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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It's not just Greeks who are upset by their country's latest bailout. Supporters of European unity say the weekend's fraught negotiations in Brussels have damaged the ideal of European solidarity.
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More and more Americans are pursuing graduate degrees in Germany, where tuition is often free and many classes are taught in English. -
More and more Americans are pursuing graduate degrees in Germany, where tuition is often free and many classes are taught in English. -
Poland does not allow gay marriage or same-sex unions, and is unlikely to amend these laws anytime soon. But the city of Gdansk elected an openly gay mayor and has hosted its first gay pride march. -
Germans activists want Europe to accepting more of the millions fleeing the world's conflict zones. They're exhuming migrants from unmarked graves in Italy and reburying them in Berlin.
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Like many former Soviet satellite states, Poland is suspicious of Russian intentions these days. Poles are joining homegrown militias, and authorities have placed observation towers along the border. -
Scaling Afghanistan's tallest mountain will be difficult enough. But Afghan female climbers and their American guides also face civil war, red tape and cultural taboos. -
An Afghan judge convicted and sentenced 4 men to death for their role in the mob killing of a woman in March. The judge sentenced 8 defendants to 16 years in prison and dropped charges against 18.
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Russian gas is expensive, so many Poles still rely on coal. Krakow is one of the most polluted cities in the EU's most polluted country. All that coal is akin to "smoking 2,000 cigarettes per year." -
Afghanistan is a mountainous land where mountain climbing is rare among men and virtually nonexistent among women. An American is now preparing young Afghan women to scale the country's highest peak.
