees Fahrenheit (from 82 degrees to 86 degrees) can almost double the speed at which the virus develops in the mosquito.

"The incubation period of the virus become shorter, so they become very infective much faster than before," said Dr Lokman Hakim, the head of disease control at Malaysia's health department.

Other new research suggests that rising temperatures shorten the lifespan of mosquitoes, making them hungrier – they bite more, in other words.

Dengue is just one vector-borne disease, but it is the fastest growing. Worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates that there are 50 million dengue infections a year.  More than 25,000 people are killed by more severe forms of a related disease called "break-bone fever" because of the severe joint pain it can produce, as well as headaches and fever.

It used to be contained largely to south-east Asia, but has been spreading, and is now found in South America, Africa, south Asia and parts of Australia. It recently turned up in Nepal, and last month returned to Florida for the first time in 50 years. Increasingly scientists are blaming climate change, supported by Malaysia's ground-breaking research.

"Dengue will be a global problem in terms of health," said Dr. Samlee Plianbangchang, the World Health Organization's South-East Asia Director. "Because as climate changes and temperatures rise, mosquitoes breed better."

Front line of research
We chose to visit Malaysia for our report for Nightly News because they are having a bad dengue year – more than 30,000 cases and 60 deaths in the first nine months of 2009, but also because they are on the front line of dengue and mosquito research.

Dengue used to be a disease of the rainy season, but the rains have become far less predictable, so it's now a year-round problem. It also used to be a disease that largely affected children. No more.

"We are seeing more and more adults being admitted with dengue, and with more severe forms of dengue as well," Dr. Adeeba Kamarulzaman told me as we toured the University of Malaya Medical Center, where Kuala Lumpur's most severe cases are treated.

There's no vaccine, and because there are four sub-types of dengue, which come in cycles, getting ill from one type does not give you immunity from the others. Quite the opposite, said Adeeba, it can leave you open to more severe attacks.

The mosquito that carries dengue is called the Aedes Aegypti, and experts say this stripy-legged creature is one of the most adaptable on the planet. It breeds just about anywhere there is stagnant water, needing no more than just a few drops of it, and scientists say its flying further and higher. And unlike the mosquitoes that carry malaria, Aedes is a day biter.

VIDEO: Malaysia mounts fight against dengue fever                    Â

'It's a war'
To those trying to stamp our dengue in Kuala Lumpur, it can be very personal. "It's a war. It's really a war," was how Khairudin Bin Noordan, put it as we followed him and his team of mosquito eradicators one humid evening, pumping clouds of think chemical fog around one neighborhood that had recently reported an outbreak.

By day they scour the kampongs (villages within the city), pouncing on plant pots, discarded tires or cups that contain water. They target building sites, armed with guppies, the little fish that feast on mosquito larvae.

But scientists say they are losing the battle.

"The virus is evolving, mosquitoes are adapting to the environment. But we are not adapting fast enough to these changes," said Dr. Sazaly AbuBakar, who heads the Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Malaya. He's got a grudging respect for the enemy. "Unless we do something smart, we will end up at the losing end of this battle."

He's trying to develop a "predictive vaccine." To that end he's collected 30-years of dengue viruses, and is lab sequencing their DNA to get a better idea of the development of the virus. He's also working on a "mosquito map" of Malaysia to better understand the way they are evolving.

He sees little chance of eradicating mosquitoes, and says a smarter approach is needed.

"We need to know, are they all equally good at transmitting virus? Knowing the enemy will give us an upper hand."

The Aedes mosquito may be aided and abetted by a wetter, warmer climate, but the spread of dengue is also the result of man's behavior – urbanization, building, a throw-away culture. "We need an approach that brings all these things together," said Adeeba, "right down to the design of houses."

Recently Australian scientists came up with an intriguing variation of climate change to account for the growth of dengue in parts of Queensland, which has been suffering drought. The lack of rain has prompted a frenzy of rainwater harvesting, which has in turn provided the perfect breeding grounds for the Aedes mosquito!

Scientists do now believe that climate change will affect patterns of disease. Dengue is their exhibit number one, but as Malaysia's scientists are showing, the global rampage of the Aedes mosquito may not be inevitable if we can also change and adapt to the new environment, and find a smarter way of taking on one of mankind's most enduring enemies.

Read and watch more reports on climate change from Nightly News' 'Perfect Storm' series. The series continues this week on the broadcast

BEIJING – Shanghai citizen Feng Zhenghu never thought he'd find himself in a plight similar to Viktor Navorski, an East European stranded in an airport in Steven Spielberg's 2004 movie "The Terminal." He also never expected to become a Twitter star followed by 7,000 people in just one month since he started to tweet about his exiled life at Tokyo's Narita Airport.     

Yoshikazu Tsuno / AFP - Getty Images

Chinese human rights activist Feng Zhenghu seen at Tokyo's Narita Airport on Nov. 12 wearing a shirt that says, "Chinese citizen has been refused to return to China for eight times."

But as of Thursday, Feng, a 55-year-old human rights activist, has been living at the immigration concourse at Narita Airport in Tokyo for 37 days.

