By Sebastian Rich NBC News

KABUL – In one of the oldest quarters of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, there is an ancient bazaar that caters to a very niche market: the sale of birds.

The Ka Farushi bazaar, located near the Pul-e Khishti Mosque, is also known as the Alley of Straw Sellers.

The directions are a little hairy, but here goes:

Off a smelly traffic-choked street there is an alley barely wide enough for two men. Take that to a smaller alley that in turn winds almost impossibly to an even smaller one. The centuries old thoroughfare is lined with ramshackle, collapsing, mud brick buildings.

After walking past an old man having a close razor shave, the hum of Kabul's endemic traffic will thankfully begin to fade away. If a small boy thrusts two fat white doves in your face, keep moving. Step past an aromatic bakery, and you've found yourself in Kabul's ancient bird market.

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This part of the city is a warren of tiny lanes where no cars can enter. It’s the kind of area that makes you feel like you’ve gone back in time, to a period many centuries ago. The air is thick with deals in the making and the trill chirping of birdsong.

In tiny open-fronted shops, merchants sell doves, parrots, pigeons and a variety of songbirds. Plus the occasional rabbit for the pot.

When I last visited, three old friends, Abdul Samad, Deen Mohammad and Qalander Shah were passing the time chatting about everything under the sun.

Mohammad and his friends said they have been coming to Ka Farushi for over 18 eighteen years. Mohammad had one little bird for sale, a “Jal” for $23.

I got the impression that the sale of the bird was of little import. Good conversation and companionship were more the order of the day for the three friends.

In the late afternoon light, as the sun lost its intense summer heat, the beating of hundreds of small wings could be heard as flocks of doves gracefully rose over the Afghan city. 

Lost in the centuries-old winding alleys of Ka Farushi, the troubles of Afghanistan seemed a distant memory, for the moment.

By Atia Abawi, NBC News Correspondent 

KABUL – After nearly four decades of military service, Gen. David Petraeus will be trading in his combat pants for some slacks as he assumes his new role as the director of the CIA later this year.

As Petraeus packs his bags to leave Afghanistan for Washington he spoke with NBC News in a one-on-one interview about America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It hasn’t been an easy year – or decade – for the general who is credited with helping turn the Iraq war around and was then tapped by President Barack Obama to do the same in Afghanistan. He has been unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate for his next big job as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and will turn over command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan on July 18.

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In 2005, the then-lieutenant general worked on an Afghan war assessment stating that the mission would likely continue for many years to come pointing to various factors including the fact that the country had already suffered through three-decades of war, resulting in extreme poverty and enormous suffering.

“There is extraordinary potential here but it's much more difficult to capitalize on, than in Iraq,” he said.

The success of the surge in Iraq was one of the reasons why Obama decided to implement a so-called “mini-surge” in Afghanistan announced in December 2009 – adding around 30,000 additional troops to the fight, bringing the number up to just over 100,000 U.S. boots on the ground.

Petraeus believes that the Taliban’s momentum has been reversed since those troops hit the ground, but says there is still work to be done.

“It remains fragile and it does remain reversible – so this will take determination and steadfast purpose,” he said emphasizing that the Iraqi surge was not an exact blue print for Afghanistan.

“I never felt that we could flip Afghanistan the way were able to flip Iraq through a variety of activities during the surge,” he said.

And although Afghanistan has not been “flipped,” Petraeus does believe that there have been extraordinary improvements in many parts of the country.

“The situation here is very hard, without question, it has gotten progressively more difficult up until somewhere around last year – last fall – when we started taking back areas from the Taliban that matter enormously to them,” he said, including Mullah Omar’s hometown in Kandahar.

And while many Americans are frustrated by the ongoing level of violence in Afghanistan, Petraeus pointed out that the violence we are seeing in Afghanistan is nowhere near what was experienced in Iraq.

“Iraq was completely out of control in a way that I don’t think Afghanistan has ever been,” he said.

