An all-female Iraqi wrestling team is on a mission to enter the ring -- and change the way women are viewed in Iraqi society. NBC News' Ghazi Balkiz reports.

VIDEO: Iraqi women break barriers, enter wrestling ring

TRIPOLI, Libya – The Egypt Air supervisor boarding our flight from Cairo to Tripoli waved a sandwich in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.  It was shortly after sunset and devout Muslims were breaking their Ramadan fast for the day after going without food or water for 14 hours. Our flight was departing on time, he said, and we should hurry aboard.

By the time we arrived at the Tripoli airport it was nearly midnight, yet the Libyan capital's streets were jammed with cars. Restaurants and coffee shops were crowded and shops were doing a brisk business. During the month of Ramadan countries in the Middle East work shorter daylight hours and do most of their business at night. 

It was quickly apparent that Tripoli has changed quite a bit since my last visit in the 1990's. Many of its old houses and shops are being torn down and replaced with modern high-rise apartment buildings.

Awash with money from its rich oil reserves – the largest in Africa and the ninth largest in the world – Libya's leader Moammar Gadhafi has embarked on an ambitious modernization program. 

Imed Lamloum / AFP - Getty Images

Libyans walk past festive lights and pictures of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi on Friday ahead of celebrations for the 40th anniversary of his coming to power in Tripoli planned for Sept 1.

Gadhafi has opened up his country to foreign investment. The rush is being led by oil companies, but breathtaking construction contracts have also attracted foreign developers as Libya hurries to make up for decades of sanctions which left Tripoli looking like a desert version of Eastern Europe before the fall of communism.

Its buildings were crumbling, its sewer systems were leaking and its roads were potholed tracks. But now, accepted back into the fold, Libya is rushing to catch up to the outside world.

Housam Abuzeid is a Libyan computer engineer in his 20's anxious to get in on the ground floor of the change sweeping the country. 

"There is treasure to be made here now," said Abuzeid. "I want to make mine now and start my own IT (information technology) business."

He explained that he has already persuaded his boss to offer computer systems to Libyans investing in construction so they can inventory their equipment, hardwire buildings for IT systems, and link security cameras to their sites.

"Many of the old guard in Libya still control the economy because they know which levers to pull in the ministries and government departments," said Abuzeid.  "We show them how to simplify the jobs their companies are involved in."

"My father is a ticketing supervisor for Libyan Airlines," he explained. "I bought him a laptop computer and showed him how to use it at home. When a computer system was first introduced at his office he was well ahead of younger people working there, so they gave him a bonus. This is how it should be for everyone in this country. We want to be part of the new world and we don't want anyone to be left behind."

Later in the evening we met Abuzeid and some of his friends at a coffee shop. They are all in their 20's and working in the IT sector. Their conversation, punctuated by pauses to suck on water pipes of sweet tobacco, was almost exclusively about computers.  They all carry i-Phones and frequently paused to exchange videos and music they had downloaded from the Internet. 

Two of them had just returned from a 10-day visit to the United States, part of a student exchange program which will soon send nearly 2,000 Libyans a year to American colleges.

"At the Philadelphia airport, when passengers in the baggage area found out we were Libyans, they moved their children back because they thought all Libyans were terrorists," said Hussein Abuzeid, Housam's younger brother.  "But we were amused rather than offended."

"I found Americans very nice and very open, very willing to share with us," he said.  "I hope to go back and study there for two years when I graduate here."

Marwan Arebi is 27 years old and works as an IT manager at the shipping company Aramex.

"Libya is on the threshold of great change," he said. "But I am concerned we don't lose any of our traditions, especially our religion."

VIDEO: Lockerbie bomber set free for oil?

The welcoming back of Libya by the outside world has been made possible by a change in the Libyan government's attitude.  Experts agree the catalyst was probably the start of the U.S.-Iraq war in 2003. Many believe that Gadhafi saw the writing on the wall – that being a rogue state doesn't work in the global world. He suspended Libyan research into weapons of mass destruction and started paying compensation to victims of Libyan terrorist operations, most prominently the bombing of a Pan Am passenger jet over Scotland in 1988 in which 270 people (in the air and on the ground) were killed. The death toll included 180 Americans. 

A Libyan man, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, was eventually convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the bombing. However, his recent release by Scotland for what it said was compassionate grounds because he is suffering from terminal cancer, sparked outrage, especially in the United States.

Nevertheless Gadhafi, now in his mid-60's and after 40 years in power as the region's longest-serving leader, wants to see Libya become the gateway to development in Africa. 

The United States apparently agrees with part of his vision. American companies are major players in the oil industry and development projects which will try to transform this desert nation into a modern state within the next ten years.

John Rainard is the Chief Operating Officer of AECOM, a Los Angeles-based engineering firm running a $10 billion project here to rebuild Tripoli and other population centers in Libya from the ground up.  Housing, roads, water and electrical systems will form the backbones of the new country.

The scope of this project is huge, according to Rainard.

"Any costs we estimate, the Libyans are expecting to add another three zeros to," said Rainard, explaining the large scale of the work.

Have there been any problems with payments so far?

"A few minor hiccups when we first started, but that changed pretty quickly. The Libyans are learning very fast."

AECOM is making sure Libyans are trained alongside the 250 Americans the company has working here.

"They eventually have to run everything so we want them in early," said Rainard.

AECOM's offices have charts and maps of the country pinned on the walls.  One of shows a ring road around Tripoli studded with interchanges, the biggest of which will cost $50 million.

Tourism is also part of Libya's new order.  Italians and neighbors from other North African states make up the bulk of the numbers coming here to visit Libya's Roman ruins and its unspoiled beaches.

"We like it here," said one man visiting from Romania who we met in a Tripoli market where he was examining gold trinkets. "The people are very friendly and we are glad we came."

