By Richard Engel, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent
 
The Wikileaks release of internal, often secret, diplomatic cables is a major setback for the U.S. State Department. American officials are trying to downplay it and mend fences. Those fences need urgent mending.
 
What was leaked?
American diplomats at foreign embassies issue cables. These are internal notes meant to advise officials at the embassy, the State Department in Washington and, ultimately, the president of the United States. 

Diplomats are encouraged to write cables. If they don’t write them, they get a reputation for being lazy. If a diplomat has a particularly interesting meeting with a foreign politician, political analyst or even a well-connected journalist, he or she might write a cable.

Diplomats will also write cables to brief officials before an upcoming visit. If the American secretary of state is visiting Lebanon to meet the foreign minister, diplomats in Beirut will prepare a cable in advance to describe what to expect and include private information and analysis about the parties involved in the meetings.

It was these cables that were stolen and posted by WikiLeaks. It is a serious blow to the State Department’s information gathering system. 
 
In journalism, we’d call what is happening “burning a source.”  If I interview someone, and that source gives me information “off to the record,” context that I am supposed to know, but asked not to report, and I publish it, I burn the source. If I publish the information and include the source’s name, I really burn the source, I flambé him.

Journalists will burn a source if they can’t contain themselves, usually because they think the story is so good, so juicy, that it will win them kudos and awards, or if they think what they have learned is of such national importance that it needs to be made public.

If you burn a source, the assumption is that the source will never work with you again, and will bad-mouth you to other sources. These are the unwritten rules of the game. 

Wikileaks just flambéed many of the State Department best sources.  
 
Far worse than past leaks
The last WikiLeaks document dump was of military correspondence from Iraq.

Those documents were short bursts of information, most of them in military acronyms. It was essentially a long list of tactical information and witness reports. It was like a giant police blotter of events, a shotgun blast of mostly bad news, field reports of bombings, explosions and shootings. The military was (and remains) furious because the data was stolen from a classified system. 
 
The leak of the diplomatic cables is far worse. The cables discuss on-going policy and conversations with major, usually sensitive, powerful and occasionally vain, world leaders.  They are also written in clear English, not military bullet points, and at times were sprinkled with sarcasm and irony.
 
One cable included a colorful description of the Kazakh defense minister.
 
“Kazakhstan’s political elites also have recreational tastes that are not so exotic. Some, in fact, prefer to relax the old-fashioned way. Defense Minister Akhmetov, a self-proclaimed workaholic, appears to enjoy loosening up in the tried and true ‘homo sovieticus’ style – i.e., drinking oneself into a stupor.”
 
Another took a swipe at Saudi Arabia’s Prince Khalid bin Faisal, Governor of Asir. Prince Khalid is “known for being extremely cheap.”
 
Another cable described Saudi King Abdullah as having little faith in the Iraqi and Pakistani presidents. The cable may also foreshadow the Saudi reaction to the WikiLeaks scandal.
 
“Once the king has lost trust in a counterpart, as has been the case with Nouri Al-Maliki or Asif Zardari, his personal antipathy can become a serious obstacle to bilateral relations.”
 
The cable described the Saudi king as particularly suspicious of Iran: “(King Abdullah) described Iran as ‘adventurous in the negative sense,’ and declared ‘may God prevent us from falling victim to their evil’…Summarizing his history with Iran, Abdullah concluded: ‘We have had correct relations over the years, but the bottom line is that they cannot be trusted.’”
 
It is a powerful exchange, and one the Saudi king undoubtedly expected would remain private.  In the Middle East trust takes a long time to build and once it is lost, is difficult to regain.
 
Why it hurts
Foreign diplomats already have a hard enough time gathering information. In many cities there are two diplomatic communities: the Americans and everyone else. 

I’ve seen this play out countless times from Baghdad to Kabul, Beirut to Cairo.  If a French, Spanish or Polish diplomat for example wants to meet a politician or author, the two go to a restaurant or a private home, have a few drinks, and discuss whatever the subject may be. 

America embassies, however, these days are generally like little (or sometimes really big) fortresses. Security restrictions on American diplomats often make it difficult for them to mingle, especially in cities where the threat of terrorism or kidnapping is considered high.

To travel, American diplomats often have to fill out travel requests, sometimes days in advance, to schedule a meeting and set up a security escort. To make it easier, American diplomats often ask sources to visit them at embassies, which can be inconvenient (going through checkpoints, metal detectors, leaving mobile phones outside) and demeaning, if officials feel they are being summoned.

Now, however, there may be a major change. Sources might ask themselves, why bother? Why go through all the effort to meet with the Americans if they can’t keep a secret?

In many counties, officials and analysts don’t want their peers, and certainly not the general public, to know they meet with American embassy officials. People who were on the fence already, not sure if they should go in and advise an American diplomat, could determine that it’s simply not worth the risk.
 
“None of us are at all happy about it,” a senior American diplomat said to me about the leaks.
“It will certainly setback efforts to build relations of confidence with foreign officials and influential actors.”

More from Richard Engel on Wikileaks: A tool for terrorists and criminals?  and WikiLeaks' Iraq files: 400,000 insights into war

The who, what and why of WikiLeaks

Revealed: U.S. diplomats slam world leaders

Click here for complete coverage of WikiLeaks 

By Richard Engel, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent 
 
Aside from the diplomatic damage the WikiLeaks dump of more than 250,000 confidential U.S. State Department cables has created, security experts say they also provide a treasure trove of information that could be exploited by terrorists and organized crime syndicates. 

The documents, which claim to have been redacted for safety, reveal much more than the often-embarrassing opinions of American diplomats of world leaders. 

From a security point of view, they also reveal who American officials met, where, and in many cases, for how long. This is the type of information that hit teams spend months, or even years, trying to gather by conducting risky and expensive surveillance. Now the information is online in clearly marked, easily sorted files.

Not just a dinner party guest list
For example, a cable from Abu Dhabi describes a dinner hosted by Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. 

He was having the dinner party for the former American CENTCOM Cmdr. John Abizaid. The cables listed a half-dozen senior UAE military officials who attended the dinner.
 
This is not just a guest list. WikiLeaks exposed the inner circle of the UAE’s military and intelligence command. The guest list identified the power players, information that could be useful to someone who wants to harm the UAE, or change the nation’s policy. 

While the names and titles of the security officials are known (they can be looked up on Google), revealing who gathers for a top-level meeting shows who is really important. There are many security officials in the UAE.  The dinner list identifies which ones are critical. 

It would be like releasing the names of the people who gather in the White House situation room at the time of a crisis. 

‘Actionable intelligence’
Another cable described how Jordan’s king, the UAE’s army chief and the Duke of York Prince Andrew often go hunting together.
 
“Jordanian King Abdullah II is a close friend of UAE Armed Forces Chief of Staff Muhammad bin Zayid Al-Nahyan. The two frequently hunt – in Morocco and Tanzania – joined, more often than not, by England's Prince Andrew.”
 
No doubt the security advisers of all three leaders are now suggesting that those trips stop, or be moved to new locations. If they’re not, they should. There can’t be that many hunting areas in Morocco and Tanzania suitable for a king and prince. It wouldn’t be difficult to figure out where they would go. The cables said the group travels frequently. 

