Deborah Amos

Credit Steve Barrett

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.

Amos travels extensively across the Middle East covering a range of stories including the rise of well-educated Syria youth who are unqualified for jobs in a market-drive economy, a series focusing on the emerging power of Turkey and the plight of Iraqi refugees.

In 2009, Amos won the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting from Georgetown University and in 2010 was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Life Time Achievement Award by Washington State University. Amos was part of a team of reporters who won a 2004 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for coverage of Iraq. A Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1991-1992, Amos was 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 an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and a Break thru 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 began her career after receiving a degree in broadcasting from the University of Florida at Gainesville.

For Syria, A 'Lawrence Of Arabia' Moment

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Credit AP

Syrians walk through a badly damaged neighborhood in the central city of Homs on Sunday. Despite a declared cease-fire, fighting has continued in a number of Syrian cities, and peace efforts are at risk of collapsing.

Credit Mohammad Hannon / AP

Syrian opposition fighters stand watch in a suburb of Damascus, Syria, on April 6. A cease-fire was declared several days later, but shooting has continued.

By Deborah Amos

In the final scenes of the classic film Lawrence of Arabia, the Arab rebel fighters are wrapped up with internal, petty squabbles in Damascus as the great powers maneuver for the future of Syria.

Now, nearly a century after the events depicted in that movie, there's a similar Lawrence of Arabia moment playing out in Syria.

10:39 am

Wed April 11, 2012

At The Met: A Middle East Transition, Centuries Ago

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Credit Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Art Resource, NY / The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's exhibit examines Christian Byzantium and Islam as they first came into contact in the Middle East in the seventh to ninth centuries. This ivory carving is from what is known as the Grado Chair, a Christian artifact from the Eastern Mediterranean or Egypt in the seventh to eighth century.

Credit The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Silver chalices made in Syria in the sixth or seventh century. They are known as the Attarouthi Treasure, named after the prosperous Byzantine merchant town of Attarouthi.

By Deborah Amos

Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 10:53 am

The yearlong tumult of the Arab Spring has reached all the way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

A stunning and timely new show, "Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition," covers exactly the places caught up in modern day revolts, and many of the developments from more than a millennium ago are closely linked to the events of today.

11:36 am

Wed March 14, 2012

Aid Group's Role In Syria Pushes Limits

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Credit Michael Sohn / AP

Campaigners from the international advocacy group Avaaz protest Russian arms sales to the Syrian government during a demonstration in front of the Russian Embassy in Berlin on Nov. 2.

Credit Reuters TV / Reuters /Landov

British photographer Paul Conroy lies on a stretcher as he is treated by a doctor in Homs on Feb. 22. Avaaz coordinated Conroy's rescue from the embattled city, an operation that left 13 Syrian activists dead.

By Deborah Amos

Originally published on Wed March 14, 2012 1:07 pm

A year into the Syrian uprising, with the world community reluctant to intervene, one international group has taken a direct and risky role in Syria — even taking part in the high-profile rescue of Western journalists from the besieged city of Homs.

Avaaz, a global online pressure group based in New York, has given crucial support to the uprising and the Syrian activist networks that aim to topple the regime of President Bashar Assad.

2:35 pm

Fri February 17, 2012

A Passion To Bear Witness: Why War Correspondents Take The Risk

Credit Steven Senne / AP

Shadid won two Pulitzer prizes for international reporting, in 2004 and 2010. Here, he poses on the campus of Brown University in the year of his second win.

By Deborah Amos

Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 11:01 am

Journalists don't talk about the danger. They don't usually recount the moments of agonizing terror that come after a bad decision to continue on down the road as the faint sound of mortar shells grows louder.

4:27 pm

Tue February 7, 2012

In Morocco, The Arab Spring's Mixed Bounty

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Credit Abdeljalil Bounhar / AP

Relatives of Abdelwahab Zaydoun, a 27-year-old Moroccan who set himself on fire to protest his unemployment and died from his burns, react to his death in Casablanca last month. A year after street protests in Morocco prompted some reforms, Moroccans remain discontent with the gap between rich and poor, and the slow strides toward democracy.

Credit Spencer Platt / Getty Images

A Moroccan mother and child beg for money in Rabat, Morocco, last year. About 15 percent of the population lives on $2 a day, and the literacy rate is little more than 50 percent.

Credit Lionel Bonaventure / AFP/Getty Images

Moroccan King Mohammed VI (shown here in Tangiers in September) moved quickly to placate the protesters of the Feb. 20 movement. Now, though, the limits of those reforms are being tested.

By Deborah Amos

Originally published on Tue February 7, 2012 6:26 pm

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12:01 am

Fri January 27, 2012

In Morocco, Unemployment Can Be A Full-Time Job

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Credit Abdeljalil Bounhar / AP

Demonstrators carry posters of Abdelwahab Zaydoun, who set himself on fire and died from his burns Tuesday. Zaydoun was part of a movement protesting unemployment in Morocco.

Credit Deborah Amos / NPR

Activists gather to march against youth unemployment in the Moroccan capital of Rabat. Protesters wear colored vests with the slogan of their respective groups.

By Deborah Amos

Originally published on Fri January 27, 2012 10:04 am

Listen

It is rush hour in Rabat, the Moroccan capital, and time for the march of unemployed college graduates.

They are part of a movement that has become a rite of passage. It's a path to a government career for a lucky few, even though it can take years.

"I have a degree, a master's degree in English, and I'm here ... idle without a job, without dignity, without anything," protester Abdul Rahim Momneh says.

6:31 am

Sun January 22, 2012

In Morocco, Islamists Learn To Work With A King

Credit Paul Schemm / AP

Morocco's Islamist Justice and Development Party heads the country's new government, the result of snap elections called by the king. Here, Abdelilah Benkirane, the party's secretary general and now prime minister, arrives for an election rally in Sale on Nov. 1. The party now faces political as well as economic challenges.

By Deborah Amos

An Islamist party heads Morocco's newly elected government, part of a wave of Islamist election victories following uprisings across North Africa.

But Morocco's case is a bit different. King Mohammed VI responded quickly to a pro-democracy movement last year with a new constitution and snap elections. The Justice and Development Party, known as the PJD, won the most votes in November. Now, Moroccans ask: How will this popular Islamist party govern?

12:01 am

Fri January 20, 2012

For Moroccan Activists, The King's Reforms Fall Short

Credit Azzouz Boukallouch / AP

Morocco's King Mohammed VI introduced reforms after protests began last February. But activists say the measures didn't go far enough and they are still taking to the streets. Here, the king is shown in his palace in Rabat last June 17.

By Deborah Amos

When a pro-democracy movement took to the streets of Morocco last February, King Mohammed VI, who's been on the throne for more than decade, responded swiftly.

Within weeks, the king proposed a new constitution and snap elections. The Moroccan example of reforms without violence was hailed by some as a model.

5:03 am

Wed November 2, 2011

With Protests, Syrians Are Learning Politics

Credit Shaam News Network / AP

Anti-government protesters march in the village of Amouda, Syria on Sept. 30. For many Syrians, the protests mark the first time they have taken part in anything resembling politics.

By Deborah Amos

Originally published on Wed November 2, 2011 8:38 am

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Government opponents in Syria have not been able to dislodge President Bashar Assad, but they are doing something the country has rarely if ever seen: they are organizing by themselves, outside of government control.

The massive street protests, demanding the end of Assad's regime, have defined the revolt over the past eight months.

But other things are happening as well, far from public view. In one quiet office in Damascus, Ashraf Hamza, 28, is leading a group of men at a session on community organizing.

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10:22 am

Thu April 19, 2012