Foreign companies, especially in the oil sector, appear to agree.

BANGKOK, Thailand – Street vendors along a major intersection in downtown Bangkok are familiar with Sgt. Nitat Saisa-ard. Not only is he a good-natured traffic cop who enjoys iced cold fruit juices, but his chubby figure is hard to miss.

The 45-year-old sergeant weighs almost 300 pounds, more than half of which he gained over the past two decades since he graduated from police academy.

"I know I'm fat," said Nitat. "It's hard for me to move around, dodging the cars, but I don't feel like working out after a long day at work. I'm just so exhausted and I want to go to bed."

VIDEO: Thai traffic cops told to hit gym

He's going to have to change. And that's an order. 

Nitat is among 340 overweight traffic police officers in Bangkok told to shed at least 10 pounds and get into shape in three months.

"We ran a health check of over 4,000 officers this year and found that 57 percent have high cholesterol, high triglyceride and are overweight," said Police Major General Pharnu Kerdlarpphon, deputy chief of Bangkok's Metropolitan Police Bureau. "Doctors blame it on unbalanced diets and lack of exercise and we're trying to fix that."

He said the nature of traffic police work exposes them to more health risks compared to their peers, largely due to long hours in a polluted environment.

The police department had adopted different approaches in its initiative to slim down the force in the past, from supporting sports activities at each precinct to handing out diet manuals to officer's wives – all to no avail.

This year, city police looked for a way to make exercise sexier and more accommodating and found a willing partner in California Wow Xperience, an international fitness company.

"Each gym has terrific facilities and is located in a clean and cool shopping mall," said Pharnu. "Trainers are also cheerful and encouraging. It's a big incentive. It's much better than working out on their own at the precinct."

The fitness company has offered eight facilities around Bangkok where plump cops can work out two hours a day, three days a week. It also designed a 12-week exercise plan that includes classes like body combat, cycling, weight lifting and yoga. And all of comes free of charge for the police officers. 

"We actually love programs like this because our mission is to continue improving people's life through fitness and this year we're focusing a lot on charity," said Janeen Lyons, the fitness' marketing communications manager.

Nitat, the portly police sergeant, has been to the gym regularly since the program started in July. His favorite workout activities are jogging on the treadmill and weight lifting. He's tried yoga, but admits that he's not a fan and tends to stand in the back row of the class. 

So far he's managed to lose almost 22 pounds, exceeding the police department's minimum requirement. He is pleased that his uniforms are getting looser and his colleagues have noticed his fleshy arms becoming more muscular.

"I guess I can live with being overweight – as long as I can get more fit and firm," he said.

Pharnu, the deputy commissioner, said he has only received positive feedback and no complaints from his subordinates, even though the program is mandatory.

"I hope they will be in a better shape, be more agile and more selective in eating," he said. "It's good for their job performance when they're healthy. Their wives and kids are happy. Their mental health and life expectancy after retirement should be improved, too."

The fitness company, California Wow Xperience, said it will reward the officer who loses the most weight with a free 3-year membership.  

It is enticing enough but Nitat said his aims are a little lower for now.

"I don't know about [winning] the award. I just hope the weight I shed won't bounce back any time soon."

MEDELLÍN, Colombia – The 18 hippos are the biggest attraction at the 'Hacienda Napoles' amusement park, 99 miles from this Andean city.

Their home was created by Pablo Escobar during his reign as Colombia's most notorious drug lord.

He built the luxurious ranch with 20 man-made lakes, six pools, an airport, a hydroelectric power plant and a zoo filled with zebras, hippopotamus and other exotic animals. 

Nowadays, the once highly secured hacienda is visited by 50,000 tourists annually, underlining the change in the city and province that was once ground zero for a bloody war between powerful cocaine magnates and the state. 

Hugo Angulo / NBC News

Children play in the fountains of a Medellin park.

Almost two decades later, business is thriving and most Medellinenses remember almost daily explosions as nightmares from the past. 

The former textile capital of South America is again making clothes for companies such as Diesel, Naf Naf, Levis, Tommy Hilfinger and DKNY.  The growing transportation system is another source of pride for many in Medellin, the only Colombian city with a metro and an aerial cable car network that connects downtown to its hilly suburbs.

And the United States is committed to helping Colombia continue to achieve greater security across the country. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced the new "Defense Cooperation Agreement," reached on Aug. 14 and expected to be signed in a few weeks. It is aimed at helping strengthen security and tackling the illegal drug trade. 

(Some South American nations fear that the U.S. is using the agreement as a way to create military bases in Colombia – a charge Clinton was quick to deny. Still a group of Latin American leaders will meet this Friday, Aug. 28 to discuss the Washington - Bogotá agreement.)

But Medellin's return to relative normalcy was an uphill climb. During the 1980s and early 1990s explosions were such a normal occurrence in Medellin that people started naming the bombs after the locations where they blew up to distinguish them. 

"We called the bomb in front of my building the 'Auto Pan bomb' because Auto Pan was the name of the bakery at the corner," art curator Felix Angel recalled. A May 1990 explosion was known as "The Intercontinental bomb" because it detonated in front of the Intercontinental Hotel.

Escobar ruled the slums surrounding this mountainous city, 160 miles northwest of Bogotá, Colombia's capital. His turf included an entire neighborhood where he built more than 400 new homes for poor families and was rewarded with their undivided loyalty. Police did not dare to enter. 

At the time, drug lords had offered to pay $4,000 to anyone who would kill a police officer. In the first six months of 1990, 100 police officers were killed.

Investigators attribute 2,000 deaths to Escobar, including the assassination of a presidential candidate and the 110 people killed when an Avianca Boeing 727 blew up over the skies of Bogota in 1989.  Two of the Avianca victims were American.