He pointed to the fact that in Iraq there were 220 attacks per day at the height of the violence compared to the 50 or 60 per day in Afghanistan at its peak.

“The level of violence [in Iraq] was so horrific that you almost can’t imagine it now looking back.”

As Iraq continues to improve, Petraeus believes that Afghanistan is on the right track as well, pointing to the fact that the country is about a week away from seven provinces and municipalities being handed over to complete Afghan control.

“Afghanization is moving forward and that is indeed what we want to see happen over the course of the years between now and the end of 2014 when transition will be complete.”

As Petraeus prepares to leave Afghanistan he believes there can be success in what some see as the never ending war – once again pointing to lessons he learned in America’s other war.

“We used to say about Iraq that it was hard but not hopeless, there is similar sentiment about this. It is hard, but it’s certainly not hopeless.” 

 

 

By Rohit Kachroo, NBC News

WAJIR, Kenya - At first glance, the massive drought which has swept across Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia appears to be a crisis caused entirely by nature.

As we traveled north through Kenya into one of the worst-hit areas, the lush green of the Nairobi suburbs disappeared into gray sand and dry earth. In three hours, I counted the carcasses of 27 cattle by the roadside, and one giraffe - apparently killed because the land could not sustain them. The striking images of the landscape seem to represent a deceptively simple assessment of the drought: the dirty work of Mother Nature.

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"The only reason for all the suffering in this region is the lack of rain," one desperate doctor told me as he lifted up yet another severely malnourished baby so that he could be weighed. The doctor is wrong.

Witness the outbreak of famine or drought and you'll usually see that there has been an outbreak of war nearby. In this case, the lawlessless of war-torn Somalia is driving people into neighboring Kenya. In Ethiopia, high inflation and fast-rising food prices have also forced people out. Many of those refugees have been competing with the recently killed animals that we saw on our journey for water and food. Consider that and the deadly cocktail behind this current crisis doesn't look so basic. Human hands are all over this.

Kenya's refugee camps are packed. Dadaab, the biggest refugee camp in the world, was originally built for 90,000 people but now has 380,000 refugees, UNICEF officials told Reuters this week. About 10,000 more stream in each week.

Bloodshed and turmoil
Many of the children arriving are stick-thin and desperately hungry, fleeing the impact of dry weather. But there are adults who appear to be well-nourished. Many are escaping their homeland because life in a stinking, over-run camp is better than the bloodshed and turmoil back home.

It all suggests that the solution might not be as simple as some donor appeals might imply. Aid agencies asking for tens of millions of dollars in donations will be able to do great work easing the anguish of many people.

Jane Cocking, Oxfam's humanitarian director, told The Associated Press that 12 million people face "a fight for survival". Oxfam hopes to raise $80 million, its largest ever appeal for Africa.

The U.N. has said the Horn of Africa is experiencing one of the worst droughts since the early 1950s.

But aid groups won't be able solve the crisis on their own. They can't end war. They can't cut food prices.

Cynics will say that it is a reason for the world not to get too involved. Many people have suggested the same thing to me. "This happens every year," they moan; on that point they're correct. Some parts of the region are so familiar with drought that they are synonymous with it. These are re-occuring crises which cannot be solved by even the greatest donor appeals.

But although the cause of the crisis is complex, the consequence is simple - painfully simple. This year's drought and "pre-famine" do appear to be particularly bad. The United Nations believes that it might lead to a "human tragedy of unimaginable proportions" - a grave warning indeed. Charities say that the world must act now to avoid a catastrophe.

But after this crisis, there may be many more - a tragedy in itself - because this is a combination of drought, refugee crisis and food crisis which has been made by men as well as nature. However, aid workers say that is no reason to look away. 

By Paul Goldman, NBC News Producer

TEL AVIV – During the hot summer months, Israel has always been synonymous with beautiful sandy beaches and swimming in the warm salty waters of the Mediterranean Sea – but not anymore.

