Leila Fadel
Leila Fadel is a national correspondent for NPR based in Los Angeles, covering issues of culture, diversity, and race.
Most recently, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. Her stories brought us to the heart of a state-ordered massacre of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo in 2013 when police shot into crowds of people to clear them and killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people. She told us the tales of a coup in Egypt and what it is like for a country to go through a military overthrow of an elected government. She covered the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014 and documented the harrowing tales of the Yazidi women who were kidnapped and enslaved by the group. Her coverage also included stories of human smugglers in Egypt and the Syrian families desperate and willing to pay to risk their lives and cross a turbulent ocean for Europe.
She was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of the 2013 coup in Egypt and the toll it took on the country and Egyptian families. In 2017 she earned a Gracie award for the story of a single mother in Tunisia whose two eldest daughters were brainwashed and joined ISIS. The mother was fighting to make sure it didn't happen to her younger girls.
Before joining NPR, she covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the Cairo Bureau Chief. Prior to her position as Cairo Bureau Chief for the Post, she covered the Iraq war for nearly five years with Knight Ridder, McClatchy Newspapers, and later the Washington Post. Her foreign coverage of the devastating human toll of the Iraq war earned her the George. R. Polk award in 2007. In 2016 she was the Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow.
Leila Fadel is a Lebanese-American journalist who speaks conversational Arabic and was raised in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
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NPR's Leila Fadel talks with Lesley Blume about the struggle of the survivors of the Trinity nuclear test in 1945 — one locals didn't know was coming and caused serious health issues.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with award winning Haitian-American novelist Edwidge Danticat about the challenges in Haiti.
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The head of Save the Children in Afghanistan says it has been difficult to operate under the Taliban and their restrictions on women. Without humanitarian aid, he predicts serious casualties ahead. -
NPR's Leila Fadel talks with Omar Muhammad, executive director of the Lowcountry Alliance for Model Communities, on communities in North Charleston, S.C., facing displacement for a highway project.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Chris Nyamandi, Country Director of Save The Children in Afghanistan about a restriction on girls' education and other threats to children's welfare under the Taliban.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with novelist Richard Powers about his new book, Bewilderment, about a widowed father and his son trying to make sense of the world.
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NPR's Leila Fadel talks with Neta Crawford, co-director of the Cost of War Project, about civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hands of U.S. military strikes.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Reuters reporter Alexandra Ulmer about the conditions beneath a bridge in Del Rio, Texas and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico where thousands of migrants are waiting to claim asylum.
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NPR's Leila Fadel talks with El Faro journalist Valeria Guzman in El Salvador about this week's protest against President Nayib Bukele.
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A Southern California community grapples with the legacy of being secretly surveilled by the FBI. Twenty years later, the matter is a legal fight that has reached the Supreme Court.
