Warangkana Chomchuen / NBC News

The Pata Zoo’s star attraction, “Bua Noi” a 20-year-old gorilla, sits in her dimly lit cage.

Warangkana Chomchuen / NBC News

Some tourists take pictures outside the bear cage at Bangkok’s Pata Zoo.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By Warangkana Chomchuen, NBC News

BANGKOK, Thailand – A few staff members cast suspicious looks at me as my video camera rolled. One asked why I was filming.

I wasn’t in army-ruled Myanmar or communist North Korea. I was visiting a zoo – in Bangkok – and the employees were monitoring me closely.

“One of our zookeepers even has a picture of the gorilla in his wallet, instead of his wife,” the staff member said. “You see, we really love our animals.”

But it’s a tough love out here at Pata Zoo, a concrete jungle on the top two floors of a department store on a busy road in Bangkok.

Solitary penguin  
About 200 species – a gorilla, a penguin, bears, tigers, leopards, sheep, flamingos, pythons, and nocturnal animals – are crammed into cages and pens that are too small or otherwise inadequate for them. The two floors of the zoo are each about the size of a soccer field.

The zoo’s superstar, a 20-year-old female gorilla, lives in a 10×15-yard concrete pen. “Bua Noi,” as she is called, sat gripping the iron bars of her dim cage, with only a tire, ropes, and TV playing slapstick comedy to keep her company on the day I visited.

Nearby, two tigers restlessly walked in their cages, their spines and ribs visibly protruding, their hollow-looking faces seemingly all bone. A black jaguar jumped wildly up and down on the fence at the sight of approaching visitors two feet away. And one dazed Humboldt penguin, the lone survivor out of an original group of a dozen, stared blankly at a glass wall in its air-conditioned room. 

“No animals can stay healthy psychologically and physically in a building or in an air-conditioned room,” said Edwin Wiek, director of Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand. “A zoo in a building like Pata is hazardous to animals and humans. It should be a thing of the past.”

Animal-rights activists have been fighting to shut down the zoo for years, but it’s a losing battle. The zoo is not illegal in Thailand. The animals were obtained legally and the zoo has a license.

‘Long life expectancy’
There just is no real legislation in place to protect animal welfare.

The zoo’s managers stand by their facility’s safety and size. “Our enclosures aren’t so small that the animals can’t move,” said Kanit Sermsrimongkol, Pata Zoo’s managing director. “Besides, our animals have long life expectancy and they reproduce. That’s an indicator of their good health.”
 
Public anger and controversy over the Pata Zoo erupts from time to time. But the zoo tends to play it down by inviting media and zoo authorities in for inspection. Eventually the publicity dies down, people forget about it, and the zoo’s permit is renewed.

Sophon Damnui, director of Thailand’s Zoological Park Organization, admits the vague laws governing zoos are problematic. The only existing laws relating to wildlife protection state a zoo must be “appropriate” when it comes to caring for captive animals.

“The bill hasn’t been amended to address the issue,” Sophon said. “But Pata Zoo has a permit. It has zookeepers to tend to animals’ basic needs and their animals don’t have a problem, so that’s OK.”

Animal-rights activists are stymied by the lack of laws. “The law is never on our side,” said Roger Lohanan, secretary of the Thai Animal Guardian Association. “We’ve tried every legal loophole, but there’s nothing we can do.”

His major concern is animal safety, especially in case of fire. Before Pata there was another zoo inside a building in Bangkok, but most of the animals were trapped and killed when a fire broke out a few years ago.

“The animals can only wait to be rescued and certainly they will be the last thing on people’s mind if something bad happens,” Lohanan said.

Cultural cruelty?
The problems at Pata Zoo reflect a broader issue of rampant animal cruelty and abuse in Thailand. It isn’t a rare sight in big cities to see men walking elephants on hot concrete streets or pet dogs performing tricks for hours in busy, bustling shopping areas – all in the effort to earn some petty cash.  

