NPR, Weekend Edition
September 2026

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Five years after the return of Taliban rule, NPR visited Kabul to see how Afghans are dealing with their new government's strict social restrictions. Listen →

NPR, All Things Considered
September 2026

It's been nearly 25 years since the start of the U.S- led invasion of Afghanistan. NPR returns to Kabul to see how Afghans, now back under Taliban rule, are coping with the legacy of that 20 year war. Listen →

NPR, All Things Considered
April 2026

VAN, TURKEY - I report from the the border between Iran and Turkey on what Iranians have to say about the fragile ceasefire between Iran, the U.S. and Israel. Listen→

NPR, Weekend Edition
April 2026

VAN, TURKEY - I report on the escalations in the war with Iran, including what we know about the downed U.S. F-15 jet, the latest targets struck in Iran, and its retaliatory attacks on countries in the region. Listen →

 NPR, Weekend Edition
December 2025

Death metal singers use special techniques to create growls and howls. Those same techniques can help people dealing with conditions that affect their voice. Listen →

NPR
March 2024

SATEH AL BAHAR, West Bank — The bright pink mobile medical clinic rolls down a dirt road in a hilly area outside Jericho for its weekly visit to a Bedouin outpost.

It stops in a clearing with a few tents and shacks that look almost abandoned. But as soon as Samir Sbieh, the driver, rolls out the awning over the van and throws open the door, women and children start emerging from the hills and tents, seeking medical help.

Increasingly, those treatments include mental health consultations. Read more →

NPR
October 2022

As demonstrations in Iran continued to grow, I reached out to protesters inside the country, of varying ages and backgrounds, to hear about the change they want and what's next for their movement. Listen →

 NPR
October 2022

Since the Taliban completed their takeover of Afghanistan in August, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been trying to leave, only to be stuck in the pipeline of various visa programs. For example, more than 74,000 applicants remain in the backlog of the SIV program, designed to help those who served the U.S. overseas. Read more →

ThinkProgress
March 2018

LESBOS, GREECE – Roohina sits in a room the size of a minivan with her daughter, Hosna, who is one and a half years old. Only the room isn’t so much a room as an indoor tent: The back wall is the only actual wall in their new home in the Moria refugee camp on the island. Blankets create a division between their space and the space where other families live in in the container housing. Another blanket functions as a door.

Roohina, who had a job at a U.N. agency in Kabul, has been living in Moria with Hosna and her husband, who she did not name and was not there at the time, for six days. The family decided to leave after his place of employment, Roshan, a telecommunication company, was among the businesses hit with a massive suicide attack in the capital’s diplomatic district in May. The attack was one of the deadliest in Kabul in years. Read more →

Al Jazeera
November 2016

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Caught in the middle of political tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan are some two million Afghan refugees - registered and unregistered - who now face the option of either returning voluntarily or being deported from Pakistan.

And it couldn't happen at a worse time.

Winter in Afghanistan can be bitterly cold. The country is also experiencing a spike in violence, with increased attacks from the Taliban and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) fighters, leading to peak levels of civilian casualties and internal displacement as people flee the fighting.  Read more →

Al Jazeera
October 2016

ERBIL, IRAQ - Jaleh has spent a total of one year inside an unmarked women's shelter in Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region.

Before coming here, the 19-year-old woman with long, dark hair had fallen in love with a man she hoped to marry - but one of her five brothers did not approve.

"So he killed my boyfriend and shot me with a Kalashnikov in our home," Jaleh told Al Jazeera, speaking under a pseudonym. Hearing the shots and her screams, neighbours called the police, and Jaleh was taken to a hospital, where doctors had to amputate her right leg at the knee.

 UN agreement reached on ending violence against women

To this day, Jaleh does not know why her brother objected to her boyfriend: "He never told me why ... he still has not." Read more →

Al Jazeera
October 2016

QADIYA, IRAQ — Nova and her sister, Bafareen, did not think they’d ever see each other again. The two - along with their entire family - were captured by ISIL fighters when trying to leave their village of Kocho in August 2014.

The two girls, members of Iraq's Yazidi religious minority, described how the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) separated the men from women and children, and then separated Nova, 24, from Bafareen, 18. Read more →

Al Jazeera
March 2014

NIHONMATSU, JAPAN  — It's from a distance that Naoki Kobayashi tries to manage the reformation of his town Namie, which sits empty 10km away from the leaking nuclear plant that has wrought chaos on the lives of those in its radioactive reach.

In the relocated town office in Nihonmatsu, roughly 66km west of Namie, Kobayashi and his colleagues are wrestling with a major dilemma: How do you rebuild a town when you're not sure anyone - especially the young - even wants to go back?

At least that's the upshot from questionnaires sent to former residents.

Of the 60 percent who responded, about 30 percent said they don't plan to return to Namie, and another 30 percent indicated they're not sure they'll ever go back.

"We had 21,000 people in Namie, but it's impossible to rebuild for 21,000 … It's mostly the younger people who don't want to come back, and the main reason is fear of radiation," said Kobayashi, an administrative officer for Namie's revitalisation and recovery department. Read more →

Al Jazeera — Listening Post
July 2012 

When Libyans vote in the country's first free elections in almost five decades, will they have had the benefit of a free and independent media to help them make an informed decision? Watch here →

Al Jazeera
August 2013

CAIRO, EGYPT — One day after Cairo police cleared two sit-ins held in support of deposed President Mohamed Morsi, the capital city was slow to wake.

Hours after the state-of-emergency curfew was lifted, traffic and signs of life began to appear by late morning on Thursday.

But in some quarters, life was not going back to normal after at least 525 people were killed in the clearings in Cairo and ensuing clashes here and across the country.

In Giza, hundreds of Morsi supporters set fire to the local government offices, prompting the government to authorise the use of live ammunition on anyone attacking state buildings.

And in the al-Iman mosque in Nasr City, the neighbourhood where a massive, 47-day vigil was held at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, hundreds of bodies from Wednesday’s violence still lined floors of the makeshift morgue.

Wrapped in shrouds and kept cool with blocks of ice, most of the bodies bore gunshot wounds, but a number were charred, making them hard to identify for family members. Read more →

Al Jazeera
May 2011

DAMASCUS, SYRIA — I was standing in two fist-sized pools of smeared, sticky blood, trying to sort out why there were seven angry Syrians yelling at me. Only one of them - who I came to know as Mr Shut Up during my three days in a detention center, where so many Syrians 'disappeared' are being kept - spoke English.

Watching them searching my bags, and observing the set of handcuffs hanging from the bunk bed wedged behind the desk in the middle of the room, I guessed that I was being arrested - or, at the very least, processed for detention.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked.

"Shut up! SHUT UP!" said Mr Shut Up.  Read more →