Unlike Viktor, the main character in the movie (portrayed by Tom Hanks), Feng did not become displaced because his country had a coup by a new power not recognized worldwide.

On the contrary, China, his home country has a good relationship with his "temporary residence country" of Japan.

Feng also has a valid visa to enter Japan; but he has not considering the option of using it. He insists on going back to his own country, China. Problem is, he's simply not allowed to.

Like many other activists in China, Feng believes his efforts to represent the disadvantaged in Shanghai, as well as several articles he has published, have agitated local officials. And now, he says, they are retaliating.  

Dissident activities angered authorities
Feng was thrown into jail in China for three years beginning in 2001 for what the Chinese charged were "illegal business activities." After his time in prison, Feng became a self-taught lawyer and dissident writer who helps poor, disadvantaged Shanghai citizens fight for their rights. After he published an article titled "A Testimony to Shanghai's Judicial Injustice" in January 2008 and sent copies of it to government officials, he says he began to be closely monitored and harassed by authorities.

Feng was detained by the Beijing Liaison Office of the Shanghai Municipal Government in February 2009 and held for 41 days. He believes he was detained in Beijing, along with other aggrieved citizens from Shanghai, for applying for permission to protest during the annual meeting of China's Communist Party leadership. His detention raised the attention of Amnesty International who petitioned the Chinese government to demand his release.

(See a report in the World Blog, "You can protest in China, if you get permission" about Cui Fufang, another protester who was detained with Feng). 

After he was released from detention, he went to Japan and was working there as a visiting scholar. But since last June, he said he has been denied entry to China on eight separate occasions.

Airlines refused to allow him to board four times, citing orders from Chinese authorities. Four other times, he made it all the way to Shanghai's Pudong International Airport, but the Chinese sent him back to Tokyo. After the last refusal, Feng had enough and started his protest at Tokyo's Narita Airport. 

The Chinese have not offered any official explanations. When Qin Gang, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, was asked about Feng's situation during a regular briefing on Nov. 27, his response was dismissive. "China's competent authorities handle such cases according to the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Control of the Exit and Entry of Citizens. I'll leave it to relevant authorities for details."

Japanese staff from the U.N.'s Refugee Agency have come to visit Feng and offered him political asylum, but Feng says his only desire is to go home. "I believe the Chinese government will eventually solve this problem. Of course they need time and I'll give them time."

VIDEO: Chinese dissident stuck in Tokyo

Temporary home: airport lounge
So for now, Feng sleeps on a 1.5-foot-wide steel bench at Terminal One of Narita Airport with his clothes on, and has spent more than a month without a shower. His request to staffers at the airport's immigration section to buy food was denied for the first few days.

But since his story has been widely reported by the international media, more people have started to notice the homeless Chinese guy. Passengers and flight attendants  are constantly bringing him food and necessities - including a portable DVD player with the movie "The Terminal."

"I'm not as lucky as Viktor," Feng joked about the movie character. "He's got a job, a girlfriend, and I didn't even have food at first. My story is just more miserable."

He wears a sleeveless white shirt with "CHINESE HUMAN RIGHTS" written on one side and "Chinese citizen has been refused to return to China for eight times" scrawled on the other side in both English and Chinese.

Feng's daily life mainly consists of talking to family and friends, being interviewed by journalists, tweeting about his life on the Internet, and sleeping on the airport bench. Now almost 7,000 users on Twitter pay close attention to what's happening to him, and a group called "Let Feng Zhenghu Return Home" has been founded on Facebook to show support.

His wife is a professor at a Shanghai University and supports his efforts to come back to China.

"Many people ask me what is the first thing I would do if I get to go back home. My answer is, I'll visit my mother first. She's over 80 years old and living in a nursing home," said Feng.

He went on to explain why he is so driven to go back. "Chinese government has never publicly claimed I cannot go home. I know in China there's still so much ordeal and hardships, but I prefer to stay in my own country," said Feng, as he made another mark on his little whiteboard calendar to note how many days he has been out of China.

LAIKIPIA DISTRICT, Northern Kenya – It was a shocking sight and the putrid smell almost made me vomit: A hundred dead cows were spread across the dry plain in various stages of decomposition. Flies buzzed around their insides which had oozed onto the dry grass. Organs lay exposed and body parts, legs, heads and ears littered the earth.

Other dead cows were untouched. Jeremiah Lemiruni, a Samburu leader, strode among them, while I kept my eyes fixed to the ground, fearful of treading on some molding skin or rotting corpse. We were followed by a dozen tribesmen in red blankets carrying spears and clubs. They poked sadly at the carcasses as Jeremiah explained: "The older ones were killed by bullets, the rest died from the drought."

A six-hour drive through the Ololoque hills and Samburu bush land of northern Kenya reveals the devastating impact of years of poor-to-no rainfall.

VIDEO: Drought driving Kenyans into conflict

Devastating drought
Rivers are serpents of dust. Natives dig in the parched riverbeds, seeking precious pools of water deep in the earth. Vultures feed off animal corpses by the roadside while skinny goats and sheep totter forlornly on their last legs. Children roam for half the day carrying yellow plastic containers in search of a running spring or at least a muddy pool. Bushes are brown and the land is bare as far as the eye can see.