“Understanding who is included in a leadership meeting and where the leaders frequently travel is the type of ‘actionable intelligence’ we often seek on our enemies,” said former top White House counter-terrorism adviser and NBC News security analyst Roger Cressey. “What WikiLeaks has done is give any adversary of a U.S. ally that kind of actionable intelligence. It is beyond irresponsible.”
 
In a statement, Sen. Joe Lieberman also said the WikiLeaks release puts lives at risk.

“It is an outrageous, reckless, and despicable action that will undermine the ability of our government and our partners to keep our people safe and to work together to defend our vital interests,” said Lieberman. “Let there be no doubt: the individuals responsible are going to have blood on their hands.”
 
A statement from the British Foreign Office said the cables “can damage national security, are not in the national interest and, as the U.S. has said, may put lives at risk.”

Quirks reveal patterns
That includes the safety of some officials who have had troubled relations with the United States.  The quixotic Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi certainly has enemies who want to kill him (the United States bombed his house in 1986), was exposed in details that would make his security entourage sweat bullets.
 
The leaked cables said Gadhafi won’t fly longer than eight hours, won’t fly over water and won’t stay above the first floor of hotels. I’m surprised they didn’t list what side of the bed he sleeps on.
 
The cables also explain how Gadhafi relies less on his female bodyguards. Back when white suits with epaulets and military hats were in style (at least in style with Gadhafi), the Libyan leader would always be accompanied by a troop of female guards. He said potential attackers would be confused and disoriented by their beauty and sex appeal. Now, the cables said Gadhafi “cannot travel without” a “voluptuous blonde” Ukrainian nurse, whom they name.
 
During WWII and the Cold War, this kind of intelligence – the oddities, quirks, and most importantly, the patterns of world leaders – was gathered by intelligence agencies. It still is. You don’t need to know how to get to a world leader. You need to know who can. It goes on and on. 
 
The cables describe who attended meetings with Gen. Petraeus in Beirut, a city where the government has little control over militants and kidnappers.
 
They identify the key counter-terrorism officials in Arab countries, and their traveling companions. 
 
In a statement regarding WikiLeaks, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, “By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals. We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.”
 
The WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables will undoubtedly cause many officials, kings, ministers, presidents and princes to review, if not change, their personal security procedures. While the Wikileaks cables contain fascinating insights into political meetings and backdoor dealings, they can also be mined for details used to harm the people named in them.
 
More reporting from Richard Engel on other WikiLeaks: WikiLeaks' Iraq files: 400,000 insights into war 

The who, what and why of WikiLeaks

Revealed: U.S. diplomats slam world leaders

Click here for complete coverage of WikiLeaks 

Ahn Young-joon / AP

South Korean activists with portraits of North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il and his son Kim Jong Un shout slogans before releasing balloons with some leaflets condemning North Korean at a rally near the DMZ on Tuesday.

By Ian Williams, NBC News Correspondent

NEAR THE DMZ, South Korea – They punched the air, condemning Kim Jong-Il as a "criminal and murderer,” then burned pictures of the North Korean dictator, his heir-apparent son and a big North Korean flag. They chanted and sang, holding aloft posters saying "Attack Pyongyang!"

Then they began their bombardment. Luckily the weapons of choice were leaflets and one-dollar bills, sent aloft over the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas using 10 large helium balloons.

South Korean activists and defectors from the north were calculating that the balloons would burst over North Korean territory, though it seemed to me that they were drifting the other way, and might well end up in Seoul, the South Korean capital.

I had traveled to Imjingang, near the DMZ Tuesday, where the activists had set up their launch-pad close to the watchtowers, wire and fences that mark the edge of the world's most fortified border.

In recent years the propaganda salvos – “psy-ops” as they are often called here – were stopped, as the South Korean government pursued its "sunshine policy" of increasing political and economic ties with the north.

Now the balloons are back and news reports here are predicting that giant speakers will soon be dusted off and resume their broadcasts of propaganda and music across the frontier.

In the past, the north has reacted furiously to the broadcasts and the leaflets, leading one official to describe them as more effective than artillery shells.

Most of those launching the balloons today were older Koreans, more likely to remember the 1950- 1953 Korean War that ended with an armistice. This generation has tended to be more uncompromising towards the north.

Younger Koreans have had an incredible ability to shrug off the threats and rhetoric from Pyongyang. They just didn't take the tantrums seriously. Even when a South Korean patrol boat was sunk in May, killing 46 seamen, and evidence pointed overwhelmingly at the north, Koreans were divided.

Now Kim Jong-Il, North Korea's Dear Leader, seems to have managed to close that generation gap by attacking civilians for the first time since the war ended over 50 years ago. Now South Korea is more united in anger and anxiety than at any time I've seen during my many visits here over the past 15 years.

‘It shook Koreans up’
Two civilians and two marines died during the bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island last Tuesday, and large sections of the island's fishing village were destroyed.

"Everyone was living life to the fullest, and not really thinking about what the North Koreans were saying," said one young woman at Imjingang Tuesday. "But this time, we've seen the civilians, we've seen the burning buildings. It shook Koreans up. The images were just too close to home."

The sentiment was echoed later by Hojung Kim, a young student I met as she was shopping in Seoul's fashionable Myeongdong district. "I am scared. I am really quite scared after the attack on Yeonpyeong Island," she told me. "North Korea was always threatening us, but it was only threats."

Seoul can be a deceptive city: brash, modern, prosperous, but it’s just 30 miles from the DMZ, and well within striking distance of one of heaviest concentrations of weaponry on the planet. Suddenly residents feel very vulnerable.

You only need drive a few miles north of the city before the modern highway is lined with fences and watchtowers, looking out on the Han River, and later the distant hills of North Korea.

Opinion polls show that South Koreans are overwhelmingly in favor of a tougher stance towards the north, although much of their anger is also directed at their own government for failing to prevent the Nov. 23 attack.

South Korea's president is talking tough, and, of course, U.S.-South Korea military exercises are underway. In reality, though, there are no good options. The policy seems to be one of tough talk, but also caution so as not to escalate an already tense situation.

Perhaps the most lasting legacy of the Yeonpyeong attack will be as a wake call, particularly to younger people, shaking what often has been a dangerous complacency about the nature of the man next door.

Following the release of more than 250,000 classified State Department documents, foreign capitals are beginning to respond to how they were seen through the lens of local U.S. diplomats.

While U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted that confidential reports by diplomats about other foreign diplomats  is basically what diplomacy is and has been going on for hundreds of years, there will surely be a few bruised egos abroad.

For instance, Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was quick to say that he does not attend the “wild parties” alleged by U.S. diplomats in Rome, but that he hosts “elegant and dignified” dinner parties.

Here are a few of the reactions compiled by NBC News correspondents and producers in Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Germany.

EGYPT
By Charlene Gubash, NBC News Producer

CAIRO – In the Arab World, where much of the press is muzzled by all powerful regimes, the public is normally obliged to guess at the reality behind the rhetoric since spokesmen rarely speak and press briefings are almost non-existent. But the WikiLeaks cables have provided a deliciously rare "behind closed doors" view of many Arab leaders.