On Dec. 2, 1993, Escobar's reign ended. Police intercepted a phone conversation he was having with his son, zoomed in on his hiding place, and shot him dead near Medellin.

More than 15 years after the death of the so-called cocaine king, crime has gone down, but remains a threatening concern.  There were 1,097 murders in Medellin from January to June of this year, according to law enforcement statistics. That's almost double the 575 homicides from the same period in 2008, according to Medellin's mayor's office.      

Still, residents note the improvement since the years of Escobar's all-out war against the state. At its worst, in 1991, there were 12 to 17 murders a day in Medellin, earning the city the dubious distinction of having the highest homicide rate of all major cities in Latin America. 

"Sicarios," a term used to describe the hit men who kill on behalf of drug traffickers, are believed to be behind many of the recent deaths. Investigators say seven out of every ten crimes can be linked to "sicarios," the result of gangs fighting each other for control of the illegal drugs' market.

Investing in education
Despite the current violence, Latin American expert Peter deShazo says the city has experienced great security improvements since the days of Escobar, which he credits to the tough tactics of Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe. 

"This is the result of the strengthening of the military, sustained under Uribe, more money being spent on security, new military units protecting infrastructure, sort of success breeding more success," said deShazo who leads the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Americas Program based in Washington. The improved security has increased public confidence, he said. 

"In the 1980s people were terrified of going to malls because a bomb might blow up, now people go shopping and that has helped small business owners," said downtown cafeteria owner Guillermo Restrepo.  He says he has gone from barely making ends meet to tripling his restaurant's profits in the past 15 years. 

Restrepo and other Medellin residents laud former mayor Sergio Fajardo Valderrama – a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate – for transforming the city by building new schools and libraries. 

Fajardo's goal was to give children a strong education and self-esteem to prevent violence in the future.  He wanted Medellin to be known as the best-educated city in Colombia and came up with the slogan in Spanish "Medellin: La Mas Educada."  

Fajardo left office in 2007 with an 80 percent popularity rating to consider a possible run for the presidency.  His successor, Alonso Salazar Jaramillo, vows to carry on Fajardo's goal of beautifying the city while offering the poor better educational opportunities.  

Five giant library complexes have been built in Medellin in the last three years, most in the poorest slums and all surrounded by parks. The cost: $35 million. Money well spent, business owner Restrepo believes. "We have to kill the venomous serpent of drugs and violence with education," he said. 

Felipe Gil Barrera, the education secretary of the state of Antioquia, where Medellin is located, recently told the newspaper La Reforma that Medellin has gained ground against the violence with educational and cultural weapons. He said Medellin's commitment to education can be seen by the amount of the city's budget allotted to education:  a full 30 percent of Medellin's budget goes towards education, as opposed to 8 percent of Mexico City's budget.

Still, a long way to go
So does Medellin have a chance of winning the war against crime? "It will take continuous effort on the part of the Colombian government to continue strengthening the professionalization of the police, to continue to combat drug trafficking and the effects of drug trafficking and to continue to generate legitimate employment," said deShazo.

Still, the city has a long way to go – the State Department warns Americans to avoid visiting Colombia, citing violence by guerillas, paramilitary groups and narco-traffickers.

KABUL – When I saw the headlines today that both President Hamid Karzai and his rival Abdullah Abdullah are claiming victory in the Afghanistan election, I was somewhat surprised. I thought that this could be an issue of major concern because you don't want to have a situation here like we had in Iran where there is a disputed election and both sides are claiming victory as the results are still coming in.

So I wanted to make sure what exactly the candidates were saying.

I went over to Abdullah's house – he is the former foreign minister and main challenger in the race against the incumbent Karzai. 

We spoke in English, and he speaks very good English, but I think some of the situation here has to do with language.

VIDEO: Afghanistan presidential election results trickle in

I asked him, "Do you think you've won the election?"

And he said, "Yes."

I asked him, "Are you claiming victory?"

He said, "No, the results are still coming in."

So I said, "Well then, what do you mean exactly? You think you've won, but the results are still coming in?"

He said, "Yes, exactly.

"But you're not claiming victory?" I asked.

He said, "No."

So there is a big, big difference. I asked him to explain to me what he thinks the situation is now.

Abdullah said, "Indications are now that I'm in the lead and that I have won the elections outright and there will be no need for a run-off; but the final results are not in. But those are the indications we have at this point." 

So, I called Karzai's people because he is also quoted as saying he's won and it's over.

But his people said, "No, no, no.  We are confident that we've won, but the results aren't all in yet. But we think it will go our way."

So basically, you have both sides saying, "We think we've won" – but not quite claiming victory.

Now it's a fine line. Could this escalate and tomorrow both sides harden their positions?

Yes, that could happen. We could be headed down a dangerous path here. But both sides at this stage are trying to not delegitimize the process and not put themselves onto a confrontational path. 

Both sides are saying they're confident and their own internal polling and fact-finding shows that they have won, but it's not settled yet. They think they will have a much clearer idea by the end of the weekend.

SLIDESHOW: Afghanistan votes

Taking count
Here's the way it works: There were 6,500 polling centers across the country, some of them in small villages and some in big urban centers like Kabul and Kandahar.

At each polling center, when the polling closed at 5 p.m. yesterday, the ballot boxes were opened, the boxes were turned over and the ballots were dumped onto the floor and counted – in public. 

This morning the tally sheets with the results were stuck publicly on the door of the voting stations.

So if you are aggressive and you have people around the country, you can find the results just by sending someone to each of these 6,500 voting stations, reading what's written on the wall, calling it back into your campaign headquarters and figuring out what happened. And that's exactly what Abdullah and Karzai are doing.

They have supporters and volunteers calling in these results.