Weak law enforcement and punishment – a 1,000 Baht () fine or one month in jail for animal abuse – exacerbates the problem. 

Appalling records of animal treatment in Thailand make people wonder what happened to this Buddhist country, where compassion for all living beings reigns first in Buddha’s teaching.

Animal-welfare campaigners call it cultural cruelty. Many Thais still view animals as one of their possessions, to treat as they see fit, and kindness and compassion usually don’t go beyond food and shelter.

“Some people say, ‘I love my fighting cock, because it’s a good fighter’. This is exactly the same mentality the zoo owner has,” said Lohanan, referring to cockfighting’s enduring popularity across Thailand. “They said they love their animals, but it’s an ancient kind of love.”

The Thai Animal Guardian Association and other animal-rights groups are pushing for a more effective animal protection law. They drafted the bill and proposed it five years ago, but it’s been buried deep under Thailand’s ongoing political mess. 

And zoos are still popular.  The birth of a baby panda last year drove the country into a frenzy and spurred the idea of importing even more exotic animals to breed on Thai soil. While it wasn’t exactly crowded, about 70 adults and kids were visiting the Pata Zoo the day I was there.   

Animal-rights activists said they don’t want to give up hope, but acknowledge that it will take a while for the draft bill to get attention and for the animal welfare mentality to kick in.

“When the public is ready to come out and say, ‘We don’t want it,’ then you can shut down Pata Zoo,” Lohanan said. “Until then, there’s nothing we can do.”

An Afghan police man controls the area from a security booth at a check point in Kandahar, Afghanistan on Sunday.

An Afghan police officer checks belongings on roof of a taxi car at a check point in Kandahar, Afghanistan on Sunday.

AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd

U.S. Army soldiers from Alpha Battery walk among grape orchards during a patrol in the Arghandab Valley, Kandahar, Afghanistan, on July 20, 2010. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – The release of the long anticipated review of President Barack Obama’s war strategy will provide plenty of fodder for pundits to argue over the specifics of the U.S. war in Afghanistan: Is there more counter-terrorism and less counter-insurgency in this latest strategy overhaul?

But here in the grape huts of the Arghandab River Valley, deep within Kandahar province, the U.S. military’s counter-insurgency strategy is alive and well.

Four months ago, a walk in this area would have been a very short stroll into chaos and death. But there I was earlier this week walking in peace and quiet – not rolling in a heavily-armored vehicle – along what was one of the most dangerous roads in Kandahar, called Route Sengeray.

I was on a combat patrol with the storied “Strike” battalion – the 1-502 – of the 101st Airborne Division, while a squad of its soldiers checked dozens of Taliban fighting positions it had destroyed during Dragon Strike, a massive clearing operation, last September.

The lush reeds and overgrown orchards that once lined the Arghandab River and hid Taliban snipers were gone. In their place, blast walls – hundreds of them – have gone up, from the river to the mountains, effectively cutting off the Taliban’s ability to move within their own homeland.

Most of the Taliban fighters had fled, or gone to ground. Hundreds were killed or captured. And hundreds of IEDs and weapons caches were uncovered before they found soldiers.

Now grape huts, adobe mud sheds punctured by dozens of deep slits, used by farmers to dry grapes and by insurgents to ambush patrols, are once again producing raisins and not KIA’s.

“There’s still a threat. The Taliban’s still out there,” said Lt. Col. Johnny Davis, commander of the 1-502. “But the military phase is pretty much over, and we won it. Now we need to build this area and the government from the ground up, so the people can feel like they’ve won something, too.”

Strategy working
U.S. and coalition fatalities are at record highs. Afghan government corruption is chronic by even conservative estimates. Yet, if the White House assessment on the war in Afghanistan rings positive, it’s in part because of the palpable change in southern Afghanistan’s river valleys, districts and villages I’ve witnessed over the past two weeks.

