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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Pakistani education officials are broadcasting lessons over a TV channel to keep kids learning. A public education channel was cobbled together just weeks after schools shut down in March.
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Thousands of people in Pakistan have disappeared over the years — suspected militants, bloggers and others. Young women are speaking out over the disappearances of their fathers and brothers.
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The attack occurred Monday morning as people were arriving for work. Unknown militants attacked the country's stock exchange in the commercial capital, Karachi.
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Kabul's cemeteries are hiring more grave diggers and they're preparing burial spots in advance to deal with a rush of COVID-19 victims.
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In Pakistan, angry families are attacking doctors and smashing hospitals as health care workers turn away coronavirus patients — saying their institutions are full.
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Like many places, Pakistan has seen a surge in bike riding during the pandemic. But the face of cyclists is changing in this conservative society as women venture onto the roads.
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A plane carrying around 100 people has crashed in the Pakistani port city of Karachi. It was only a few days ago, on May 15, that domestic flights were allowed to resume in the country.
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Automated ventilators are expensive. Hand-operated ventilators require a lot of labor. So these teens are on a quest to create a mechanized bag-valve-mask that'll do the job.
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There's a shortage of medical personnel and equipment in the war-torn country. Teenage girls are building a ventilator out of cheap car parts to help their country cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The assault in Kabul targets a maternity ward and shocks a country grimly accustomed to violence. And it isn't the only attack Tuesday as a suicide blast tears through a funeral in another province.