Hungry tribesmen desperate to feed their families ambush cars on the dirt roads: our guide whispers that three groups of tourists have been robbed at gunpoint here this year. We travel with two armed policemen.

It hasn't rained here since April and then only a few drops. Before that it was last October and that was a few drops too. Natives scratch their heads and try to remember the last serious rainfall.

And when, hundreds of miles away, the clouds do gather darkly and the skies open, rain gathers in the mountains and rushes in a wall of water through the plains, in flash floods that carry off animals and children. Consistent rain patterns are a distant memory here. The Samburu gather in knots on hilltops with torches and pray for rain but it hasn't helped much.

The drought is so bad that traditional cattle rustling has turned into murder.

In September Pokoti tribesmen attacked neighboring Samburu villagers, seeking to steal their land, not with the usual spears and blood-curdling screams but automatic rifles. Thirty-three men, women and children died in the one-hour gun battle, which only ended when both sides ran out of bullets.

As the drought persists, the threat of violence is growing.

We read a lot about competition for resources; here it plays out at the most basic level: a fight for pasture and water. Police now guard this area of Laikipia to keep the peace, but too late for Jeremiah.

Battle for resources  
At 5:30 a.m. he was asleep in his hut of thorn wood and twigs when 200 men from a rival tribe attacked.

They blew whistles to scare the sleeping victims and to give each other strength. They fired guns into the homes of the surprised and terrified herders, and shouted "At them, at them!" as they ran forward, shooting and stabbing men, women and children. Jeremiah and his family ran for their lives, screaming and yelling.

Clansmen sleeping 200 yards away leapt to their defense. Some had guns and fired back at the raiders. After an hour of dawn fighting, shooting and pandemonium, 21 villagers lay dead, 13 were wounded, and 80 cattle were shot. Twelve attackers were also killed – leading to the total of 33 dead. Since then, police have been posted five miles up the road to prevent a repeat attack, and to stop Jeremiah from taking revenge.

"We don't want revenge," Jeremiah said, adding, "God will take care of them. The government and the police will find them and punish them. The most important thing for us is to keep this land."

SLIDESHOW: Refugees flee drought, war in East Africa

 Trying to steal the best pasture
The government gave each villager 50 acres of grazing land years ago. But nature decided whose would be fertile, and the land of Jeremiah's clan has held up best in the drought. There is grass for the cattle to eat and a nearby spring provides barely enough water. His animals are dying from the drought too, but fewer than his neighbor's.

Their dawn attack was for a reason as old as herding: to steal the best pasture. For the attackers, it was a matter of survival. Their land had run out of grass, their cattle were dying, so they had to steal their neighbors land. It wasn't about whose grass was greener, but who had any grass at all.

The struggle in these dry lands is not yet about human survival, even if many live on one meal a day: "ugali," a porridge-like, unnutritious mix of corn flour and water. On a good day they also drink milk mixed with cow's blood. Meat is a luxury, although today it is plentiful for all the wrong reasons.

But for those who have no hope of survival at home, migration to town is the only option. There they subsist in quickly-growing slums like Kibera in Nairobi, one of Africa's largest, where they contribute to a whole slew of other problems.
 
Too many cattle
After reporting all day, our NBC team, Paul Goldman, Krzysztof Galica and I, got into a discussion about these issues with the only other guest at the Maralal Safari Lodge where we were staying:  Alastair, a third-generation Kenyan farmer who works on a rhino preservation ranch a day's drive away.

A log fire was crackling in the large stone fireplace in the wood-paneled lounge, as zebras grazed on the lawn outside. The place was a colonial throw-back of dim light, cold, brown water from the only functioning tap and a hint of ghostly G and T's at sunset.

For old time's sake I ordered a gin and tonic. Alastair, big and brawny in shorts and denim shirt, drank beers while he also bemoaned the drought, but warned us not to miss the obvious.

"There are too many cattle, that's a large part of the problem. It's their culture," he said. "The more cattle they have, the higher their status, the richer they are, the more they can offer for a bride (the Samburu bride price is at least eight cows), so the more they raise. But there isn't enough pasture for them all," Alastair added.

The cattle, goats and sheep devour the landscape, munching grass, roots, seeds, anything they can pull from the ground. That erodes the fertile top soil that washes away in the rare rains, browning the land.

So the herdsmen, as they always have, roam endlessly seeking pasture, but today they often don't find any.

"Our cattle are everything for us," Jeremiah had told me. "If my neighbor has a 100 head, I need more. And my other neighbor needs more than me."

Jeremiah was surrounded by dead cattle. Others were prostrate, their legs twitching, eyes fluttering, dying of thirst.

Bond between animal and man runs deep
It is true that cattle equals status here, but for the Samburu tribesmen, as for all the native pastoralists, the bond between animal and man runs deeper, is more visceral, than that. Nature has bonded them.

As we prepared to leave Jeremiah's decimated village, where the 21 victims of the slaughter lay buried in a mass grave beneath the largest, proudest tree, a man and woman called for help from a passing warrior.