It's now a common sight to see scores of dead, gray jellyfish covering the beaches’ white sand while kids poke them with sticks. It's even more common to see bathers running away from the water with big red sting marks. 

More than 200 million jellyfish, known here as “Meduzot,” have been attacking Israel, and there is not much anyone can do about it. The jellyfish are an invasive species called Rhopilema Nomadica that originally migrated from the Red Sea.

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They're coming here for one reason: They have few natural enemies lurking in these waters. The sea turtle is one such enemy, but massive construction along the Israeli coastline has devastated the turtle nesting habitat, leaving a paradise for the jellyfish.  

Dr. Dror Angel, who works at the Department of Maritime Civilization at the University of Haifa, says the problem of jellyfish is only increasing. "People bathing get stung, and for the fishermen it's a disaster, they catch them in their nets. And of course the electric plants suffer as well.”

Seawater is used to cool the turbines that supply most of the electricity in Israel.

"When we suck the water, we also suck the jellyfish,” explained Rafi Nagar, the chief maintenance officer at the Israel Electric Corp. near the town of Hadera. “And if we let them go through the filters, they can cause the plant to shut down, leaving millions of Israelis without electricity.”

Nagar has been working 24/7 to combat the enormous number of jellyfish.

"It's a very difficult problem," he said. "In the last three days, we pulled out 100 tons of jellyfish from our filters."

Nagar's crew has been nicknamed the “Jellyfish Busters.” They wear special goggles, rubber gloves and long-sleeve shirts and pants to help them protect themselves from the stings. They use long poking iron sticks to pull the jellyfish off of the filters, piling them into huge canisters. Nagar says that in his 33 years at the electric company he has never seen anything quite like this.

Alon Levi, a veterinarian who volunteers at the Israel Marine Mammal research center, said sailing in the Mediterranean last weekend was like "sailing in a soup of jellyfish.” But it’s not just difficult for swimmers and sailors; the explosion of the jellyfish population affects the larger eco-system.

“It's very sad since they eat small crabs and fish," said Levi.
 
Angel says we need much more information and research on the life of the jellyfish in order to find ways to cope with them.

One thing we know is that every female jellyfish lays 300,000 eggs – making it an almost impossible battle.

By Warangkana Chomchuen, NBC News

BANGKOK, Thailand – It’s the dawn of a new era in Thailand with the election of the country’s first female prime minister on Sunday.

Yingluck Shinawatra’s supporters already are comparing her to other Southeast Asian female political icons, like the Philippines' first female president, Corazon Aquino; Indonesia's housewife-turned-president Megawati Sukarnoputri; and Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Incredibly, it took only six weeks to transform the 44-year-old businesswoman into the country’s premier. Her success has been attributed to her pop star appeal, easy-going disposition, overwhelming support from majority rural voters and the fact that she’s a woman.

But no one is happier for Yingluck’s win than her older brother Thaksin Shinawatra, who served as premier for five years before he was booted out in a 2006 military coup.

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Yingluck is believed to be a "proxy" for Thaksin, a billionaire business tycoon, who has called her his "clone." He now lives in exile to escape a two-year-prison sentence after a graft conviction, but he has handled all major interviews with the media on behalf of his sister.

When the polls closed, Thaksin was the first to confirm on a phone interview broadcast on Thai television that his youngest sister will fill the role of prime minister. 

"The voters didn't choose me only because my last name is Shinawatra," Yingluck said at a press conference trying to downplay her brother’s influence. "They like me, the Pheu Thai party, and the management team combined."

Triumph of a braver electorate

Sunday’s general election was seen as a battle between Thaksin and the coup makers who uprooted him.

The champion of three consecutive elections was deposed, his close allies banned from office, his two parties disbanded, and two prime ministers he backed disqualified by the courts.

But the Pheu Thai party's electoral victory is not necessarily a reflection of love for Thaksin and his party by voters.

The election was also a referendum on what voters think of what has happened to their country since the coup in 2006.

