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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In Germany, the American presidential primaries are generating more interest than usual — especially in Trump, a candidate who has German roots, and whose rise has many Germans feeling alarmed.
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In Germany, the American presidential primaries are generating more interest than usual — especially in Trump, a candidate who has German roots, and whose rise has many Germans feeling alarmed.
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Germany is straining to cope with the large number of asylum-seekers and is encouraging some of them to return home. Germany's Parliament has also passed new laws making deportation easier.
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British Prime Minister David Cameron says he negotiated a deal to give the United Kingdom special status in the European Union. The deal follows a series of meetings between Cameron and other leaders.
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Ambivalence about refugees runs high in Denmark. Danes are critical of a new law requiring police to take cash and valuables from asylum seekers. But they're also nervous about rising refugee numbers. -
"Ich bin ein Kallstadter," Donald Trump likes to say. But many of the villagers are more proud of other famous American descendants with links to Kallstadt: the Heinz family, of ketchup fame. -
Germany has been generous in welcoming refugees, but is stepping up deportations to dissuade more from coming. Chancellor Angela Merkel says many Afghans seeking asylum shouldn't expect to stay. -
A majority Germans are afraid of what the coming year will bring, according to two new polls. That's a significant increase over last year, when less than a third of Germans surveyed felt that way.
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Months of training culminated with reaching the summit of a 16,500-foot peak, which they named. But there were frustrations and squabbles along the away, and uncertainties as they returned to Kabul. -
After the Paris attacks, refugees in Berlin have felt increased scrutiny, as police comb their numbers for potential threats. But many Syrians there say they fear ISIS as much as their hosts do.