He stuck his spear in the earth and together they struggled to raise a dying cow to its feet. It was black and bony and listless, lying exhausted on the ground. The first man hauled it up by the head, the young warrior encircled its thin body with his arms and pulled, while the woman tugged its tail. They managed to get the cow to its feet, where it stood unaided for a moment, before shuddering and sinking to the ground again.

The first man poked its head with his stick and got no response. He turned away, looked towards the heavens and then down at his dying cow. His eyes creased and quivered, and he pursed his lips, fighting back tears. Then he gave a huge sigh, turned around and walked away.

Part of the problem could be solved if tribesmen made do with fewer cattle. But in the plains of northern Kenya, that is as likely as a thunderstorm tomorrow.

How to help?

The UNHCR operate a refugee camp near this drought stricken region. See the UNHCR web site for ways to help.  The World Food Program also works in the area.

Click for more of Martin Fletcher's recent reports from Kenya:
Kenyan girls given a chance to dream
A window into East African refugees' pain

Read and watch more reports on climate change from Nightly News' 'Perfect Storm' series. The series continues this week on the broadcast.

COPENHAGEN –  Decisions being made here at the 192-nation climate conference will affect people in far away corners of the globe. In the case of Peru, the South American nation 6,800 miles away, negotiations here could have an impact on the country's shrinking supply of life's most basic resource: water. 

The United Nations says 80 percent of the water that flows to Peru's highly populated Pacific coast originates in the Andes Mountains. The Andes hold the world's biggest collection of tropical glaciers – glaciers that are disappearing.  

Slideshow: Trying to save their glacier

The glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range stand three miles above sea level. While the majestic mountains appear over overwhelming, Peru's foremost glaciologist Marco Zapata said that the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca are now 27 percent smaller than  they were 33 years ago.  

In fact, the Pastoruri Glacier is now split in two. It has lost so much ice, scientists don't even consider it a glacier any more. They call it an ice cap. We tried to walk on it, but we didn't get very far.  Zapata believed it was too dangerous to walk on because it was too unstable.

Video: Melting glaciers lead to water wars

'We don't respect our Mother Nature'
Accompanying us as we walked over the dirt, rocks and ice was Marina Espinosa Huerta. She is the president of the peasant community in the nearby town of Cata. Water from the glacier feeds the community of subsistence farmers' livestock, nourishes their potato fields, and is essential to their health. But today, Huerta said it's harder to farm and harder to stay healthy. 

Climate change is not only taking away the glaciers, she said – it is making the days hotter and the nights colder. More people are becoming ill from bronchitis, sore throats and other illnesses.          

I ask her if she feels victimized by rich countries. "Victimas?" she says as a wise smile spreads across her face. "Victims from the human beings, the human being not just from the United States, [but] including ourselves, because we don't respect our Mother Nature."

VIDEO: 'Peru's future depends on mountains'

Some 3,000 feet below the Cordillera Blanca, outside the city of Huaraz, there are concrete irrigation canals crossing the fields of small farmers. The canals take water from the mountains to the city. There are small holes in the side of these ditches that send water to the farms, but the farmers say it is not enough. In protest is a makeshift dam, made of stones and sticks. It takes the precious water headed for Huaraz and forces some of it over the edge of the canal and down the slope to a potato farm.

The dam is the handiwork of Kennedy Coururucacha, a 14-year-old boy who helps his father with their modest farm. They grow wheat, potatoes, barley and oats. Kennedy, who dreams of becoming a tour guide,  said he has no choice but to block the canal. They need water to live, and since the canals were built, there is not enough.

Water shortages are not just restricted to rural areas. Lima, the capital of Peru, is the second largest city in a desert. Only Cairo, Egypt is bigger. Out of  the 8 million people who live in Lima, an estimated 2 million don't have access to running water.  

Many of those people live in the shantytowns built into the dark brown dunes that border Lima.  Water trucks make their way through the streets, charging exorbitant prices for water no one is sure is clean. While in the Plaza des Armas, even on a holiday, the grass is watered.

Peru's president, Alan Garcia, won office with a slogan "Water for All." Today, that is far from the case.

The country's first environmental minister, Antonio Brack Egg, says Peru must start to adopt a culture of conservation to help itself as the world works on a solution to climate change. If not, the source of life will become an even bigger source of trouble.

Click here for more on the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference

 

 DHAKA, Bangladesh – When I first met Kohinoor Shelim she was trying to feed rice to her young daughter, but the child just screamed and kept turning her face away. Instead, the girl demanding lentils – wanting anything else except for rice, the only food her mother had been able to afford that day.

Shelim told me that, Insha'Allah (God Willing), her husband, a rickshaw driver, would return later with enough money to buy more food.

Home for Shelim, her husband and two daughters, is a tiny corrugated shack in one of Dhaka's biggest slums, a maze of narrow, crowded alleyways lined with squalid shelters and open sewers, spilling down to a fetid river. She'd moved to the Bangladeshi capital with her family just two months earlier. When I asked her whether life was better here, she just looked away.