Many Thais are increasingly frustrated by what they see as the systematic undermining of democracy, through political suppression, coercion and judicial manipulations.

Similarly, outgoing Prime Minister Abhisit, who once held so much promise, was defeated not simply because his party is unpopular or its candidates inferior.

Critics say he was submissive to the political elites and military leadership, who helped him to beat the Pheu Thai party in 2008 to take office. That, the critics say, alienated him from the rural poor and pro-democracy supporters.

He also was haunted by his handling of "red shirt" protesters – largely Thaksin's urban and rural supporters – who staged a two-month rally that paralyzed parts of Bangkok last year. The demonstrations led to military crackdowns that left 90 people dead.

Street demonstrations in the past five years – whether by ultranationalist anti-Thaksin "yellow shirts" or pro-Thaksin anti-coup "red shirts" – are testimony to a dramatic change: Suddenly, Thai voters are no longer too shy to make demands.

Turnout of at least 70 percent was reported, and many polling stations saw lines forming before voting began. In Sukhothai, residents braved a ravaging flood, and in the restive south, voters ignored the risks of roadside bombings by insurgents. 

"The ongoing political crisis has become the country's major issue," says Kan Chokrungvaranon, a 23-year-old voter. "It affects people from all walks of life, and elections mean more to them than ever before."

A dawn of reconciliation?

In the short term, Pheu Thai's large mandate could go a long way to restoring Thailand’s stability.

Key political players responded to Pheu Thai's victory in a more conciliatory tone.

Defense Minister Gen. Prawit Wongsuwon said Monday that military leaders "will allow politicians to work it out" and would not interfere.

Abhisit solemnly conceded election defeat and announced his resignation as the Democrat Party's leader.

He said his party would work with Pheu Thai, but he pledged to oppose Pheu Thai's controversial proposal to give amnesty to political allies and rivals charged in connection with the 2006 coup.

Many people fear the plan could pave way from Thaksin's return and whitewash the corruption charges against him, which he said were politically motivated.

Thaksin tried to avert the concern by saying he's not in a hurry to come home.

"I will wait for the right time and under appropriate conditions to return," he told Thai television. "My return must be part of the solution, not the problem."

By Sebastian Rich, NBC News

KABUL, Afghanistan  — Kabul is flexing its muscles.

The Afghan capital is a muscleman's haven, with more than 200 gyms across the city and others sprouting up every day.

They are arguably a little primitive compared to the chrome-plated body temples of the U.S. and Europe. More than two decades after the end of the Soviet occupation, many of the gyms remain littered with bizarre and rusting machines from that era. Battered "gira" — a Soviet form of dumbbell resembling a cannonball with a handle — also remain common.

But the gyms are always packed with enthusiastic young men pumping iron and staring at themselves in cracked and broken mirrors with dreams of becoming the next Arnold Schwarzenegger, Afghan style.

Gyms were allowed to function in a very ad hoc fashion across Afghanistan under the hard-line Islamist Taliban.

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Imprisoned, beaten 
While the gymnasiums were deemed as un-Islamic, the regime could not seem to make up their mind on the matter. Some bodybuilders were jailed for showing their skin to the public. However, others were allowed to train and compete if they were fully clothed and not tanned. It was not uncommon for Taliban fighters to make surprise visits to the gyms and beat the bodybuilders with sticks for not praying enough.

Down a dusty back street strewn with derelict cars and half-starving stray dogs is the dingy basement entrance to the Nasim Super Gold Gym.

Owner Mohammed Nasim, 35, is a former "Mr.  Peshawar" who is extremely proud of his empire of muscle and iron.

Although the equipment is a mix of very old, second-hand and home-built, the gym’s clientele is made up of young men from all walks of Kabul life. Waiters, street cleaners and wealthy businessmen sweat together.

Mohammad Saleem, the 20-year-old "Mr. Kabul", is training with Mustafa Ahmadi.

