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Saeed Shah

Reporting on global affairs, from war to climate change to economic turmoil

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Front-page story for The Guardian, April 2026, on the destruction of civilian infrastructure. “Immiserating the civilian population for bargaining leverage is not lawful.”

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U.S.-Iran war
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Chinese jet shot top Western plane

Exclusive breaks news that Chinese fighter jet beat advanced Western aircraft, in India-Pakistan conflict. The most-read story on the Reuters website in 2025.

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UAE buys African forest carbon rights 

The Wall Street Journal, 2023:  story reveals that UAE had quietly bought up the carbon rights to vast tracts of African forest, to offset its own heavy carbon footprint.

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Doctor used in hunt for Bin Laden

Front-page scoop for The Guardian in 2011, revealed that the CIA had recruited a local doctor to try to obtain DNA to confirm the presence of Osama bin Laden. The story led the White House to ban the use of medical personnel for espionage.  

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Secret girls schools in Afghanistan 

Front-page story for The Wall Street Journal, 2023: I visited ‘secret’ schools after girls were banned from high school by the Taliban. I discovered that some of the Taliban members were sending their own daughters to such schools. 

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The global drive to eliminate polio

Front-page story for The Wall Street Journal in 2021 on the decades-long struggle to eliminate polio, and what lessons it provided for tackling Covid-19. I went out with vaccinators, who had come under regular terrorist attack,  

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The global drive to eliminate polio

Front-page story for The Wall Street Journal in 2021 on the decades-long struggle to eliminate polio, and what lessons it provided for tackling Covid-19. I went out with vaccinators, who had come under regular terrorist attack,  

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Suicide bombings against Chinese

Front-page story for The Wall Street Journal, 2022: China made Pakistan the showcase for its global infrastructure building program.  I tracked down the shocked family of a female suicide bomber who blew up Chinese teachers, and got the inside track on the police investigation

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Investigating Mumbai attack

The Guardian, 2008: A front-page scoop. After gunmen killed 166 people in Mumbai, Pakistan denied that the attackers came there. I tracked down the home village of the sole surviving gunman, to prove he was Pakistani, a story that changed policy in Pakistan, India and the U.S.

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Bombing of Gaza infrastructure

Front-page story for The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 2024, looking at the scale of destruction of civilian infrastructure, early on in the war. “The word ‘Gaza’ is going to go down in history along with Dresden and other famous cities that have been bombed,”

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How China's fighter jet won

Reuters, 2025: I got inside the Pakistan Air Force’s war control room, to figure out how Pakistan’s Chinese-made fighter jets shot down several top Western planes flown by India. The story showed the previously untested capabilities of Chinese military hardware in an actual war

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Iran's post-war domestic struggle

The Guardian, June 2026: Now that the war appears to be over, the new generation of leadership confronts competing demands, from hardliners to stick to rigid principles of the Islamic revolution and a population exhausted by economic hardship and repression.

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Inland sea drowns towns and villages

The Wall Street Journal, Sept 2022: Reported on monsoon flooding so extreme that it covered 10% of the country. I went by boat to a submerged town, where the remaining residents were swimming across streets. Global warming likely disrupted the rain pattern, deluging the normally parched south.

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Investigating the Easter attackers

The Wall Street Journal, 2019: Scoop: After suicide bombers attacked hostels and churches in the Easter attacks, I found out that they were not in fact linked to Islamic State, as had been thought, but instead had self-indoctrinated and taught themselves bombmaking from the internet.

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The Wall Street Journal, 2021: I found a woman so poor that she was selling her three-year-old daughter. Readers raised $60,000, which saved her daughter and provided for the family. This story was part of the WSJ entry that was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

Desperate poverty in Afghanistan
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Interview with jailed leader

Smuggled out an interview with jailed Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan, held in solitary confinement. “The nation teeters on the brink of moral and financial bankruptcy, and its people, disillusioned, see no hope in the current imposed government,” said Khan.

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Terrorists quietly encircle Karachi

The Wall Street Journal, 2014: an investigation that established that an Al Qaeda-linked militant group had a presence in neighborhoods all around the outskirts of Pakistan's biggest city, from where they were directing attacks and running an extortion operation

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Poor nations push for climate funds

The Wall Street Journal, 2022: The decades-long struggle by developing countries for compensation for environmental harm from the industrialization of the West. There was finally a breakthrough in the COP27 climate negoiations. 

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China swoops for Afghanistan deals

The Wall Street Journal, 2022: Following the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, China moved to tap the country's mineral wealth. I got access to China's biggest project, a giant copper deposit, lying under the remains of an ancient Buddhist city. 

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