It's an imperfect system, as you can imagine, because they are probably not getting to every polling station. But each campaign has its own monitoring system and they are telling their respective candidates that they are winning. 

On a precipice
However, there could be a major sparring between the two candidates over the results, which would delegitimize the entire political system.

That is the biggest danger right now. We are not at that point, but we are on a precipice. Just a little bit more from either of these candidates, and we could have a serious situation. 

So many U.S. soldiers and Marines have fought and died in this country to create a political framework to allow Afghans to vote. That is the U.S. mission here: to stabilize Afghanistan so that they can have a political process, so they can have a sovereign government.

If either of these candidates negates the entire political process by claiming victory – irrespective of the vote count – that delegitimizes the political process and undercuts the entire American mission.   It would beg the question, why did so many U.S. soldiers and Marines fight and die to allow Afghans to have a vote?

Now, that hasn't happened yet. But that's the danger. That's why you're seeing people like U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke weighing in on the issue.

But if this process of counting the votes takes forever, people will get impatient.

For the time being, both candidates are playing by the rules. We're on the edge, but we are not over it.

I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but that's where we are now.

More on Afghanistan's elections:
Interactive: A look at election-related issues in Afghanistan
CFR.org: Afghanistan election is 'critically important'

BEIJING – For most of August, it's been hard to imagine China leading the charge down a low-carbon path. 

On my Blackberry, headlines about how the country is seeking to ramp up development of alternative energies such as wind and solar power and rolling out electric vehicles have been competing all summer with relentless Tweets from BeijingAir telling us the obvious:  That air quality in the Chinese capital is "unhealthy" or "hazardous." 

(BeijingAir is a Twitter feed published by the U.S. embassy in Beijing, which monitors the air in the central downtown area, on an hourly basis, using U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards.)  

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

BeijingAir publishes hourly tweets on the capital's air quality.

Last weekend's weather was so foul (BeijingAir: "very unhealthy") that I stayed indoors, engrossed in reading a political thriller that pits the U.S. against China over climate change.

"Ultimatum," a novel that came out earlier this year, is set in the year 2032, when a newly elected American president discovers that the effects of global warming will be far more catastrophic than anyone realized. 

With huge swathes of America's coastline – as well as those of every other continent – destined to go under water, forcibly relocating hundreds of millions of people, the U.S. realizes any viable solution requires a coordinated effort with the world's biggest emitter, China. And so begins a secret, high-stakes diplomatic game of cat and mouse…

In an email exchange, the novel's U.K.-based author, who goes by pseudonym Matthew Glass, told me that he was inspired to pen the novel in part because "the evolving relationship between the U.S. and China will be the most powerful driver of international events over the coming half century." 

And Glass imagines that conflict between the two countries will arise over the control of carbon emissions. As it stands now, both are believed responsible for producing 40 percent of the pollutants linked to climate change. 

Glass believes that, "in the area of emissions control, the two powers are locked in a true zero sum game. If one emits more, the other must emit less, and vice versa. This puts them on a collision path, the outline of which is already becoming visible as we approach [the U.N. Climate Change talks at] Copenhagen."

Of course, "Ultimatum" is just a novel. But some of the points raised in the book make it a good read for anyone needing an entertainingly packaged refresher (or primer) on the 1997 Kyoto Protocol – especially just months ahead of its successor – the U.N. Climate Change Conference that will be held in Copenhagen this December. 

VIDEO: Tony Blair discusses China's efforts to tackle climate change

For one, there's the "common but differentiated responsibilities" stance advocated by China and other developing countries. 

One of the major challenges for Kyoto was the notion that countries such as China and the U.S. are at different stages of development so each country should play different, commensurate roles in combating climate change. Moreover, developed countries have more obligations than developing ones as they industrialized first.

"This was a common impasse we used to come to," said Sam Geall, deputy editor at China Dialogue, a bilingual Web site that exchanges views and responses to environmental concerns with a heavy emphasis on China. 

"Chinese intellectuals or people you engaged with on this subject, their attitude was, 'You got rich and now who are you to say that we can't develop the same way,' which would shut down the conversation right away."

But what's interesting is where real life has departed from Glass's novel. Not only have those same Chinese detractors changed their tune – perhaps, said Geall, helped by the increasing number of natural disasters, like the freak winter ice storms of 2008 – but the Chinese leadership has also exhibited signs of becoming more flexible on its stance over an emissions cap.

Last week, a senior Chinese climate change policymaking official said their emissions would peak at 2050 and that they would not "continue growing emissions without limit."  

Next week, lawmakers in Beijing will debate a new resolution and amendment to its renewable energy law. Although details are not forthcoming, news of this debate follows last month's publication of an 894-page think tank report, "2050 China Energy and CO2 Emissions Report," that supports aggressive policies to improve energy efficiency that will allow for emissions to fall by 2030. The authors of the report also advise the Chinese government to invest an average of $147 billion each year into developing low-carbon technologies until 2050.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

At nearly 900 pages, the "2050 China Energy and CO2 Emissions Report" is a guide of sorts for policymakers, researchers, and scholars.

"China sees economic opportunities in the clean energy space," said Charlie McElwee, a Shanghai-based environmental lawyer from the U.S.

He believes that authorities "see a chance that, given China's huge needs in this area, [if they] pump enough public funds into it, you can produce national champions to help with their innovation and tap into a growing market worldwide."

And the Chinese have a very high-profile champion. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Beijing this week and praised China for its momentum on developing and commercializing a range of low-carbon technologies. "They're really down to specific policy measures on renewable energy," he told NBC News.

The market opportunities sometimes seem to outweigh environmental concerns. As McElwee noted, Chinese officials appear more focused on, say, increasing wind power capacity instead of shutting down polluting lead smelters. Just this week alone, separate reports emerged of nearly 2,000 children found with lead poisoning from two polluting metal factories in two provinces.

