Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Special correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson is based in Berlin. Her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning programs, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and read at NPR.org. From 2012 until 2018 Nelson was NPR's bureau chief in Berlin. She won the ICFJ 2017 Excellence in International Reporting Award for her work in Central and Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson was also based in Cairo for NPR and covered the Arab World from the Middle East to North Africa during the Arab Spring. In 2006, Nelson opened NPR's first bureau in Kabul, from where she provided listeners in an in-depth sense of life inside Afghanistan, from the increase in suicide among women in a country that treats them as second class citizens to the growing interference of Iran and Pakistan in Afghan affairs. For her coverage of Afghanistan, she won a Peabody Award, Overseas Press Club Award, and the Gracie in 2010. She received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award from Colby College in 2011 for her coverage in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson spent 20 years as newspaper reporter, including as Knight Ridder's Middle East Bureau Chief. While at the Los Angeles Times, she was sent on extended assignment to Iran and Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She spent three years an editor and reporter for Newsday and was part of the team that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for covering the crash of TWA Flight 800.
A graduate of the University of Maryland, Nelson speaks Farsi, Dari and German.
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Many Afghans complain that the United States and other donor countries are spending billions of dollars creating a hodgepodge of expensive and often shoddy relief and development projects in dangerous areas. A U.N. official says it's time to "let the kid drive," allowing Afghans to direct aid projects.
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Barack Obama has met with Iraqi and U.S. military officials in Baghdad. The Democratic presidential candidate's visit to Iraq is his first on-the-ground look at the war effort since starting his White House bid. Over the weekend, he was in Afghanistan.
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Adila, a 6-year-old Afghan girl with a congenital heart defect, had life-saving surgery in Karachi, Pakistan, on Friday. She's in the cardiac intensive care unit, but is stable.
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The Taliban has denied responsibility for what is being called the worst bombing in Afghanistan's history, in which at least 80 people were killed and dozens more wounded by a suicide bomber's blast at a dog-fighting event. Funerals have already begun in Kandahar, where the governor expressed outrage at the attack.
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visit Iraq unannounced on Tuesday, but her trip was overshadowed by an incursion into the northern part of the country by Turkish troops hunting guerrillas of the Kurdish separatist group PKK. The U.S. has recently begun sharing intelligence with Turkey to pinpoint guerrilla positions.
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. The goal of her unannounced visit is to urge reconciliation among Kurds, Arabs and Turks in the oil-rich region 150 miles south of Baghdad.
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Coordinated car bombings in the southern Iraqi city left at least 40 dead and more than 100 wounded. Earlier this year, British forces handed over security duties in the province to Iraqi government troops. A similar handover in neighboring Basra is set for next week, raising fears of more violence in the largely Shiite region.
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Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had a news conference Friday in Karachi, a day after bomb attacks aimed at her motorcade left more than 130 people dead and dozens more wounded. Bhutto blamed militants for the attack and said she would not surrender the country to them.
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Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto ended eight years of self-imposed exile Thursday and arrived in Karachi, where tens of thousands of supporters greeted her. The return was marred by at least two explosions near her motorcade, which was surrounded by supporters.
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Gen. David Petraeus gives his first news conference since assuming command of U.S. forces in Iraq. He says insurgents are increasing "sensational attacks" in an effort to thwart U.S. and Iraqi efforts to restore order in Baghdad.