The report concludes that there’s enough progress in those areas controlled by U.S. and Afghan forces to pursue the current three-pronged approach:

• Clearing the Taliban from its traditional strongholds with high-intensity operations like Dragon Strike – combining special and conventional forces, both on the ground and in the air;

• Holding those gains with a series of so-called “strong points” – and filling those new outposts with U.S. and Afghan forces, right in the heart of communities which had supported, or were coerced by, the insurgents;

• And building support for local government on the most basic, village level, through programs like “work for cash,” which now pays thousands of fighting-age men throughout Kandahar province about a week to clean streets and canals – better pay and a lot safer than planting roadside bombs. 

In July when U.S. soldiers walked through the streets of  Senjera, a highly radicalized town of 8,000 about 12 miles west of Kandahar City, children would toss hand grenades from roof tops as the soldiers passed below, injuring several at a time in the cramped, narrow warrens.

When we visited over the last few weeks, children offered handshakes and smiles instead, and asked for candy or pens. More importantly, adults were coming forward, too. They were no longer afraid to lead soldiers to IED’s or suspicious objects in broad daylight, despite continued death threats from the Taliban.

“We used to have to bound from roof top to roof top to get across this town,” said Capt. Nick Stout, commander of Alpha Company. “This is more like it, no?”

Tipping point?
But is it a tipping point? Stout says, not yet.

“The next big test will be in the spring, when Taliban fighters – all creatures of habit – return to their traditional staging areas and bed-down locations,” he said. “But this time, they’re gonna find blast walls and SP’s [strong points] all over the place. And Afghans with jobs and a future. That could well be the tipping point.”

Stout has no illusions. Most of the Taliban fighters he’s faced have infiltrated over the border from their safe havens in Pakistan. And until Pakistan concludes it’s in its interest to take out Afghan Taliban strongholds inside Pakistan, those fighters will reinforce their brothers-in-arms inside Afghanistan.

“All we can do,” said Stout, “is build up defenses here, train up the Afghan forces, provide jobs, and hope the bad guys will be contained once we go.”

Also, while the Taliban have taken huge hits in areas such as Arghandab, Zhari and Panj’wai, they also are changing its tactics – relying more on foreign suicide bombers.

They claimed responsibility for at least four suicide attacks on U.S. and Afghan forces since the end of Dragon Strike, in October. That included an attack Sunday when an explosives-laden mini-van rammed into the front of a new strong point near Sangsar – the birthplace of Taliban leader Mullah Omar – killing six U.S. soldiers and wounding seven more.

“The loss of soldiers is always devastating,” said Lt. Col. Davis, whose sister battalion, the 2-502, took all of Sunday’s casualties. “But we all know what we’re getting into and that the fight will be tough.”

As he walked through Sengeray’s bazaar – once abandoned but now bursting with merchants, motorbikes, spices, pomegranates and solar panels – Davis told me that, despite the ongoing threat, you have to focus on the positives.

Apparently, the White House agrees.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London, currently on assignment in southern Afghanistan. He has covered the war in Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion began in 2001.

By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com 

They’ve infuriated government officials, provoked Internet hackers, and now, the secret cables exposed by WikiLeaks have inspired an ad for feminine products in Pakistan.

“WikiLeaks… Butterfly doesn’t,” boasts Butterfly brand sanitary pad company in their new campaign, which is gracing two billboards in Karachi, Pakistan’s capital. A print campaign and a third billboard are on the way, RG Blue Communications, the ad agency behind the campaign, said, according to UPI.

“Nobody has said it’s in bad taste yet,” RG Blue’s head of business development, Amjad Hussain, told Pakistan’s Express Tribune.

Butterfly loved the campaign idea when it was pitched, Hussain told The Express Tribune, and wanted the ads rolled out as soon as possible. The billboards went up earlier this week.

Most ads in Karachi steer clear of political slants and current events, but Nando, a restaurant chain, has attracted attention for its billboards making fun of Sarah Palin and famous Pakistani cricket players, among other figures in the news, the Pakistan newspaper reported.

Perhaps Julian Assange should consider a future in advertising.