China's jumpstart in the low-carbon technology race, however, isn't simply a business opportunity. It's also about power.

"[The Chinese] see this as power politics in its rawest form," said Jonathan Watts, a Beijing-based correspondent for the Guardian newspaper who writes about the environment. 

"They can see that the way these climate talks develop will shape who has authority, power, the ability to develop in the future. For that reason, they should try to use them. For that reason, they cannot afford to ignore them or to be seen as the villain."

That only works in thriller novels.

Japan has some of the world's toughest recycling laws. It also has the most rapidly aging population, who are leading the way to create a zero-waste community. NBC's Ian Williams reports.

VIDEO: Japanese elderly turn town into zero-waste community

In a country where women have few rights, thousands will head to the polls on Thursday to vote in Afghanistan's elections. NBC's Richard Engel reports on women's roles in the high-stakes election.

VIDEO: Will election help women in Afghanistan?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Miangul Aurangzeb excused himself for being a little hard of hearing, and smiled wistfully.

"I'm happy I am not the ruler today," he said. "It was a no-win situation."

Aurangzeb, an affable octogenarian, is still affectionately known as the "Wali," or ruler, of Swat, even though it has been 40 years since his family was in power.

In 1969, when the Swat Valley was incorporated into Pakistan (more than 20 years after the partition of British India), Aurangzeb's family kept their hereditary title and their homes – but lost their right to rule.

The Taliban would not have gained control of the idyllic Swat Valley, once known as the Switzerland of Asia, if Swat had remained sovereign and the Wali still ruled – at least that's Aurangzeb's view.

VIDEO: Former Swat ruler: 'revenge' motivates Taliban

Nonetheless, he blames former President Pervez Mushrraf and the United States for the bulk of Pakistan's troubles with the Taliban.

"They should not have involved Pakistan in Afghanistan's affairs. If they (the U.S.) wanted to bomb Afghanistan, they could have done it from America," he said.

"Pakistan produced the Taliban to help America throw the Russians out. And then Musharraf stabbed them in the back to please the Americans. Now the Taliban are taking revenge," said Aurangzeb, with a raised voice for added emphasis. "Revenge is a very important factor. They (the Taliban) have been let down by Pakistan."

He claims Musharraf allowed the Taliban to grow in strength in order to frighten President George W. Bush into giving him more money and weapons. 

Aurangzeb left Swat in April – just before the Pakistan army launched an offensive to clear the Swat Valley of local Taliban militants. More than two million people fled the fighting, but they didn't run away from the Taliban, he explained. The Taliban already lived there.

"They ran away from the army," he insisted. "They (the army) would tell a village to vacate in one hour. Now tell me if someone would tell me to vacate this house within one hour, can I do it? So the people just ran."

Aurangzeb follows the news out of Swat from his home in Islamabad – a spacious two story house filled with fine furniture and carpets. The house also chronicles several generations of family history through photographs of Aurangzeb's ancestors, his seven children, his grandchildren, and even snapshots of relatives with numerous heads of state – including President John F. Kennedy. 

Aurangzeb describes his father, the former ruler of Swat Valley, as a benevolent autocrat. 

"Ask anyone, even our enemies," he said. The valley was peaceful when his family ruled the area, he said. Justice was quick and fair based on a system he described as a combination of Islamic law and common sense. 

"If someone was arrested and told to go to jail, he went to jail. Now people are fed up with the justice, cases never finish and the courts are corrupt." It's the lack of justice that angers Aurangzeb the most and the reason why he believes that people eventually accepted the Taliban.

But Aurangzeb is quick to point out that he doesn't support the Taliban. What he wants is a proper democratic system and a proper judicial system – for Swat and for all of Pakistan. "We are among the top ten corrupt countries in the world."

How is it, he points out, that a policeman who takes a bribe of about ten cents, is dismissed and sent to jail and a person who takes billions of dollars in kickbacks gets away with it.

"Is that fair?" he asked.  "And the Taliban exploited that, which is why they became heroes of sorts – they stood up and said this is unfair."

Aurangzeb is making plans to return to his home in Swat in the next few weeks – as soon as the Internet is back up and the electricity is back on. His house is intact – just shrapnel here and there, or so he was told.

"The army killed my old servant," he said. "When I asked someone why, they said people were saying his son was a Taliban. You see, they (the army) couldn't get the son so they killed the father."

Aurangzeb is not optimistic about the future of Swat. The army offensive may be over for now, but he says people don't feel secure: "It's an insurgency and you will find there are very few insurgencies that have been crushed in the world."

BEIJING – In the past few years, China's Internet vigilantes have mobilized to root out, expose and shame people they perceive to be exhibiting corrupt or immoral behavior.

Marked for their unfettered zeal, the literal translation of the Chinese term for this ad hoc group of sleuthing online activists is: "human flesh search engine."

Nevertheless, while the stature of this group of online watchmen continues to grow, a new Chinese movie may force the Internet phenomenon out of the online sphere and into the country's public dialogue.

"Invisible Killer," produced and co-written by Xie Xiaodong, is the first movie to broach the subject of Internet vigilantism and dramatize the pitfalls of having a mobilized and motivated online mob administering its own brand of justice.

VIDEO: The dangers of online mob justice

In the film, the main character, Gao Fei, is accused online of seducing a married woman. In response, his online "judges" mete out justice by digging up and posting personal information about him on the Internet. Branding him a "fugitive" online, the cyber assault on Gao's character turns even nastier when his home is attacked and a manhunt sponsored by a Web site to locate and interview him turns violent.

The events portrayed in "Invisible Killer" may be fiction, but the story line is not far from reality.