“Thanks to Wikileaks, I felt like a child who was allowed to listen to grown-up conversations for the first time," gushed "The Sandmonkey," a prominent Egyptian blogger.

The region’s favorite TV news venues – satellite channels Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya – reported extensively on the leaks implicating Arab leaders during Monday’s broadcasts.

There were two items that were considered to be the most explosive: Saudi Arabian King Abdullah’s repeatedly calling on the U.S. to strike Iran’s nuclear sites and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak approaching Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas before Israel’s 2008 offensive on Gaza and asking if they would be willing to take over the Gaza Strip after the defeat of Hamas.

Some felt vindicated by the revelations. Hisham Kassem, former publisher of Egypt’s first independent daily newspaper, Al Masry al Youm, says the leaked documents provide "further exposure of how rotten and double-faced the regimes are: the double standard of public discourse on one hand and what is said behind closed doors on the other."

Sandmonkey also blogged about how the cables proved the duplicity that had been suspected all along. “There is now evidence that Egypt is aiding Israel in isolating Hamas; that Mubarak has nothing but utter hatred for the Muslim Brotherhood and utter distrust towards Qataris and Syrians; that the entirety of the Arab Gulf region, including Qatar, are weary of Iran’s lies and would love to see Iran gone or disarmed; and that they all would secretly support a strike on Iran from either the U.S. or Israel. The dichotomy between their rhetoric and actions was finally exposed as hypocritical and duplicitous to their people and the world.”

Kassem believed the leaks would provoke only short-term public outrage, but that the real fallout will be between governments whose officials pointedly criticized each other to the U.S. in leaked documents.

Sheikh Khalid Bin Ahmad Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s foreign minister, tweeted that the revelations "weakened diplomacy in general, U.S. diplomacy in particular."

Arab analysts in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt concluded that Arab politicians won’t change their policies but will be more guarded in their future conversations with U.S. officials. "They are just going to get better at covering up information,” said Rania al Malky, editor-in-chief of the Daily News, an Egyptian English language newspaper.

Most observers believe that the public, now privy to the real state of affairs between their leaders and the U.S., will take the information in stride. "I think it is helpful, insightful and believable. It didn’t tell us something which is unbelievable," said Mervat Mohsen, head of news at Nile TV. But he added that most Egyptians are too caught up in major issues, like unemployment, to care.
Al Malky said that while the average Egyptian may doubt the veracity of the leaked information, opposition groups "will use the information to make a case against the government to the bitter end."

In any case, Clinton will be able to assess the fallout, public and private, when she meets several of her Arab counterparts this weekend in Manama, Bahrain, where she will give the opening speech before the annual Manama Dialogue.

AFGHANISTAN
By Atia Abawi, NBC News’ Correspondent

Allauddin Khan / AP

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, second from right, is met by his half brother Ahmad Wali Karzai, left, in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan on Oct. 9, 2010.

KABUL – One of the more interesting narratives in the WikiLeaks release describes American officials’ meetings in September 2009 and February 2010 with Ahmad Wali Karzai -- the half brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a power broker in the Taliban’s home turf of Kandahar and allegedly a drug trafficker. 

The cables show a wide-ranging conversation – from Karzai’s attempt to promote himself as a U.S. partner, to his instance that he would take a polygraph test to dismiss rumors that he is a drug trafficker, to his fond recollections of his days as a restaurant owner near Chicago’s Wrigley Field.

In a phone interview on Monday, Wali Karzai said he was disappointed by the leaks – he is well aware of his reputation on the world scene but he believes he has done a lot to help the U.S. and international community.

“We invite them as guests and treat them as guests,” he said about his meetings with American officials, but expressed disappointment that his own countrymen were not treated with the same respect.  He mentioned that he met with Frank Ruggiero, the American diplomat describing his one-on-one with Karzai in the leaked cable, over 50 times. 

“America has done a lot for us; they’ve helped build our army, police forces and institutions. We are grateful for their efforts,” said Karzai.  But he added, “It’s going to be harder to talk to them in the future because we don’t know if what we are saying to them privately will be made public. But we won’t stop cooperating with them. This is about helping Afghanistan and we must work together for that.”

PAKISTAN
By Carol Grisanti, NBC News’ Producer
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's Foreign Office was quick to issue an official statement criticizing the WikiLeaks release but added that the government was not in a position to comment on the authenticity of U.S. official documents.

Of most concern to Pakistanis were the comments by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia about Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president.  One cable quotes King Abdullah saying that Zardari was "the greatest obstacle to Pakistan's progress" and "when the head is rotten, it affects the whole body." 

Pakistan’s Foreign Office called the report "misleading and contrary to the facts" and went on to say that the king and the people of Saudi Arabia have always stood by Pakistan. “It is quite evident that these mischievous reports reveal the utter inadequacy of the author to grasp the essence of the Pakistan-Saudi relationship," the statement said. 

The cables also revealed U.S. concerns over Pakistan's nuclear facilities. According to the leaked documents, the U.S. has mounted a secret effort, since 2007, to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani reactor. 

In May 2009, Anne Patterson, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, reported that the Pakistanis were refusing to schedule a visit by U.S. technical experts because, according to a Pakistani official, "if the local media got word of the fuel removal they certainly would portray it as the United States taking away Pakistan's nuclear weapons."

Abdul Basit, Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesman, explained that the fuel in question was from a research reactor given to Pakistan in the 1960s by the United States. “Since 2007 they have been asking us to return that fuel," he said in an interview with NBC News. "Our position is that the fuel is our property and we cannot return it."

GERMANY
By Andy Eckardt, NBC News’ Producer

MAINZ, Germany – “The U.S. government is facing a disaster,” was the first line of German public broadcaster ZDF’s report on the WikiLeaks dump.

News stands in Germany prominently displayed the cover of Der Spiegel magazine on Monday morning, with its headline, “Revealed: How America Views the World.” The German magazine, one of the few media outlets worldwide to receive excerpts of the documents from WikiLeaks ahead of the general public, called the release "nothing short of a political meltdown for U.S. foreign policy.”

With a special focus on secret reports from Berlin's U.S. embassy, Der Spiegel wrote that the documents portrayed German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle in rather unflattering terms. Not great timing for Merkel and her governing coalition, which is already under increasing domestic political pressure – the international criticism of the German leaders via the links only adds to the bad news.

In the confidential U.S. diplomatic cables, Merkel was described as risk-averse and Westerwelle as largely powerless.

In one cable to the State Department in 2006, the then U.S. ambassador to Germany, William Timken, wrote that the tone of trans-Atlantic relations may have improved, but that Merkel "had not taken bold steps yet to improve the substantive content of the relationship."

Timken’s predecessor, Philip Murphy was highly critical of Westerwelle, writing that his thoughts “were short on substance," and that "Westerwelle's command of complex foreign and security policy issues still requires deepening.” 
 
Opinions on how damaging the revelations are for German-U.S. relations were mixed Monday.  

“Big secrets are not the problem, at least not in Germany,” John Kornblum, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany told ZDF.  "But if you now speak with an American diplomat, and you have to be worried that it will appear in the newspaper the next day, that is severe.”