Her home near Bhola, a district deep in the river delta on which much of Bangladesh sits, was lost to the sea. "Over time, the river broke our house," she told me. "Until we had nothing to live in."

Video: Sinking below sea level in Bangladesh

'Global destabilization'
If climate change does lead to a 3-foot rise in sea levels around Bangladesh by mid-century, as some scientists predict, then Shelim's story could echo those of 20 million climate change refugees here. It's an aspect of global warming that's only now being more fully appreciated, but which Atiq Rahman, the country's leading environmentalist, calls one of the biggest threats facing not only Bangladesh, but the world.

"There will be global destabilization of populations," he told me. "The poor will be the most affected. They'll have very little to lose once they've lost their land."

Rahman heads the Bangladeshi Center for Advanced Studies and was also an author of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

In Dhaka, the impact is already being felt, with some half a million migrants arriving in the city each year. That's about the population of Washington, D.C., pouring mostly into squalid slums. The biggest reason for moving is environmental degradation.

"People are moving, being displaced forcibly, because of climate factors," according to Rabab Fatima, the Dhaka-based representative of the International Organization for Migration.

Rebuilding an embankment in Garbura/ Ian Williams

The crowded and gridlocked capital, home to at least 12 million people (probably more, but nobody knows for sure) is already under stress because of the explosive rise in population. The number of people living in Bangladesh's capital has doubled in a decade.

"Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in the world, the frontline state of climate change," Rahman said, pointing to a large map on his wall, a thick black line across the delta, cutting off a fifth of the county. "Anything south of this line is going to under water."

More than half of Bangladesh is less than 20 feet above sea level. Experts say it faces a double threat: Rrising sea levels as a result of the melting ice caps and glaciers, and more extreme weather, like cyclones and heavy rain.

Taken together this could generate more climate change refugees than anywhere else on earth.

Getting worse
The country is no stranger to floods or cyclones. Both are facts of life here. But travel across the water clogged delta, and people tell you that both have been getting worse.

Take the island of Gabura, or what's left of it: A May cyclone smashed the embankments that had protected the island, and now most of it is gone, taken by the sea. The houses that survived cling precariously to spits of land, while makeshift shelters made of bamboo and sticks line the top of broken sea walls.

It's here I met Amjad Gazi, with his wife and six children, who were lucky to survive the raging waters.

Living on a spit of land in Garbura /Ian Williams

"This one almost got swept away," he wife said, pointing at their youngest son. "There was water everywhere. The currents were so strong, and we were scared."

Gazi pointed out where his home used to be, and the land he had farmed for rice. All that's left is water, with a forlorn-looking cow stranded on a spit of mud beyond.

Gazi still clings to a hope that the water levels may fall, enabling him to return to the land. That hardly seems likely.

"I don't see how much longer we can live like this," he told me. "One day we will have to leave. What else can we do."

That will mean joining the mass exodus to the cities.

'Climate change has a taste'
Even where the land has not gone, it is becoming harder and harder to live on. A two-hour drive north of Gabura, we stopped in the village of Kamira Bazar.

Like much of the delta region, it floods each every year, but the flooding has been getting worse, the waters are staying longer, and contaminating the fields and the wells with salt.
I stood looking over the flooded fields that belonged to Sheikh Shetta. "It's never been this bad," she told me.

"We haven't been able to grow anything properly here for five years." Water from the local well is no longer drinkable.

As Rahman, the environmentalist, puts it: "Climate change has a taste, and it tastes of salt. Freshwater is being polluted and contaminated and overcome by saltwater."

This area borders India, where the authorities are building a border barrier, a high fence of reinforced barbed wire that cuts through the paddy fields. Soon it will completely encircle Bangladesh, 2,100 miles of it.

International migration, millions of poor and desperate people pouring across borders, is a sensitive subject here, but it is clearly one factor in India's thinking. The fence is due to be completed by March next year.

Water lapping homes in Garbura / Ian Williams

'Matter of life and death'
Can anything be done to avert disaster?

Already entire villages are being mobilized to raise and reinforce the embankments that protect their homes, which in the past have been very poorly maintained, there are plans to plant millions of mangroves, a natural defense against tide surges. The destruction of mangroves over recent years has made the area all the more vulnerable.

Other fixes, such as saline-resistant rice and better storage for drinking water are being discussed, and Bangladesh has launched an international appeal to pay for it.

UNICEF is supporting a program to teach children basic swimming skills, since drowning is now the biggest cause of death among children under ten in Bangladesh.

"(Climate change) here is a matter of life and death for the communities, for the people, for the ecosystem," Rahman says. "In the West it is an issue of minor lifestyle changes."

This weekend, the world heads to Copenhagen to try and come up with a global strategy to combat climate change. The sessions formally open Monday, but already there are developments that suggest what seemed impossible just three weeks ago, may come true by Dec.18 when the U.N. conference closes. 

President Barack Obama originally planned to go to the conference on his way to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway on Dec. 10. But, in an interesting move, he changed his schedule to come on Dec. 18, the last day of the conference, where he will join a host of world leaders.

The White House says the reason for the schedule change is due to "progress being made towards a meaningful Copenhagen accord."  