China's online vigilantes have been active for several years, but their first big breakthrough came in 2006. At the time, the Chinese media and what were seen as "amateur sleuths" began a national manhunt to discover the identity of a Hangzhou woman who appeared in gruesome videos crushing cats under sharp stiletto heels.

Outraged netizens demanded justice and began to analyze the videos for clues on the whereabouts of the woman. A week after the release of the grisly video, the online watchdogs had traced the location of the killings and even traced the stiletto heels to a purchase made on eBay. The identity of the "Kitten Killer of Hangzhou" was eventually revealed to be 41-year-old nurse and recent divorcee, Wang Jue.

Wang and her cameraman were soon fired from their jobs.

Since Wang's case, these amateur sleuths have evolved to become, at their best, Internet activists used to root out government corruption.

Government watchdog
One prominent example of this was the case of Zhou Jiugeng, who until late last year was the director of a district real estate management office in Nanjing. A government official with what should have been a nominal salary, Zhou drew the ire of Chinese netizens when, at the height of the housing bubble in China, he declared at a press conference that developers selling apartments below market price should be prosecuted.

Zhou immediately drew criticism online for his perceived insensitivity to the plight of everyday Chinese. But it was not Zhou's words that really got him into trouble as much as how he appeared in a photograph. Discerning viewers noticed on Zhou's wrist a Vacheron Constantin watch, an imported luxury that costs more than $25,000. By his side were a pack of "Nanjing 95 Imperial" cigarettes, a high-end brand in China that retails for $22 a pack.

What followed was a swift but intense campaign by the "human flesh search engine" to flush out Zhou's other excesses. Pictures of Zhou's lavish house and luxury Buick soon found their way onto the Internet, proving in the court of online public opinion that Zhou was living well beyond his means as a local government official.

Zhou was removed immediately from his administrative post and the Communist Party under charges of corruption and bribery.

Though it has been speculated that the watch was just a counterfeit, follow-up reports revealing innocence or absolution are often ignored or swept aside. The mere perception of excess or guilt is often enough to indict in the court of online public opinion.

Indeed, the increasingly intense scrutiny that Chinese government officials find themselves under from the Internet has forced worried local officials to pay attention to Chinese netizens, a trend that has begun to draw the attention of a concerned central government.

Speaking to journalists in Beijing earlier this week, Steven Dong, a former TV news presenter for CCTV and currently an adviser to the State Council, said, "The Internet has become the most powerful media in every government official's daily life."

Dong noted that out of 84 government officials who came under close scrutiny by the online watchdogs, one-third of them have been removed from office.

Despite the successes, there have been ugly moments that have called into question the legitimacy of an anonymous online mob handing down justice as it deems fit. Many of these cases involved heightened nationalism online, such as the Tibet riots of last April.

In the case of Grace Wang, she didn't even need to be in China to become a target of the "human flesh search engine." When the Tibet riots broke out last year, Wang, a Chinese national and a freshman at Duke University at the time, found herself trapped in the middle of a confrontation between pro-Tibet independence and pro-China counter-demonstrators.

With friends on both sides, Wang tried to facilitate a conversation between organizers, promising to write "Free Tibet, Save Tibet" on the back of a pro-Tibet protester in exchange for his participation in a talk with members from the pro-China side.

Wang quickly became the subject of Chinese netizens' ire. They posted her photo online and thousands of angry comments from Chinese declared her a traitor. Her e-mail was flooded with hostile messages, including one that promised, "If you return to China, your dead corpse will be chopped into 10,000 pieces."

More disturbing, though, was the revelation that personal information, including her phone number, national identification card number and directions to her parents' apartment in the city of Qingdao, had been posted.

Wang's parents were forced into hiding when outraged Chinese stoned their home and threw human feces outside their front door.

It was precisely cases like Wang's that prompted Xie Xiaodong to write and produce "-Invisible Killer."

Speaking to NBC News, Xie said he isn't against the idea of online activism in principle. "I'm not against the human flesh search itself. What I'm against is we have no protection for [our] privacy rights," said Xie. "So I think the government has the duty and responsibility to make a law to safeguard ordinary people's privacy rights."

Attempts to regulate the online watchdogs have been plagued by the simple fact that much of the information netizens are able to cull is already freely available.

Instead, the Chinese government has attempted to cast aside the supposed veil of anonymity on the Internet in China by passing a law earlier this year that requires all domestic news sites with comment sections to require real name registration for users. This and a similar real-name registration law proposed in 2006, but pulled off the table after a significant public backlash, have represented the government's only significant foray into regulating netizens.

But Xie is optimistic that his movie will help people see that even without government intervention, the online sleuths can regulate themselves as long as people follow one basic tenet: "Respect other peoples' right. That's the best way to protect yourself."

NBC News' Jim Maceda just returned from several weeks of reporting in Afghanistan.

Watch the video below to see a behind-the-scenes tour of how U.S. troops cope with the extenuating circumstances of living in what Maceda calls a booby-trapped ghost town in Afghanistan's 130 degrees Fahrenheit heat.  

After years of reporting on military embeds in Iraq and Afghanistan, Maceda calls this particular trip the "embed from hell."

VIDEO: Behind the scenes tour a military embed in Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The guessing games over the fate of Pakistan's Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud, continue as government officials and Taliban militants exchange verbal duels – challenging each other on national TV to prove that Mehsud is alive or dead.

Accusations on both sides swirl: Top Taliban militant commanders, loyal to Mehsud, allege that Pakistani government officials have known for weeks that Mehsud is seriously ill and under a doctor's care in North Waziristan. So they say that now is a convenient time for the Pakistani government to declare him dead and remove U.S. pressure to go after him.

The government counters that the Taliban are just buying time. They have, they argue, irrefutable intelligence that Mehsud was killed in a U.S drone attack on Aug. 5 in South Waziristan, along with his wife, a brother and some aides at the home of his father-in-law while receiving medical treatment.