By NBC's Carol Grisanti and Fakhar ur Rehman

ITTAN WALLI, Pakistan – In early November, in the dusty city of Sheikhupura in Pakistan’s heartland, Asia Bibi, an illiterate Christian woman and mother of five, was sentenced to death by hanging under the country’s blasphemy laws.

Her crime? She allegedly insulted the Prophet Muhammad.

Almost immediately, the death sentence unleashed international condemnation, and put pressure on Pakistan’s government to overturn the verdict and amend the country’s blasphemy laws – a holdover from a 19th century penal code designed to protect minority religious sects during British colonial times. 

The law was radicalized during the 1980’s under the military dictatorship of General Zia ul Haq. He imposed life sentences, even death, for blasphemy to appease the mullahs and legitimize his grip on power.

Pope Benedict XVI appealed for clemency but hard-line Islamic groups have threatened civil war if the government pardons Bibi or attempts to amend the law.

Bibi’s husband, 48-year-old Ashiq Masih, is desperate, convinced radical Islamic groups are aiming to kill the family. He has gone into hiding, along with his children, sheltered inside a Christian colony in an outlying district of Sheikhupura. Masih insists his wife was framed, a victim of old score-settling in their village of Ittan Walli, where his family was just one of two Christian families.

“She was picking berries with other women, when she was sent to get water,” her husband said. “One of the women refused to drink the water after my wife dipped her cup into the bucket. This woman said it was contaminated because it was touched by a Christian.” According to Masih, all the women then started taunting his wife, and shouting insults against her mother and their children. Bibi just repeated the same insults back at them. “The name of the holy prophet never came up.”

At the time, Masih said he thought that was the end of it. It wasn’t. 

“Five days later, the local cleric came to our house, followed by an angry mob, and dragged my wife away,” he said, recalling the incident that took place in June 2009. They beat her, ripped off her clothes and accused her of insulting the prophet. Then they locked her up in a house until the police came to take her away.”

Anjum Naveed / AP

Ashif Masih, right, husband of Christian woman Asia Bibi who had been sentenced to death, and daughters Sidra Shahzadi and Isham Ashiq listen to Pakistani minister for Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti, unseen, during a meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan on Nov. 24.

In an interview with NBC News, Qari Muhammed Salem, the local cleric in Ittan Walli, accused Masih of lying. “I talked to everyone who witnessed this incident and she is guilty,” he said. “She confessed to the crime in front of the entire village and then she begged for forgiveness,” he insisted. 

“She even told me she said these things in rage during a heated argument and would never think of blasphemy,” he said. Salem said he called the police to lock her up, only to protect her, because the angry mob would have killed her.

Najma Yousaf, a sister of Bibi, still lives in the family home in Ittan Walli, a rural village of approximately 10,000 inhabitants, almost all Muslim. “I’m not afraid to live in our house,” she said. “The villagers are all very nice with me, my husband and our children. They are angry with my sister.” 

Bibi, 45, is the first woman condemned to death under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. While no one has ever been executed, most of the accused – all men – languish in prison alone and forgotten. Human rights groups point out that the law is a convenient way to settle scores, often among the Christian community who total about 2 million of Pakistan’s 175 million people.

In a statement released from New York, Human Rights Watch, called for Pakistan’s government to immediately introduce legislation to repeal the blasphemy laws.

“Asia Bibi has suffered greatly and should never have been put behind bars,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The injustice and fear the blasphemy law spawns will only cease when this heinous law is repealed.”

Other minority groups are targets too. The Ahmadis, an Islamic minority sect that has been declared non-Muslim under Pakistani law, are often the victims of intimidation and violence and incarcerated under the blasphemy laws. In addition, they are prime targets of the Pakistani Taliban who, in the past, have blown up their mosques, killing hundreds, according to Human Rights Watch.

STR/PAKISTAN / Reuters

Protesters hold up placards demanding the release of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy, at a rally in Faisalabad, in Pakistan's Punjab province, Nov.29.

Bibi’s lawyer has filed an appeal with the High Court in Lahore and Pakistan’s President Asif Zardari may consider an unconditional pardon if the appeals process takes too long.

So far, the Minister for Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti submitted a report on the case to Zardari. He concluded that the charges were baseless. In an interview with NBC News, he said that Bibi could be released on appeal in the high court. “We should wait for the court proceedings but if the court delays then the president may pardon her on the basis that she is innocent,” he said.

Bhatti is well aware of the possible consequences of an acquittal. Judges have been assassinated for freeing victims and several accused persons have been gunned down inside prisons or outside courtrooms as they walked free.

“We will protect Asia and her entire family,” the minister said. “No harm will come to them.”

Sidra, Bibi’s 18-year-old daughter, takes her younger sisters to the jail every Tuesday to visit their mother. “My mother tells us not to cry and to be strong,” she said.  “But now, my mother is crying, so how can we be strong.”

With media reports of a possible pardon for Bibi, hard line Islamic groups have held demonstrations in cities across Pakistan. They’ve warned Zardari of a severe backlash if he commutes her death sentence. 

At one rally, organized by “The Movement for the Protection of the Prophet’s Honor” denounced any attempt to change the law. “We are ready to sacrifice our life for the prophet,” they chanted. 

By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent
 
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The victims of Haiti’s latest challenge lie in cots quarantined so as not to spread cholera.
 
The bacterial disease has killed more than 1,100 people and hospitalized more than 18,000 since the outbreak was first reported late last month and health officials here fear the epidemic is about to get far worse: The United Nations estimates as many as 200,000 Haitians will contract cholera within the next six to 12 months.

Kerry Sanders / NBC News

Pierre Dennis,9, suffers from cholera and clings to life in a Red Cross tent hospital.

In the worst hit area, Cap-Haitien, U.N. statistics reveal the death rate is an astounding 30 percent.

“It's an epidemic, it's a nationwide crisis now,” said Imogen Wall, the U.N.Humanitarian spokeswoman in Port-au-Prince.  “Cholera is in Haiti now, so this will go on for years.”  
 
Race to save lives
Cholera, a water-borne bacterial illness, can kill within hours if left untreated. But if treated quickly, survival is almost guaranteed. A simple mixture of salt and sugar water to replace lost fluids nearly always results in a cure, according to the World Health Organization.  

But when patients get treatment late, the administration of intravenous fluids may be necessary.
 
The faces of the youngest of the victims are haunting: Twelve-year-old Yvio St. Leger and his nine-year-old brother Pierre Dennis lay side-by-side in a Red Cross tent hospital 40 miles north of the capital city. Both are alive, but their parents and two siblings died en route to the clinic.

Dr. Henrike Meyer, who is in Haiti with the German Red Cross, slipped a finger-nail sized pill into Pierre’s mouth. Then she gave him a little water so he could swallow it down. As hard as he tried, Pierre couldn’t swallow. After three tries, he spit the pill into a bucket.

He was trying to take Doxycycline, an antibiotic that is a long-tested medicine used to treat a variety of infections all over the world.

Pierre was hooked up to an IV. “The main problem is we need to provide fluid, fluid, fluid,” said Meyer. “He got already yesterday about four liters, and we have to continue.”

(The brothers were recovering well, according to doctors Friday, but they are still under observation at the hospital).  
 