VIDEO: Climate change e-mails cause heated debateÂ

  
Offers of compromise from certain countries have prompted others to step up to the table. Obama said the United States is willing to commit to cutting its carbon emissions "in a range" of 17 percent by 2020. In turn, China and India have pledged to reduce their "carbon intensity" as they continue to grow economically. And the European Union is talking about boosting its promise to cut emissions from 20 to 30 percent by 2020. Japan also says it can slash its emissions by 25 percent.

But cutting emissions is not the only issue facing negotiators. Here's a quick guide to some of the other thorny issues.

The world's developing nations are adamant that they should not have to pay for the sins of already industrialized nations. They say they need to continue to grow their economies to lift their people out of poverty – even if it means doing so in less than environmentally progressive ways.

But many of these countries are on the front line of climate change and are already dealing with drought or sea level rise. They want aid money so they can buy the technology needed to adapt to what's already happening.

The White House says there is an emerging consensus to try to provide $10 billion a year by 2012 for these underdeveloped nations. It says America is willing to pay its fair share and that other countries will make substantial contributions, too.

SLIDESHOW: Warming threatens lifestyle of Russian herders

Deforestation
Cutting down the world's rainforests puts more carbon emissions in the air than all the cars, trucks, trains and planes in the world. Not only that, but it robs the Earth of one of its great carbon storage systems – the plants, trees and soil in the rainforest.

So there is a lot of talk about reforestation, planting trees to return land to the way nature intended. It is the cheapest and easiest way to combat climate change.

How is it done? For two decades, Costa Rica has paid landowners to maintain their forests or replant forests. As a result, the country's forest cover has grown from 21 percent to more than 50 percent.

And Brazil says it is willing to preserve its spectacular Amazon rainforest, but it wants to be paid to do so. The objective, more forests, is easy to agree on. The tougher issue is deciding who should pay for it.

At the Bali conference on climate change two years ago, the U.S. was told to lead or get out of the way. Now, the offer from the U.S. to reduce emissions by around 17 percent has prompted China and India to promise to take action as well.

But critics say it is not enough and that the U.S. must do more. Some see Copenhagen as a test of U.S. leadership in the world. However, any agreements made in Copenhagen will have to face domestic scrutiny as well. What the world wants may not be what the Senate is willing to pass – and the Senate will have to approve any climate treaty.

There are many more issues. We will be talking about them over the next two weeks. It should be a very exciting time.

Click here for more coverage of environmental issues

The Frontier Corps, a 60,000-strong group of paramilitary fighters, are an integral part of Pakistan's war against militants in the troubled frontier and tribal areas along the Afghanistan border.

NBC News' Amna Nawaz reports from the remote mountaintop post of one unit known as the Khyber Rifles which are charged with securing their namesake – the Khyber region in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

VIDEO: On the frontlines with Pakistan's Frontier Corps

LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan – On the heels of President Barack Obama's announcement that 30,000 more U.S. troops will be heading to Afghanistan, it's important to remember one thing that makes the fight there so difficult and unique: Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. 

However, one of the few success stories to be found here is the slow, but steady, demining of the war-ravaged landscape by an unlikely ally – specially trained dogs. 

"We have cleared 60 percent of the country," said Dr. Mohammad Shohab Hakimi, the director of the Mine Detection Center in Kabul, referring to the Mine Action Program in Afghanistan, overseen by the United Nations. The program is focused on locating and disabling mines planted during the war with the Soviet Union (1979-89) and the era of mujahideen fighting that followed in the 1990s.

VIDEO: Dogs sniff out deadly mines in Afghanistan

Leading the way is the Mine Detection Center, whose record for accuracy, speed, and safety is rooted in its use of mine-detection dogs. The only organization of its kind in Afghanistan, the center was established in 1989 – with U.S. government funding – by Hakimi and other Afghans refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan. 

"We thought this is our country," said Hakimi, a former professor of agriculture whose colleagues on the project were other university professors, engineers, and doctors. "And we should work on this particular subject, and we should solve this problem."

When the opportunity finally came to safely return home, Hakimi and his colleagues went back to Afghanistan in 1998. "In those days, the Taliban were in power," he recalled. "When we had discussions with them, they were very positive about de-mining operations in this country."

In fact, the Taliban donated a large swath of land up on Nadir Khan Hill overlooking the capital for the project to use. The Mine Detection Center quickly set up shop, with Hakimi making sure that trees were planted everywhere. The open compound now feels like a national park – dotted with fir trees and carpeted with grass. 

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

An instructor at the Mine Detection Center in Kabul engages in some "ball training" with German shepherd puppies.

The first group of dogs ever trained by the center came from Thailand and only obeyed commands in Thai. Afterwards, the dogs came from Germany so the instructors and handlers now use primarily German commands. (Although we heard a lot of praise in English – "nice, easy, good dog" was a common refrain.)

Today the animals are mostly German shepherds and Belgian Malinois – known for their keen sense of smell. And all of them are bred in Kabul by the center, which now receives grants from a number of foreign governments to keep their work going.

