Diaa Hadid
Diaa Hadid chiefly covers Pakistan and Afghanistan for NPR News. She is based in NPR's bureau in Islamabad. There, Hadid and her team were awarded a Murrow in 2019 for hard news for their story on why abortion rates in Pakistan are among the highest in the world.
Hadid has also documented the culture war surrounding Valentines' Day in Pakistan, the country's love affair with Vespa scooters and the struggle of a band of women and girls to ride their bikes in public. She visited a town notorious in Pakistan for a series of child rapes and murders, and attended class with young Pakistanis racing to learn Mandarin as China's influence over the country expands.
Hadid joined NPR after reporting from the Middle East for over a decade. She worked as a correspondent for The New York Times from March 2015 to March 2017, and she was a correspondent for The Associated Press from 2006 to 2015.
Hadid documented the collapse of Gadhafi's rule in Libya from the capital, Tripoli. In Cairo's Tahrir Square, she wrote of revolutionary upheaval sweeping Egypt. She covered the violence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria from Baghdad, Erbil and Dohuk. From Beirut, she was the first to report on widespread malnutrition and starvation inside a besieged rebel district near Damascus. She also covered Syria's war from Damascus, Homs, Tartous and Latakia.
Her favorite stories are about people and moments that capture the complexity of the places she covers.
They include her story on a lonely-hearts club in Gaza, run by the militant Islamic group Hamas. She unraveled the mysterious murder of a militant commander, discovering that he was killed for being gay. In the West Bank, she profiled Israel's youngest prisoner, a 12-year-old Palestinian girl who got her first period while being interrogated.
In Syria, she met the last great storyteller of Damascus, whose own trajectory of loss reflected that of his country. In Libya, she profiled a synagogue that once was the beating heart of Tripoli's Jewish community.
In Baghdad, Hadid met women who risked their lives to visit beauty salons in a quiet rebellion against extremism and war. In Lebanon, she chronicled how poverty was pushing Syrian refugee women into survival sex.
Hadid documented the Muslim pilgrimage to holy sites in Saudi Arabia, known as the Hajj, using video, photographs and essays.
Hadid began her career as a reporter for The Gulf News in Dubai in 2004, covering the abuse and hardships of foreign workers in the United Arab Emirates. She was raised in Canberra by a Lebanese father and an Egyptian mother. She graduated from the Australian National University with a B.A. (with Honors) specializing in Arabic, a language she speaks fluently. She also makes do in Hebrew and Spanish.
Her passions are her daughter, photography, cooking, vintage dress shopping and listening to the radio. She sings really badly, but that won't stop her.
Meet Hadid on Twitter @diaahadid, or see her photos on Instagram. She also often posts up her work on her community Facebook page.
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Residents of Pakistan's Himalayan region turn to science and folklore, with backing from the U.N. They're erecting ice towers, harvesting avalanches and performing an ancient glacier ritual. -
Muhammad Yunus has faced a slew of legal cases, and now is accused of siphoning off dividends owed to workers, labor law violations and corruption.
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Australians fall silent as their team, The Matildas lose to England in the World Cup semi-finals. The team's rise has been called a "feminist cultural reckoning."
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Australians are smashing viewing records as they watch their team, The Matildas, advance in the Women's World Cup. But for some women, it's a bittersweet moment.
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It's a move that should trigger general elections by November. But already there are concerns that elections could be delayed — potentially throwing the country into more instability.
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Over 50 years ago, a poet was found dead in Karachi, Pakistan. The incident triggered a media frenzy, but the murder mystery faded from memory — until now.
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Police in Pakistan have arrested that country's former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, after a court sentenced him to three years in prison for concealing assets.
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Pakistan is vowing to hunt down those behind a massive suicide bombing on Sunday that targeted a rally of a pro-Taliban cleric. Dozens of people were killed and nearly 200 wounded.
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The Taliban has ordered all beauty shops in Kabul to close by the end of July. These businesses are one of the last places where women can work and congregate as restrictions on women are mounting.. -
Since returning to power nearly two years ago, the Taliban have resumed pushing women and girls out of public life. The Taliban now say they're shutting down women's beauty salons.
