Diaa Hadid
Diaa Hadid chiefly covers Pakistan and Afghanistan for NPR News. She is based in NPR's bureau in Islamabad. There, Hadid and her team were awarded a Murrow in 2019 for hard news for their story on why abortion rates in Pakistan are among the highest in the world.
Hadid has also documented the culture war surrounding Valentines' Day in Pakistan, the country's love affair with Vespa scooters and the struggle of a band of women and girls to ride their bikes in public. She visited a town notorious in Pakistan for a series of child rapes and murders, and attended class with young Pakistanis racing to learn Mandarin as China's influence over the country expands.
Hadid joined NPR after reporting from the Middle East for over a decade. She worked as a correspondent for The New York Times from March 2015 to March 2017, and she was a correspondent for The Associated Press from 2006 to 2015.
Hadid documented the collapse of Gadhafi's rule in Libya from the capital, Tripoli. In Cairo's Tahrir Square, she wrote of revolutionary upheaval sweeping Egypt. She covered the violence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria from Baghdad, Erbil and Dohuk. From Beirut, she was the first to report on widespread malnutrition and starvation inside a besieged rebel district near Damascus. She also covered Syria's war from Damascus, Homs, Tartous and Latakia.
Her favorite stories are about people and moments that capture the complexity of the places she covers.
They include her story on a lonely-hearts club in Gaza, run by the militant Islamic group Hamas. She unraveled the mysterious murder of a militant commander, discovering that he was killed for being gay. In the West Bank, she profiled Israel's youngest prisoner, a 12-year-old Palestinian girl who got her first period while being interrogated.
In Syria, she met the last great storyteller of Damascus, whose own trajectory of loss reflected that of his country. In Libya, she profiled a synagogue that once was the beating heart of Tripoli's Jewish community.
In Baghdad, Hadid met women who risked their lives to visit beauty salons in a quiet rebellion against extremism and war. In Lebanon, she chronicled how poverty was pushing Syrian refugee women into survival sex.
Hadid documented the Muslim pilgrimage to holy sites in Saudi Arabia, known as the Hajj, using video, photographs and essays.
Hadid began her career as a reporter for The Gulf News in Dubai in 2004, covering the abuse and hardships of foreign workers in the United Arab Emirates. She was raised in Canberra by a Lebanese father and an Egyptian mother. She graduated from the Australian National University with a B.A. (with Honors) specializing in Arabic, a language she speaks fluently. She also makes do in Hebrew and Spanish.
Her passions are her daughter, photography, cooking, vintage dress shopping and listening to the radio. She sings really badly, but that won't stop her.
Meet Hadid on Twitter @diaahadid, or see her photos on Instagram. She also often posts up her work on her community Facebook page.
-
In Pakistan, illiterate fishermen have become citizen scientists, helping to revive the fortunes of the endangered Indus River dolphin. -
It's considered the world's most polluted megacity. The air is so bad that a new report estimates that on average each resident loses 12 years of life. Here's what they're doing about it. -
Smog in New Delhi is so bad that one study suggests residents lose eight years of life from inhaling it. Politicians are trading blame.
-
Images shared by Afghan journalists showed at least one village reduced to rubble after a series of quakes flattened stone and mudbrick homes in the country's west. -
Residents of Pakistan's Himalayan region turn to science and folklore, with backing from the U.N. They're erecting ice towers, harvesting avalanches and performing an ancient glacier ritual. -
The Taliban has ordered all beauty shops in Kabul to close by the end of July. These businesses are one of the last places where women can work and congregate as restrictions on women are mounting.. -
A Pakistani court has granted former Prime Minister Imran Khan bail in multiple cases against him, allowing for his release following his dramatic arrest earlier this week. -
The court ruled that Khan's arrest on Tuesday was illegal and said he should be released. Khan's arrest has sparked violence in major Pakistani cities. -
Paramilitary forces arrested Khan at a court in Islamabad, where he was facing corruption charges. The arrest has triggered rare pushback against the military, the country's most powerful institution. -
As details of Noor Jehan's neglect came to light, the revelations sparked a national conversation about the neglect and abuse of animals in Pakistan — and of vulnerable humans as well.