There are 107 dogs stationed at the center while 151 more are currently deployed across Afghanistan. "And we have now about 21 puppies," said Jabar Baser. (Typically, most dogs work until they are nine years old and then are retired.)

Among the 1,700 Afghan staff employed at the center are technical experts, field workers, de-miners, paramedics, veterinary experts, and instructors who focus on both personnel and, of course, dogs.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

A dog handler watches his partner scout the area at the Aynak Copper Mine.

We watched as Bismullah trained the puppies. The 55-year-old former dog handle, who goes by just one name, used to go out into the field with the dogs, but he lost his left eye in a de-mining operation in 1993 and has been an instructor ever since. He was firm but affectionate with the animals, teasing and directing them the entire time.

"This stage is the most critical," he told us as the one-month old animals nipped at one another around our legs. During this period, the dogs are socialized and become used to interacting with humans and accustomed to vehicles. (Judging by the amount of attention my boots were getting, the dogs were quite socialized.) After six months, the animals are introduced to "ball training."

"This stage is so important for us that the dogs – or the small puppies – are so eager, and they're [interested in chasing] the ball," said Baser.  The ball is used as a teaching tool and as a reward for locating explosives (the dogs sit when they find one). If the dog shows a great deal of interest in the ball, fostering an association with finding explosives is that much easier. 

The animals are paired off with handlers at the next level of training, and the two are given a couple more months to grow familiar before they're finally sent on missions. By that point, the dogs are about 20 months old and, on average, will work until they're nine years old.  Throughout their career, all members of dog teams are given refresher training on a regular basis – even when they're out on in the field. 

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The Aynak Copper Mine is one of the Mine Detection Center's most critical projects.

The thorough training has paid off.  Not just in reputation – the center has posted dog teams overseas, most recently to assist on operations in Yemen and Tajikistan – but also in safety.  In 20 years, the group has lost only five dogs, and up to 20 personnel in de-mining operations.

In fact, recent casualties are mostly due to insurgents who accuse the Mine Detection Center teams of working for the U.S.-led international security force in Afghanistan. And as the war has intensified in the past two years, more and more of the staff have come under threat from insurgents, mostly in southern provinces like Helmand and Kandahar.

The turn of events is ironic, given that the Mine Detection Center was once welcomed by the Taliban, who "consider mines are 'haram' ("forbidden" in Arabic)," according to Hakimi. "Still…we face security problems."

The de-miners repeatedly argue they are neutral in the current war and remind everyone their mission is not to clear IEDs (improvised explosive devices) but anti-personnel or tank mines and unexploded ordnance planted during the Soviet and mujahideen eras. (Although a report on Afghanistan by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines noted that the Taliban insurgents have been accused of using antipersonnel mines.) 

The de-miners, added Hakimi, are "peace workers."

For a monthly wage of $350 that includes a food allowance, they're more than peace workers.  They're patriots.

"It's my duty to do this job," said Saifullah, a 42-year-old dog handler who joined the Mine Detection Center nine years ago, and also goes by just one name. The former farmer has lost 20 relatives and friends in mine blasts and believes by doing this work, "I am serving my country."

KABUL, Afghanistan – Despite the fact that President Barack Obama's speech on Afghanistan was broadcast in the middle of the night for troops watching from the war zone, there was a sense of excitement among U.S. troops watching the announcement at Camp Eggers, a NATO training base in Kabul.

There is an almost universal feeling among those in uniform that this surge is the United States' last chance to turn around what is increasingly seen as a failing war. 

But how can the United States turn the war around?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, believes the way forward is to implement what the military calls its counterinsurgency strategy or "COIN" for short. COIN has become an almost sacrosanct buzzword among military thinkers and strategists, but it is relatively unknown to most Americans.

Now that more Americans troops are going to war, perhaps the public should take a look for itself at what exactly the United States is getting into in Afghanistan. What is the strategy?  How do the most senior commanders plan to "get it right" in Afghanistan?

According to an unclassified military document from the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff obtained by NBC News, the COIN strategy has a basic goal. The document says to successfully conduct a counterinsurgency, U.S. and NATO forces "must accomplish three tasks simultaneously":

"Influence insurgent-minded individuals to adopt a neutral disposition."

"Influence neutral-minded individuals to adopt a supportive disposition."

"Retain supportive individuals."

In other words, COIN's goal is to convince militants to stop fighting and to persuade Afghans sitting on the fence – those unsure whether to back the Taliban or President Hamid Karzai's government – to throw their support behind the U.S.-backed government and its security forces.

It sounds simple. But an attempt to visualize the strategy reveals how immensely complicated it is for U.S. forces to accomplish.

Below is the military's schematic, a map of the counter insurgency strategy, that shows what U.S. troops hope to accomplish in Afghanistan. 

Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

This unclassified document from the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shows the U.S. military's plan for "Afghanistan Stability/COIN Dynamics – Security." CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE A LARGER VERSION

The slide is undoubtedly overwhelming.  For some military commanders, the slide is genius, an attempt to show how all things in war – from media bias to ethnic/tribal rivalries – are interconnected and must be taken into consideration.  It represents a new approach to war fighting, looking beyond simply killing enemy fighters.  It underscores what those fighting wars have long known, that everything matters.