Saleem says that he wants Afghanistan to be free from the Taliban so that anybody can do what they want without living in fear.

He wants nothing more than to hold the coveted title of "Mr. Afghanistan" and to be able to compete worldwide. His heroes include Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.S. bodybuilding star Jay Cutler.

But when asked further about the Taliban, Saleem and his friend take on a look of exhausted fatalism. "Our good friend was killed [last week] in the Inter-Continental Hotel suicide blast," Mr. Kabul says.

In theory, women are now allowed to join Mr. Kabul and Mr. Peshawar in Kabul's gyms. But it would appear they choose not to.
 

By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent

LONDON - The latest round of my glamorous foreign correspondent's career is with a 5-year-old kickboxer. It's for a Today show story on kids kickboxing.

Now it's true that the song "I'm a lover, not a fighter" could have been written for me, but I'm not scared; well, not very. Yet this upcoming bout, in an hour's time as I write, does hold every prospect of total humiliation. There really is no upside for me. Win, lose or draw, the fact that I am about 3-feet taller and have a reach advantage of 2 feet, means I am certain to be cast as the villain of the piece. I'll either go to the hospital or the jail.

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As it's a Today show story a little humor would not go amiss, and in general I can take a laugh at my own expense. But the fact is, and I'm not making excuses here, I did pull a muscle in my shoulder a few weeks ago and I have limited movement in my left arm. So I'm going to have to stay on my opponent's left side, which would favor my secret weapon, a sharp right uppercut last used to great effect against Jim Palmer, 58 years ago.

Also, my toe hurts.

Anyway, what makes it even worse, is that the 5-year-old is a girl. And she has an oriental name, which suggests she's been trained in the martial arts for four years already, and is probably a math whiz to boot.

All I can say is, if the 5-year-old does hurt me, I'm gonna punch her lights out.

She's toast.

I'm psyched because last night I saw the world heavyweight championship between David Haye and Wladimir Kitschko and I got a couple of good ideas - dodge, weave, jab, jab, uppercut with the left, hook with the right, same again three times, quick as lightning.

I'm ready.

Hold me back.

Time to go. David Moodie, my 6-foot-10 inch cameraman will be in my corner, so after I've dispatched the little tyke he should help in dealing with her dad. We're carrying the camera, tripod, lights and emergency first aid kit to the car. She's gonna need it.

I'll report back after the fight.

Bring it on!

Two hours later.

The ambulance raced from the gym, sirens screaming, me strapped to the stretcher as the medic radioed ahead to the ER of Wellington Hospital....

Not really.

Lila Thai, 5 years old, 3 feet 6 inches tall and only 50 pounds, shot out of her corner like a demented cat, hissing and snarling, her two braids following like wings. I parried the first blow from her tight fist and deflected the first few kicks but she landed a swift, vicious punch to my knee, followed by two sharp kicks to my shin. When I fell down she was on me like a ton of bricks, stamping on my left foot.

It was all very funny for a while. Certainly everybody else couldn't stop laughing but soon I was winded, worried and felt like a wuss. I wanted to take her out but didn't think it would go down well with her dad, Kru Muay Thai, who fought 350 kickboxing bouts in Thailand and won 250. He was alternately egging his daughter on and telling her to calm down.

Mixed messages is not good parenting, I reflected, as Lila again penetrated my defenses with a vicious blow to my butt. I'm gonna teach her a thing or two, I thought, hoping dad would turn away for amoment, but he never did.

After the fight, Lila wouldn't stop fighting, pursuing me around the gym kicking and punching and snarling at me with screwed-up eyes and curled, mean lips. It was very cute for a bit, but after 10 minutes of protecting my groin area I had to lock myself in the manager's office.

So here I sit, back home, reflecting on the pitfalls of a long reporting career, looking forward to lying down and reading my book. It's title, I notice, is The Lost Wife, by Alyson Richman and I wondered, was anything lost when little girls stopped reading and became kickboxers?