Anger over source of illness 
Cholera is often spread due to poor hygiene. Despite rampant bad sanitation and poor access to clean drinking water in Haiti, cholera has not been recorded in the island nation for six decades. But cholera is endemic to Nepal, and thousands of Nepalese troops came to help Haiti in the wake of January’s devastating earthquake.

Outrage over the outbreak has erupted over the last several days, fueled by suspicions that U.N. troops from Nepal spread the disease from their base into the Artibonite River system, where the initial outbreak was centered last month. Those suspicions are shared by some prominent global health experts.
 
Anti-U.N. violence spread to the nation’s capital Thursday as protesters threw rocks at peacekeepers, attacked foreigners' cars, blocked roads with burning tires, and toppled light poles.  

But Wall, the U.N. spokeswoman, said where the illness came from is irrelevant at this point.
 
“It doesn't change the response knowing where it came from. We know everything we need to know about this illness from lab tests, and we know how to deal with it,” she explained. “So the origin is obviously of interest but not significant from a response view.”
 
Dealing with crisis at hand
In one of the quarantines, 12-year-old Emerson, cradled in his mother’s arms, said he believed he got sick after eating rice.

“It hurts inside. I cry a lot,” he said. As his mother gently poured cool fresh water into her hands and bathed his face, Emerson cried, “I’m hot. I’m hot. I’m hot.”

Doctors say all Emerson and his mother can do right now is wait.
 
Juergen Rostan, the logistics officer at the German Red Cross clinic, said he’s unsure what they’ll do if more patients arrive.

All 45 cots at their clinic are now filled. His hope is to cure those who arrive as quickly as possible, so they can leave and make room for the next patients.

“We do what we can here on the spot, and that’s all we can do from our side here,” he said.

Wyclef Jean on Haiiti presidential run: World 'wasn't ready for me'

 Prevention education needs to spread
Unlike the outpouring of help that flooded into Haiti following the January earthquake, there’s little outsiders can do to help now.  Local aid organizations say the key to beating the cholera epidemic is education.
 
If word could spread quickly to explain that washing hands, boiling water for 20 minutes before drinking it and keeping fecal matter far from water sources will help prevent the spread of illness, experts believe the battle could be won.
 
But there are a limited number of Creole speakers with medical authority with the time to spread the word because they are increasingly dealing with the crisis at hand.
 
Another problem is millions of homeless packed together in tent camps in the capital city. Health officials say that close proximity means once cholera hits, it can spread to hundreds of others within days.
 
The Haitian department of health has launched a team of six men to scour the city for the dead. On Tuesday they found two bodies. Wednesday, another was found dead in a busy street. The team wears masks, protective yellow suits, and gloves, and they spray a chlorine disinfectant on the bodies. It’s a stunning image that scares residents as much as it calms them.
 
Haiti has a long history of uphill battles: political upheavals, hurricanes, earthquakes, and now, cholera. But deep in the soul of those I met, there is an energy that drives them to keep going and overcome the problem, not matter what the challenge. And in that spirit, there is hope for a nation that again is in crisis.

By Chris Hampson, NBC News Director of International News

LONDON – Not many people know this, but it's been scientifically proven that the brain of the average London cabbie is somewhat bigger than ordinary brains like mine.

That's because they spend years cramming their heads full of what they call “The Knowledge” – how to get from one end of the city to the other by the best possible routes. Thousands of memorized street names mean they are human GPSs (but with no off-button).

A by-product of these super-sized brains is that they always have a view on every topic under the sun. As they sit for hours in traffic, they spend their time wisely, quietly absorbing what's going on around them. They are the litmus paper of London.

Oli Scarff / Getty Images

The front pages of British national newspapers are dominated by news of the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton on Wednesday in London.

This means you can always get an opinion in the back of a black cab - whether you want one or not.

On my way back from Buckingham Palace Wednesday, I could see from the size of my driver's baseball cap that here was a man worth talking to. 

No need to seek dozens of interviews about the only news in the U.K.: the royal wedding.

I knew this cabbie could speak for England, and he did.

In short, we love it.

It's just what austerity Britain needs – a knees-up (party).

“It means we get millions more of these,” he said, pointing to the tourists in the Mall, the busy street between Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. “And some of them are going to get in my cab.”

He liked William: “He seems grounded, not like some of those other royals. Got some common sense.”

As for Kate – and he saved this till we were in Trafalgar Square – he knew her.
 
Well, he did, if you count picking her and a girlfriend up from a nightclub six months ago. But that's closer than I've got.

“She was nice, sensible, normal – not drunk like some women we pick up.”

No scandal then, but it was reassuring to know our future Queen Catherine is not a binge-drinker.

My driver – and I never quite got to see his face – was not a monarchist. He wasn't a fan of the minor royals. He was, to use his own word, grounded. But he was happy to give the “important ones” their due.

The queen? “She puts in the hours. Always working.”
 
Princess Anne? “She's really busy. I often see her out and about.”

A man of clear vision, he could easily distinguish real happiness from a stop sign. And that's what he told me he saw in Kate and William yesterday.

Now here's my point. If any of you have ever stumbled across my ramblings before, you will know that I am not a big fan of our royals.

So I found myself somewhat at a loss last night to understand why I (oh the shame) had a tear in my eye as I watched Kate and William talk of their engagement and their plans for the future – including starting a family with, presumably, lots of baby kings and queens to keep the monarchy going.

AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth

Britain's Prince William and his fiancee Kate Middleton pose for the media at St. James's Palace in London, Tuesday, after they announced their engagement.

It was, I suppose, because we’re all suckers for a love story.

We had one, or so we mistakenly thought, with Diana and Charles.

Now it’s her son’s chance to put it right. 

Ever since those haunting pictures of William and Harry walking with such dignity behind their mother’s casket, the boys have earned a place in this country’s affections.

William’s choice of his mother’s engagement ring for Kate – so his late mother didn’t “miss out on the excitement” – seemed just what we expected of this particular mother’s son. How proud she would have been.

SLIDESHOW: A royal couple's long courtship

So, on behalf of my sage cabbie friend and I: roll on the wedding, roll in the tourist dollars, bring on the knees-up. And may they all provide our apparently cash-stricken country with a bit of fun.

Lord knows we need it.

Click for complete coverage of the royal engagement  

Richard Engel, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent

S. Sabawoon / EPA

Afghan President Hamid Karzai addressing journalists after offering Eid al-Adha prayers in Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday.

KABUL, Afghanistan – The good news is there is finally a framework, a blueprint, to end the nine-year combat mission in Afghanistan. The bad news is that it’s scheduled for a long time off (2014) and that, to use a military phrase for uncertainty, it’s “conditions based.”
 
According to senior U.S. military officials in Afghanistan, the American blueprint is to wind up combat operations sometime in 2014. That means the fighting phase of the war, codenamed Operation Enduring Freedom, the large scale U.S. military operation that entails moving heavy weapons and vehicles, surrounding cities and clearing them of militants and their weapons, is supposed to end in three to four years, depending on when in 2014 combat operations finally stop. 

After that, some American troops would remain, similar to the 50,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq assisting and training Iraqi security forces.

By 2014, U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan should be over, if the plan holds, and a new non-combat mission would begin.  

