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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Nicolae Ceausescu ruled with an iron fist for 25 years until he was overthrown and executed on Christmas Day in 1989. A quarter-century after his ouster, the country is still dealing with his legacy. -
Manfred Karg's 19-year-old son, a convert to Islam, is one of at least 60 Germans killed fighting alongside ISIS militants. Karg says efforts to stop the flow to Syria and Iraq are taking too long. -
In a country that strives to protect work-life balance, there are calls to ban employers from sending work email after business hours. Some big companies are already doing that. -
A huge crowd gathered at the wall the night of Nov. 9, 1989. Border guard Harald Jaeger was told not to let anyone through. But he was worried it could turn violent. So he opened the gate. -
Authorities are investigating possible neo-Nazi involvement in the theft of the gate at Dachau, the first concentration camp the Nazi regime opened in Germany. A similar 2009 theft targeted Auschwitz. -
City planners rushed to erase divisions between East and West Berlin after the wall came down in 1989. But the fate of communist-era buildings can still provoke friction a quarter-century later. -
The country's defense minister says Germany currently can't fulfill its long-term NATO commitments because of a widespread grounding of its military planes and helicopters. -
The nation is the world's third-largest arms exporter, and many weapons go to countries with questionable human rights records. Sigmar Gabriel wants to change that — but not all Germans are on board.
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At an event in Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel said there is no place for anti-Semitism in Germany and called it a "monstrous scandal" that anyone in the country would be hassled for being Jewish. -
Ukraine's president says he and Russian President Putin have agreed to a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine. Putin's spokesman says since Russia isn't a party to the conflict it can't agree to a ceasefire.