VIDEO: Did Pakistan's Taliban take a hit with the death of Baitullah Mehsud?

Mehsud, 35, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was Pakistan's enemy Number One. Charismatic and ruthless, he was practically unknown until 2007, when he teamed up with al-Qaida, and banded together at least 13 separate militant groups operating in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas.

Mehsud declared himself the leader of an estimated 20,000 fighters and hundreds of suicide bombers, and ruled unopposed until last week, when the drone fired two hellfire missiles and allegedly took him out – or maybe not.

Mehsud had a long history of poor health. Plagued by kidney problems and diabetes, he was reported to have died last year from illness, only to surface again and marry for a second time. Mehsud kept a low profile and rarely spoke to the media. Last week, the news of his death unleashed a flood of rumors, conspiracy theories and media mania.

First came the claims and counterclaims by Pakistani government officials, intelligence sources and sources within the Taliban – all of whom claimed to know the fate of Mehsud.

These pronouncements were quickly followed up by threats and accusations on all sides, which finally led Pakistan's interior minister, Rehman Malik, to dare the Taliban, on national television, to prove their leader was still alive.

The "dead or alive" dilemma gripped the nation. Malik's challenge was played over and over again on all of Pakistan's TV channels and led to contradicting banner headlines in the nation's newspapers. On Saturday, most of the nation's dailies proclaimed Mehsud dead; on Sunday, the same dailies revised reports of his death with a question mark. The controversy has riveted the nation.
 
Early Saturday morning, Mehsud's close confidant, Hakimullah, called NBC News' Mushtaq Yusufzai to say Mehsud was alive, but seriously ill once again. Hakimullah said the Taliban were preparing to take revenge for the killing of Mehsud's wife.

But it was on Saturday evening that the tale took a different turn – more like a spaghetti Western, but without the sheriff.

The cell phones of local journalists started ringing with breaking news of a gun battle between Hakimullah and Mulana Waliur Rehman – Mehsud's 40-something-year-old handpicked successor, should Mehsud be dead, that is.

A shura, or tribal council, had been called in Sara Rogha, a remote hamlet of South Waziristan, to anoint a new Taliban chief. All of the important Taliban commanders were apparently present, or at least that's how the story whipped around the media.

And then, allegedly, a heated argument broke out, Kalashnikovs were drawn and in the end both Hakimullah and Mulana Rehman, the two main contenders for Mehsud's crown, were dead.

Pakistani TV whipped up a frenzy. The shootout was proof, they reported, that Mehsud was dead and his top aides were embroiled in a power struggle. Malik, the interior minister, quickly called the press to announce the gun battle and that at least one of the rival commanders was dead; the other, he said, was wounded.

Turkistan Bhittani, a mid-level commander from an anti-Mehsud Taliban faction, was quick to give interviews and also announce that yes, Baitullah Mehsud was dead, and so were Hakimullah and Mulana Rehman. "Baitullah's Taliban were in disarray and disintegrated," he boasted.

Then one of the presumed dead, or perhaps just critically injured men, Mulana Rehman, called local journalists in Peshawar and declared that the entire ballyhoo was a propaganda ploy, by the government and the intelligence agencies, to destabilize the Taliban.

He was, he said, very much alive and in good health, as was his rival, Hakimullah. Rehman said there had been no gun battle; in fact, there had not even been a meeting.

Meanwhile, the suspense continues. Pakistani government officials insist they are more and more convinced that Mehsud is indeed dead. Interior Minister Malik said that in the absence of any concrete proof, the government will now try to match Mehsud's DNA with that of his brother. But, Malik added, somewhat unconvincingly: "That is if security forces could reach the site and possibly get hold of some of the dead militant's body."  

Neither the government nor the army has had any physical presence in the remote Mehsud tribal lands for months.

As for the Taliban, their new strategy, they say, is to keep everyone guessing – just like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar do.

KABUL, Afghanistan – The 'new' U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has a familiar ring to it.

"You can't kill your way to victory here, Jim," the U.S. Army Brigade Commander began, cocking his cap back off his forehead, as he often did before making a point. "You must protect the population, separate the enemy from that population, and then, quickly, bring good governance to the people so they  reject the enemy when he tries to return."

The colonel called this a "new" strategy, fully supported by Washington, and based on proven counter-insurgency practice. He believed this would radically alter the course of war in Afghanistan and lead, hopefully, to a "tipping point" – shifting momentum away from the Taliban and towards coalition forces.

VIDEO: How successful has the Afghan surge been?

But, this comment wasn't something I pulled out of my reporter's notebook from my recent trip to Afghanistan – although it could be. It's actually a quote from then-Col. John 'Mick' Nicholson, commander of Task Force Spartan, in Eastern Afghanistan, back in April of 2006.

Interestingly, Nicholson's boss at the time was Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the then-commander of U.S. and NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

Now fast-forward more than three years. I am back in Kabul, but I kept flashing back to that earlier conversation as I listened to Eikenberry, now the new U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, define for me what he called "the conditions for success" here.

"First you must secure the area and separate the people from the enemy, Jim. But right behind that, steps have to be taken to help the government of Afghanistan..." My thoughts drifted as Eikenberry went on to describe the need for "good governance" and a "sense of justice." I was thinking instead about how I'd heard this "new doctrine" before, almost word for word.

My point: There's little really new about the Obama administration's "new strategy" in Afghanistan.

True, as reported in Monday's New York Times, there's been a clear shift in counter-narcotics tactics, away from indiscriminate poppy eradication – which hurt farmers, but not the Taliban –  while going more aggressively after the drug lords and smugglers.