But for others, the diagram represents a fool's errand that the United States has taken on in the name of national security. 

Detractors say the slide represents an assault on logic, an attempt to jam a square peg into a round hole. They say the concept of occupying a foreign nation to protect security at home is expensive, time consuming, ineffective and ultimately leads to the "spaghetti logic" of the slide. They say this slide is what happens when smart people are asked to come up with a solution to the wrong question.

Support the war or oppose it, back the surge or think it is digging a deeper hole for the United States, visualizing the counterinsurgency strategy appears to reveal one basic fact: success in Afghanistan will not be easy. 

VIDEO: Richard Engel and a panel of analysts map the surge strategy

More on President Obama's Afghanistan speech:
VIDEO: Afghan strategy outlined
Top war commander lauds build-up
Obama hints at 'more operations' in Pakistan
How will Congress pay for the surge?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The beat was good.  Even the song's title, "Turn Your Swag Off," was catchy – but the lyrics needed some explanation.
 
"What does it all mean?" I asked. 
 
"It's just about me rapping how cool and bad I am," said Adil Omar, an 18-year-old Pakistani rap artist. 

 "I don't get it," I told him. 

"Look," he tried to explain, "I guess you could call it a protest song, but having fun with it, instead of taking myself too seriously. The violence is all comical and the sex is all comical. It's just a funny song."

"Oh, I see," I said, pretending to get it.

VIDEO: Pakistani teen raps as a creative outlet

Omar went on to explain that he often writes fictionalized or outrageous lyrics as metaphors for other things. 

"In Pakistan today," Omar explained, "there are certain things you can't do, you can't promote. There are certain topics you can't tap into because it's a bit dangerous – like religion and politics." He said he is not an activist and stays away from rapping about governments. "You can't target certain individuals in Pakistan," he said, "but if you speak out against the West, then no one really cares."

Some Pakistani musicians have made headlines by tapping into the anti-Western and especially the anti-American sentiments gripping the country. I asked Omar about the band "co-Ven," and their song, "Ready to Die" which was singled out recently by the New York Times for its anti-American lyrics.  

Omar didn't think that was cause for too much concern. "It [the song] was probably for shock value and people are just taking it too seriously," he said. "It's has always been either the really violent and explicit side of rock, rap and hip-hop that gets the news coverage or it's the protest side. It's always been a genre, its entertainment," he argued with a conviction that belies his years.

Privileged Pakistani rappers
Rap music was born out of rage. It began, over 20 years ago, as a cry against the deprivation and unequal opportunities in America's urban ghettoes. But today's Pakistani rappers, by contrast, are from the country's educated and privileged classes and at least by Omar's account – they are "just having fun."

Omar is a well-mannered and soft-spoken teenager who lives in a posh suburb of Islamabad. He attends a private high school and is hoping to get into an American university next year. He started to write rap lyrics, as a hobby, when he was 9 years old. But it may well have been the death of his father one year later when Omar decided his life's ambition was to become a full-time rapper.

"My mother thinks it's a bit extreme, but she is supportive of my music. She understands that it's the only thing I am probably good at," he said.

I asked him about the lyrics to his song, "The Writer," which say, "The world hates me so I hate the world."

"That's pretty strong stuff," I said. Omar laughed. "That was all about being so involved in your work that you have the feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world," he said, grinning.  

He advised me not to take his writings so literally. "You thought it was anger," he said.  "I'm not angry. I'm actually pretty happy, but maybe if I didn't have this outlet to write this stuff, I would be angry," he said.

Omar is not the only Pakistani teenager turning to rap music to voice their feelings. Earlier this year, Bakhtawar Bhutto, the 18-year-old daughter of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, mourned her slain mother in a rap rhythm she released on YouTube.  

In her song, "I Would Take the Pain Away," Bhutto rapped about her grief: "Shot in the back of your ear, so young in 54th year, murdered with three kids left behind."// "Why did you have to go?"//" Why did you have to leave?" The teenager sang out her pain over a simple hip hop beat and edited video clips of her mother.

Like young musicians across the world, the Internet is the vehicle of choice for young independent Pakistani artists who are looking for their big breakthrough. Omar uploads his music on YouTube, as well as on Facebook and MySpace for maximum exposure.  

Last year, a cyber chat with B-Real of Cypress Hill led to an invitation to B-Real's studio in Los Angeles and the opportunity to collaborate on the song, "Takeover."  

He has also recorded with Penn, of Penn and Teller, and has a cameo appearance in a soon-to-be released, countercultural film, "Slackistan" – which is set in Islamabad and tries to knock down some of the stereotypes people in the West may have of Pakistan's youths. 
 
Omar's popularity as a rapper is on the rise. Already, a few thousand fans worldwide have downloaded his music and follow him on the Internet.  He's not sure what people like about him, but he hopes it's because his music is pure and he sings from his heart.

"Is it difficult to be a rapper in Pakistan?" I asked.
 
"Yes," Omar replied. "Not many people like it; it's a pretty small scene. So, I'd like to think of myself as a big fish in a small pond."