But there are a number of uncertain conditions – and Afghan President Hamid Karzai may be chief among them.

The exit plan
The shape of the plan to end combat operations in Afghanistan ironically started to become clear when President Barack Obama announced that he was ramping up the Afghan war. At West Point last December, Obama said he would add another 30,000 troops to the 68,000 already there, bringing the total to about 100,000 – effectively declaring the start of his Afghan surge.

But unlike former President George Bush’s 2007 surge in Iraq, Obama added something of a timeline to his military bet, doubling down on a faltering war with the hopes of turning it around. 

Obama said his surge would start to end in July 2011. The time reference became the subject of intense debate.  It was vague, perhaps deliberately so. People understand the start and beginning of events, but the start of the end is a much squishier concept, by definition more subjective.

What did that mean? How long would the drawdown take?  How fast would it go?  It was never said. Stephen Colbert aptly compared the July 2011 benchmark as the “start of the diet.” 
 
But the question always remained, what would happen in and after July 2011?  Would there be a sharp reduction in troops, a crash diet, or a slow life-style altering weight loss program?  

Now at least we have a trajectory. The plan, to be presented by Obama when he attends the NATO summit in Lisbon later this week, is to start drawing down some surge troops in 2011, and move to transitioning security responsibility to the Afghan government with the goal of having all combat troops out by 2014. A force – perhaps of 30-60,000 American non-combat troops (no number has been set as far as I am aware) – would remain in Afghanistan to assist and train the Afghan security forces.
 
But there are many unknowns, many things that are still “conditions based.”

The Karzai factor
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is an unpredictable leader. 

He has been prone to emotional outbursts, and is increasingly critical of the United States military and American Afghan policy. When pushed by the United States, Karzai has threatened to join the Taliban. He’s openly said he takes cash payments from Iran.  He’s compared the American military to Afghanistan’s Russian occupation, which some American officials interpreted as tantamount to saying it is legitimate to attack U.S. troops. 

He’s called for American troops to stop so called “night raids,” which U.S. military officials believe are essential to kill and capture militant leaders. He’s equated Western security contractors, linked to billions in development contracts, to terrorists. 

Karzai has been – to say the very least – hard to read. 

Gen. David Petraeus has even assembled Afghan experts to try to predict what the next “crisis” might be. When will be the next time Karzai gives an interview or makes a statement that seems to contradict what has been agreed in private? The experts’ conclusion: Who knows? 

Even Afghans close to Karzai are having trouble anticipating his behavior. Karzai is erratic in part because of his personality and by circumstance. Afghan and U.S officials say Karzai’s inner circle won’t stand up to him. He’s lived cloistered in a Kabul palace for nine years surrounded by officials who feed him conspiracy theories. He’s trying to emerge as a national hero by criticizing the United States, biting the proverbial hand that feeds him.

Karzai thinks Pakistan will deliver him a peace deal with the Taliban. U.S. officials don’t even know what a peace deal with the Taliban would look like. Would the Taliban actually be given power?  Would there be Taliban ministers? There are many – countless – calculations that Karzai is apparently trying to figure out. 

The United States now has a roadmap to end its combat mission in Afghanistan. It remains to be seen, however, if Karzai has the same plan.

Electricity shortages are a constant nuisance of everyday life in Pakistan. In an effort to ration electricity, through a system called load shedding, it is often shut off at the most inconvient times - in the middle of the midday heat or when school kids' are doing their homework.

Pakistan is pinning its hopes that a fifth nuclear rector - to be built by the Chinese - will help solve the problem. NBC News' Sohel Uddin reports from Islamabad. 

ATTOCK, Pakistan – Walking through the Ersari Elementary School in this town 90 minutes north of Islamabad, we were struck by how dedicated the students were to their studies. 

In cramped classrooms across two small buildings, children ranging in ages 5 to 16 diligently followed their lessons, each one of the estimated 300 students in a clean, pressed uniform.

Adrienne Mong/ NBC News

Student retention is a problem at the Ersari Elementary School because many parents want their children to begin working as soon as they reach 15 or 16.

And despite the distraction of having our NBC cameraman, Faisal Tariq, and I slipping in and out of rooms with our cameras, they listened closely to their teachers, reciting after them phrases in English, Urdu or Dari.

The students all come from Afghan refugee families who live in Attock, Pakistan.  In fact, the student body is a microcosm of Afghanistan: the children are Pashtun, Hazara, Turkoman, Uzbek and Persian.

For 15 years, the Afghan community has been sending its children to Ersari Elementary School, which was set up in 1995 by Barakat, an NGO based in Boston.  http://barakatworld.org/ 

An American carpet manufacturer, Chris Walter, and his Afghan business partner, Habibullah Karimi, founded the organization, which runs schools in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

At the school in Pakistan, which is staffed by local employees, the students learn English, Urdu, Dari, Pashto, arithmetic, science, Islamic studies and social studies.

“We wanted to address the needs of the substantial Afghan refugee population in Pakistan,” said Lyla Hardesty, Barakat’s interim executive director. Hardesty was touring the NGO’s three schools in Pakistan to assess their progress --and what she saw on her first visit to the country impressed her.

“The teachers and the principals at the schools really know the community. They know all their students and they know the parents,” she said.

Trouble retaining students
This connection has proved invaluable, building trust between the schools and the often distrustful refugee population. 
“In 1994, we had 22 students and each of those students was hard-won,” said Hardesty. Today, Barakat counts between 1,200 to 1,500 students in three schools in Pakistan.

Even so, Barakat’s teams of education experts still face an enormous cultural stumbling block in recruiting and retaining students from the Afghan refugee community in Attock.

The community is conservative and very traditional, hence its reluctance to allow daughters to attend school in the first place. And it’s also incredibly impoverished.

“They’re still reluctant to send – especially their girls – to school [once] they’re over the age 15,” said Sumera Sahar, Barakat’s country director in Pakistan. That’s because many of the families want to send their children out to work. 

“So you can see in our classrooms, the overcrowded classrooms [are] in the lower grades, and gradually when you move to the senior classes, the enrollment of both boys and girls is very [much] less.”

The numbers bear out that challenge. Since Ersari opened its doors 15 years ago, only 15 girls have gone on to college. 

‘Bringing them to school is my first success’
“Education is very important,” said Abdul Rehman, an Afghan who helped to start up Ersari and now serves as the school supervisor. “The children who receive an education here, they get good jobs.”

Rehman, a Turkoman who fled his home in Jowzjan, northern Afghanistan, 27 years ago, seems to be the exception to the rule. His daughter is attending medical school and is one of three female graduates from Ersari who are studying to become doctors.
The boys have a better track record: roughly 50 percent of them finish their schooling at Ersari. 

“It’s very important for me and for my future,” said Mahmood Anwar, a 14-year-old also from Jowzjan. He said he dreams about becoming an engineer.

The challenge of keeping kids in school also means Ersari can’t afford a much-needed relocation. “We need more resources,” said Shehnaz Begum, the school’s principal. “The building we have here is too small.”

Indeed, students, especially the younger ones, were crammed into tiny classes with little elbow room. But in order to find a bigger yet affordable space, Ersari’s faculty would have to move the school outside the center of town.  “If we move out of the city, we’ll be too far for the parents, and they won’t send [the children] to school,” said Begum.

