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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Trips down memory lane — to a highly regimented place that no longer exists — are the hallmark of this Dresden home for the elderly. -
It's a vital step to ending a nearly four-month long political crisis in Germany after last September's elections failed to give any party a majority. -
The parties from the last coalition will start negotiations on forming a government. It's only a partial victory for Chancellor Angela Merkel, and concerns remain over the role of a far-right party. -
After 15 weeks of wrangling, Angela Merkel has brought her conservatives together with center-left allies to end a political crisis, and allow formation of a coalition government.
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The German chancellor is in the political fight of her life. As Germans wait for a fully formed government, Merkel and the leaders of two other parties hold a final attempt to form a government.
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When the Freedom Party was in government before, there was an outcry and Austria was subject to sanctions. Critics say the party's anti-migrant, anti-Islam agenda is now considered mainstream.
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Refugees are no longer allowed to settle in one western German city. Such bans are expected to be introduced in other cities as more Germans complain that there are too many refugees.
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Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was killed Monday, never wavered in his belief that only he could lead the Yemenis. But he fueled societal divisions by playing enemies off each other to weaken his opposition.
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Salzgitter is the first German city to ban more refugees from moving in. Two others have followed. The U.N. refugee agency has criticized the ban, but it is expected to be repeated elsewhere. -
The German Foreign Ministry is trying to negotiate the return of German children who ended up with ISIS through no fault of their own. Some of the children were taken to Iraq and Syria by their German parents, while others were born there.