But the much touted "clear-hold-build" paradigm, and the need for both "military" and "civilian" surges, are ideas lifted right out of the U.S. military's counter-insurgency handbook, drawn up by Gen. David Petraeus himself.

This strategy was, in fact, formulated during President George W. Bush's administration and applied by Bush, despite resistance from his own advisors, in Iraq.

What is new – and a potential breakthrough – is the commitment that the U.S. government appears to have made to the strategy in Afghanistan.

Congress has allocated tens of billions of new dollars, not just to the fight, but, for instance, to turning Afghanistan back into the agricultural powerhouse it was before 30 years of war destroyed it.

VIDEO: Clearing a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan

When Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke recently paid a visit to staffers in Kabul at what he called "the most important embassy in the world," he made this "new commitment" his first talking point.

"I can assure you that President Obama is personally committed to this mission, and that the resources you've required for so many years are now being made available to you,'' Holbrooke promised. During his remarks, I caught a glimpse of now-Gen. 'Mick' Nicholson, standing among the crowd, and beaming with approval.

This was payback, I thought, for those years when the boots and weapons and intelligence assets flowed mostly out of Afghanistan and into Iraq.

Over the years covering the U.S. war in Afghanistan, I've often been struck by the disconnect between U.S. commanders on the ground and the politicians back home. It felt like a constant tug of war between the mission and the means.

In 2006, Nicholson, and a few others, spoke eloquently of the ways to win "trust and confidence" in Kunar or Nuristan, and other Taliban strongholds, but their hands often seemed tied by other priorities, usually in Iraq.

The unspoken truth back then was that, despite gains made in several successful battles, there were never enough U.S. troops, or Afghan forces, to hold those gains, or build the Afghan infrastructure. Clear-hold-build was still-born.

Today, there are some encouraging signs. Embedded with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, I met up with Col. Bill McCollough, a 40-something battalion commander, who sounded much like Nicholson, years before.

"It's all got to happen at the same time," the Minnesota native told me, as if from the same page. "While we're establishing security you have to be doing job creation, you have to be enabling governance. Because those things contribute to security, too."

I stifled a smile. In other words, I thought, you have to do a lot of "nation building." That's what the Bush administration talked about, but never committed to.

Now, McCollough, a driven professional who honed his counter-insurgency skills in Iraq, says he has what he needs to make the (not so) new strategy work.

His battalion was part of the so-called "surge" of Marines – over 10,000 in all – who since June have spread across Helmand and other parts of southern Afghanistan, the heart of the Taliban insurgency. And they've learned from past mistakes, a Marine spokesman recently said, effectively, that U.S. Marines won't clear what they can't hold, and won't hold where they can't build.

VIDEO: Holding ground in Afghanistan's no man's land

This shift in commitment – if not in strategy – hasn't been lost on Afghans.

Haroun Mir, a U.S.-educated Afghan analyst from Kabul, says he's encouraged by the pledge to make Afghanistan Obama's number one foreign policy priority.

 "If Afghans perceive that the U.S. and NATO mission here is short-term, just temporary, they'll start siding with the Taliban, only out of fear of reprisals if the Taliban returns to power," said Mir.  

He admitted that he was an optimist, and thinks the U.S. effort has ''been on the 'right path' for several years now. ''We are winning the war. But we have to continue, it's just a question of commitment.''

That commitment certainly won't be easy, especially if the numbers of U.S. dead and wounded continue to rise through this fighting season, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, warned in an interview in the Wall Street Journal. "We've got to stop [the Taliban's] momentum, stop their initiative. It's hard work,'' he said.

But his plan to put troops into heavily populated areas isn't a new strategy. Thousands of Canadian forces have been doing just that for several years in Kandahar, trying to "separate the enemy from the people," with little success.

What is new (that word again) is the commitment of large numbers of U.S. forces to reinforce those Canadian units in the South.

U.S. military experts, quoted in Sunday's Washington Post, said that these security and political commitments will last at least a decade and potentially cost the U.S. more than the war in Iraq.

Mir agreed with the time line. "It could take another decade," he said, "to convince the Taliban that fighting is useless."

But that begs the question, is America that committed?

BEIJING – A debate over whether eating organic foods provides any nutritional benefit was sparked late last month after an independent study in the U.K. found that there were no significant nutritional differences between organic and conventionally produced food.

But, in China, a growing appreciation for organic food isn't simply because of the perceived nutritional benefits; consumers have turned to organic food as a means of ensuring some measure of health and safety. 

After all, this is a country where the challenges of maintaining food safety are regularly in the newspaper headlines – the melamine milk scandal in 2008; tainted cough syrup that killed more than 100 people in Panama in 2006; and pet food containing adulterated wheat gluten, which was blamed for thousands of animal deaths in the U.S. in 2007.  Not to mention the myriad reports of food being tampered in local Chinese markets.

This year the Chinese government has taken numerous steps in an attempt to improve food safety. Chief among these is the country's first food safety law, which went into effect on June 1, enacting tough penalties against producers of tainted food and consolidating oversight in one cabinet-level agency. And more recently, officials established a database keeping track of food manufacturers who have issued recalls in the past. 

Still, consumers in Beijing are taking matters into their own hands.  In fact, just as it has in the U.S. and other western countries, community supported agriculture – buying locally grown produce directly from farmers – has begun to grow in popularity in the capital.

A Taiwan-born New Yorker, Lejen Chen, explains to NBC News why she set up the Green Cow Organic Farm, a little oasis on the outskirts of Beijing.

VIDEO: Organic food sprouts in China

An Israeli court order police to evict two Palestinian families from their homes, despite having lived there for 50 years, so Jewish settlers could move in. The evictions follow a long legal battle over the disputed ownership of the site. NBC's Martin Fletcher reports.

VIDEO: Palestinians evicted from homes