So Begum and the teachers figure it’s better to try to educate as many of the children as possible, even if it means cramped conditions.

“Bringing them to school is my first success,” said Sahar. “They are in classrooms.  I consider this as our success, our achievement.”
 

By Ian Williams, NBC News' Correspondent

BANGALORE, India – Kenny Jones adjusted his microphone, waiting for his cue. "Radio Inigo 919. It's 20 minutes after 10 o'clock."

He took a couple of breaths over the fading beats of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" before asking listeners to call in and let off steam over problems on the airport road.

"Every day there are 400 new cars added to the streets here," said the DJ from Ohio who now hosts one of hottest radio shows in Bangalore.

NBC News

Sean Blagsvedt, a California native, works with an Indian colleague on the streets of Bangalore.

His show, which plays international music, has a massive following among the young technology crowd in this, India's high-tech hub.

"This place is really booming," he told me when he came off air. "It’s very happening, a real melting pot. People come from all over the place. Look at me!"

A little later, in another part of this rapidly expanding city, I met Sean Blagsvedt, from California, who started up Babajobs.com, a pioneering employment agency for blue collar workers, such as drivers, cooks and gardeners, which uses text messaging.

"Basically, people text in their profile, a simple profile," he told me. "We then send back a text of matching jobs. Suddenly the phone is a digital tool that enables people to get connected to better information."

Blagsvedt came to Bangalore in 2003 for Microsoft, but left four years later to set up Babajobs, seeing an opportunity in the explosive growth of cell phone usage in India, which now has more than 700 million cell phone lines.

"There's a lot of hope in this city," he said.

I didn't expect to meet people like Jones and Blagsvedt in Bangalore. After all, this is the city frequently blamed for taking American jobs. Its India's outsourcing capital, and "to be Bangalored" has fast become a term for losing a job.

Some 60 percent of the work done by India's $60 billion IT and outsourcing industry for the U.S. is done here. The industry employs around 4 million people, and Bangalore is the hub.

President Barack Obama chose to skip this city which used to be at the top of the list for visiting dignitaries. So I came here to see what he is missing.
 
Not about cheap labor, about ‘being global’
Obama, when he was still a candidate, declared that he wanted to see jobs created in Buffalo, not Bangalore.

But the city has continued to boom, and Bangalore has now moved well beyond the call centers and back-office work where outsourcing started in the 1990s.

The city now hosts some of the world's most cutting edge research and development work, and the glittering new office blocks here are a roll-call of America's technology giants, employing highly skilled Indian workers.

"We don't do things because it’s cheap. We do things because of the expertise available here," said Raj Raghavan of GE India Technology. GE, the parent company of NBC Universal, has set up in Bangalore its biggest technology center outside the U.S., employing 4,000 people on work that includes the latest medical diagnostics and aero-engines. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal),

Still, in spite of rapidly increasing wages here, skilled software engineers cost only a fifth of their U.S. counterparts.

But Raghavan was quick to say, "This technology center is not about outsourcing, it’s about being global."

GE is also now concentrating increasingly on developing products for the fast growing Indian market. Raghavan showed me a portable electro-cardiogram GE's developed for rural healthcare.

"India's going to be big for GE," he told me. "It's a win-win situation for everyone."

There is a similar story at CISCO and at Texas Instruments, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in Bangalore. Texas Instruments released a picture to a local newspaper of their first satellite dish being unloaded from the back of a bullock cart.

For many U.S. companies, their Bangalore operations give them an important foot in the door, and they say benefits will flow back to the U.S. as the Indian market takes off.

‘Jobs will go wherever the talent is’
Early one morning I visited Tutorvista, which provides online tutors to the world. It too is booming, with the fastest growth from the U.S.

"People think we are taking jobs away from the U.S.," said Srinivas, a tutor, between teaching algebra lessons to two high school students in the U.S., where it was evening. "It's unimaginable that this could be done from the U.S. The cost would be 10 or 12 times what we are providing."

Tutorvista, which charges $100 per month for unlimited access to a private tutor, argues that far from taking jobs, they are providing an additional service for people who could not afford the cost of a private tutor in the U.S. Their biggest growth area recently has been from older people attending community colleges, going back for more education during the economic downturn.

A recent survey of Bangalore's IT workers found a majority understand the anger in the U.S. towards outsourcing. But they were proud of the work they are doing.

“Jobs will go wherever the talent is," said Sunder Prakashaw, who runs a company called Get Friday, which provides personal assistants to small businesses and busy individuals. "America will have to find new ways to reinvent itself."

One of Sundar's proudest moments was when a client phoned from the New York subway, where he was lost, and Get Friday helped him figure out where he was and organized a taxi for him a couple of stops down the line.

‘Jobs based on merit’
Technology colleges are expanding across Bangalore to meet the demand for skilled workers. One of the most prestigious is RV College of Engineering, where I met students working on a project to design a racing car. They were defensive about accusations that Bangalore is taking American jobs.

"As long as people are getting jobs based on merit, that shouldn't be a problem I feel," one of the students told me.

Yet in many crucial ways, they were still looking to America. They showed me their car, telling me the engine and the chassis material came from the U.S., since it was the best source. And after graduating, 10 out of the 15 team members said they want to do post-graduate work in the U.S., which for them was still the best place to study.

Later that day I read another newspaper article complaining about the outsourcing of jobs. Only this time it was an Indian newspaper article about jobs moving away from India, where costs are rising fast, to the Philippines, which is now set to take over as the call center capital of world. It seemed that Bangalore was being Bangalored.

Which I guess is the reality of a globalized economy.
 
Before I left the city, I bumped in to Sean Blagsvedt again at a packed city bar. It was "Booze and Clues" night, a drink-fueled quiz night, attended mostly by the tech crowd, and his team was doing well.

He told us that four members of his family had recently lost jobs in the U.S.

"The U.S. economy has to make things the world wants," he said.
 
His business is rapidly expanding across India, providing a simple but very effective service for a huge sector of India that previously only learned about informal jobs via word of mouth. He now plans to expand to Indonesia.

The relationship between Bangalore and America is a complicated one. It’s certainly is not a zero sum game. There is so much more to this city, and it’s far from being all bad news for the U.S.

I think on balance, Obama should have come here, but I'd be interested to hear whether readers of this blog think he was right to ignore India's most dynamic city.

By Arata Yamamoto, NBC News Producer

TOKYO – It may be a Japanese version of WikiLeaks, or simply Japan's inability to protect its own classified information.

But during the wee hours on Friday morning, video of the Sept. 7 confrontation at sea between two Japanese coast guard vessels and a Chinese fishing boat, the incident which caused a major riff between the two countries, was uploaded onto YouTube.

The leaked coastguard video, 44-minutes long, shows the entire drama of the Chinese boat ramming into the Japanese coastguards ships despite repeated warnings.   

The newly released video could be the match that re-ignites animosities between the Pacific neighbors that leaders in both countries had hoped they had put to rest. 

Territorial dispute
The collision shown in the clip created a major diplomatic row after Japan arrested the captain and crew of the Chinese boat, claiming they intentionally rammed into both of the Japanese vessels.

