Deborah Amos
Deborah Amos covers the Middle East for NPR News. Her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.
In 2009, Amos won the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting from Georgetown University and in 2010 was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award by Washington State University. Amos was part of a team of reporters who won a 2004 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of Iraq. A Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1991-1992, Amos returned to Harvard in 2010 as a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School.
In 2003, Amos returned to NPR after a decade in television news, including ABC's Nightline and World News Tonight, and the PBS programs NOW with Bill Moyers and Frontline.
When Amos first came to NPR in 1977, she worked first as a director and then a producer for Weekend All Things Considered until 1979. For the next six years, she worked on radio documentaries, which won her several significant honors. In 1982, Amos received the Prix Italia, the Ohio State Award, and a DuPont-Columbia Award for "Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown," and in 1984 she received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for "Refugees."
From 1985 until 1993, Amos spend most of her time at NPR reporting overseas, including as the London Bureau Chief and as an NPR foreign correspondent based in Amman, Jordan. During that time, Amos won several awards, including a duPont-Columbia Award and a Breakthru Award, and widespread recognition for her coverage of the Gulf War in 1991.
A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Amos is also the author of Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East (Public Affairs, 2010) and Lines in the Sand: Desert Storm and the Remaking of the Arab World (Simon and Schuster, 1992).
Amos is a Ferris Professor at Princeton, where she teaches journalism during the fall term.
Amos began her career after receiving a degree in broadcasting from the University of Florida at Gainesville.
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The long-anticipated Syrian peace conference is again in turmoil. The U.N. secretary-general's surprise decision to invite Iran to attend the conference prompted a boycott threat from Syria's exiled opposition. At issue is the fact that Iran has not publicly committed to the framework for the conference or pledged to withdraw its troops and allied militias from Syria. Under pressure from the opposition groups and the U.S., the U.N. has since withdrawn its invitation to Iran.
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The conference, set for Wednesday, will bring together a delegation representing President Bashar Assad and the Western-backed, exiled political opposition. A lot of diplomatic capital has been spent to make this happen, but it's unclear whether there will be a meaningful outcome. -
When peace talks open in Switzerland, one common concern between the West and Syria is expected to be the threat of Islamist extremists and the rise of al-Qaida-linked militias. Thousands of Sunni militants from around the world have joined the rebel groups in Syria, but there are other groups of militant foreign fighters who support the Syrian regime. Iraqi Shiites are being recruited in the thousands to bolster Syria's armed forces. Recruiting billboards and social media help portray the fight as an existential battle between Sunnis and Muslims.
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Syria's civil war keeps getting more complicated. In the latest twist, fractious rebel groups have united to fight extremists linked to al-Qaida. Both sides oppose the Syrian government, but for now they are pointing their guns at each other and a nasty battle is taking place in the northern city of Raqqa. -
Before Syria's civil war, there was no real need for a clinic that could teach the disabled how to walk on artificial legs. Now there's huge demand, not only for the legs, but also for training.
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Confusion has surrounded the departure of a group of Greek Orthodox nuns from a convent north of Damascus earlier this month. Syrian officials say radical Islamist rebels kidnapped the nuns at gunpoint. But a rebel leader who was there says the nuns' convent was under fire from government forces.
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Many Syrians fled their country and took refuge just across the border, planning to wait out the war. But now, a growing number are working with smugglers to get to northern Europe. The Syrians say they see no end in sight to the civil war and want to start a new life. -
The polio outbreak in Syria has spread to four cities, and new cases are suspected each day. But U.N. agencies responsible for combating the outbreak can work only with the Syrian government. This limitation has hobbled vaccination efforts in rebel-held regions, where the virus was first detected. -
Already at war for more almost three years, Syria is facing another scourge. At least a dozen cases of polio have been confirmed so far, and experts fear the childhood disease could quickly engulf the entire country and spread beyond its borders. -
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that effectively bars women from driving. Women are making a renewed challenge to the ban by getting behind the wheel and posting videos in advance of a national drive-in set for Saturday.