Beijing retaliated by claiming the islands in the East China Sea, near where the event took place, and staking its rights over the surrounding waters.

For years, the disputed island, the site of vast potential gas and oil reserves, have caused friction in the region from time to time – usually ending opaquely with some form of political compromise on both sides.

But this time, the event escalated into something more formidable when local Japanese prosecutors decided to charge the Chinese ship captain with obstruction of justice. The dispute led to large demonstrations in several Chinese cities, and even triggered mass rallies in Tokyo, something very rare for Japan.

And as the tit for tat escalated, China stopped its supply of rare earth minerals to Japan – exports critical to the production of dozens of products from cell phones to hybrid cars to high-tech weaponry. Beijing claimed the move was unrelated to the diplomatic row.

The tension between the two countries had become so alarming that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intervened during a recent visit to the region calling on both sides to make nice.

Calm sparked
Since then, both sides had taken great lengths to quell the situation. Despite calls from the opposition for full disclosure of video of the incident and suffering a huge blow in opinion polls for appearing to be appeasing Beijing, Prime Minister Naoto Kan's administration decided to limit access to the footage.

So as not to fuel further acrimony, the government only showed a 7-minute version of the video to a parliamentary committee and took strict security precautions to make sure it did not get out to the general public. The lawmakers were forbidden from carrying cell phones or any devices for recording the footage. 

But by Friday morning, it was all over Japanese TV.

The video showed a blue boat bearing a Chinese name colliding with two Japanese patrol boats as sirens blared and Japanese crew repeatedly shouted "halt." The video was taken from aboard the Japanese vessel, which was a coast guard patrol craft.

Japan’s Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara admitted Friday that the leaked video was cause for “grave concern regarding how the government manages and controls information.”

For its part, China said Friday that the video does not change its view that Japan acted illegally by arresting the fishing boat captain.
 
Inside job?
Still, the territorial dispute between the two countries is bound to be reignited with the YouTube upload.

It will certainly create an awkward moment when the leaders of the two countries meet next week when Japan hosts the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Yokohama, near Tokyo.

It is still unclear whether the leak was deliberately done by an insider, or whether the video file was hacked from the outside.

But just this week, in a separate incident, it was revealed that over 100 classified anti-terrorism police files dating back to 2004, including information obtained from the FBI, were leaked on the Internet through a file sharing software.
Some of the data included information pertaining to security measures taken at the G8-Summit Japan hosted in Hokkaido two years ago.

Although the Japanese government has stressed that the information leaked on the web would not affect security for next week's APEC gathering, the two recent gaping holes in Japan's information management has raised concern over how Japan controls its sensitive, classified data.

The government spokesman Yo@!$%#o Sengoku admitted, “we will need very extensive reforms in everywhere imaginable" to correct this situation.

By Mujeeb Ahmad, NBC News

KARARGAH, Afghanistan – Ever since he joined the Taliban movement in Kandahar in 1994, Mullah Aminullah has been a close aide of the movement’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar.

Mujeeb Ahmad/ NBC News

Mullah Aminullah, a close aide to the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Omar, during a recent interview.

Aminullah’s loyalty to Omar is unshakeable; the two men are from the same tribe and grew up together in Uruzgan province in Afghanistan. When he first joined the Taliban, he was Omar’s personal cook but as he gained the trust of the organization’s senior leaders was made a commander.

After the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban in 2001, scattering its leadership, Aminullah and Omar remained in touch with each other – that is, as much as Omar keeps contact with anyone.
 
Just a few days after word spread in the Western media about high-level peace talks between the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and influential members of the Taliban, I tried to get word to Omar’s deputy, Mullah Zakir Qayum, to find out what was really going on.

That request was quickly refused. A short time later, Aminullah sent word that he would see me and make arrangements to escort me to Karargah, a tiny village of mud huts on the way to Kandahar in Afghanistan.

With my Pakistani identity card, I was able to enter Afghanistan from the Chaman border crossing in Balouchistan Province.  All I needed to say, to both the Pakistani and Afghan border guards, was that I was shopping for a particular car, an old Japanese model, and a friend in Afghanistan knew where I could buy one.  After a quick body search, I crossed over the Pakistan border and was on my way to the Afghan town of Spinboldak where three men on motorbikes were waiting for me.

I was asked to hand over my cell phones and then helped on to a motorbike and blindfolded for what seemed like more than an hour’s journey to finally meet Aminullah.

‘We are winning, why should we negotiate’
More than six feet tall and slender, Aminullah is around 45 years old, which makes him approximately two years younger than Omar.  He is an imposing figure who never takes off his dark glasses and stroked his thick black beard as we chatted and drank tea. His bravado was evident and the 250 fighters under his command seemed to be in awe of him.

“All of these reports of peace talks are nonsense,” Aminullah said. “This is just propaganda by the U.S. and its NATO allies to hide their defeat on the battlefield. We are winning, why should we negotiate.”

“So in your opinion, what is the current status of the U.S. and NATO on the battlefield,” I asked.

“Let me ask you that question,” Aminullah shot back. “Which U.S. or NATO operation has been successful? Has the operation in Helmand been a success?”

Aminullah was quick to answer his own questions.

“British forces cannot come out of their bunkers. What about the U.S. operation in Marjah? That certainly failed. And whatever small gains they say they are making in Kandahar will fail too.” 

Is Mullah Omar really in charge?
I was curious to know how Mullah Omar was still able to control the Taliban and direct the war in Afghanistan while being a recluse; or was Omar’s importance simply more fabrication than fact?  Aminullah was patient and considered his response.

“There is no question that Mullah Omar is our supreme leader and commander,” Aminullah said in a low voice. "Those who try and downplay his role are either ignorant or misguided.”

NBC News

Mullah Aminullah, a Taliban leader, sits with NBC News' reporter Mujeeb Ahmad after a recent interview in Karargah, Afghanistan.

“He communicates with us through messengers on a weekly basis – sometimes there are 10 different messengers before the message reaches the intended person. And the messengers are never the same; each communication will have different men to deliver Omar’s orders,” he stressed.

I asked Aminullah if he knew where Mullah Omar was or for that matter where Osama Bin Laden might be.

“No one knows where Osama is,” Aminullah laughed. “The last time I saw Mullah Omar was in August 2009 in Nimroz Province. It is more than one year now, so I am hoping he will send word that we can meet again somewhere soon." He paused and went on, "I am looking forward to that.”

‘Leave us alone’
“What would be the Taliban’s conditions to hold peace talks with the Karzai government?” I asked.

“Our position has never changed and the Americans, NATO and Karzai know it all too well. Before there can be any peace negotiations, all foreign forces have to leave our lands; only then can there be peace,” Aminullah said.

As I was preparing to leave, Aminullah grabbed me by the hand and said: “Look, the Americans call us terrorists; what terrorist act did we ever commit? They traveled 10,000 miles to us and forced us to wage jihad against the Russians, who were their enemies, and now they are waging a war against us. We are Afghans and Afghanistan is our country. All we want is for the Americans to leave us alone; only then will there be peace in Afghanistan.”

NBC News’ Carol Grisanti in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Related blog: Is the Taliban really talking?