New York Times names new South Asia correspondent in Delhi — Afghan native Mujib Mashal

Mujib Mashal has been reporting from Afghanistan for the NYT for the past five years. In his new role, he will report on India’s internal politics and the rest of the SAARC countries.

NYT's new South Asia correspondent Mujib Mashal. | Photo: NYT

New Delhi: The New York Times has named Mujib Mashal, who is presently NYT’s senior correspondent in Afghanistan’s Kabul, as its new South Asia correspondent, who will be based out of Delhi.

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I will soon take up a new role as the @nytimes South Asia correspondent based out of Delhi, learning and telling stories from another place I love.https://t.co/X6GdDifLuX

— Mujib Mashal (@MujMash) August 19, 2020

Mashal has been reporting from Afghanistan for the NYT for the past five years and has covered insurgent leaders, corrupt politicians, battle-scarred soldiers and devastated families.

Described by the NYT as a “fearless reporter with a poet’s flair”, Mashal has been covering Afghanistan since 2010. In the past, he also reported from Kolkata and New Delhi, during the 2019 elections and farmers’ protests in 2018, respectively. He has reported from Sri Lanka as well. 

According to the NYT, Mashal will be taking on his role at “an important time in India” when “a huge, vibrant and freewheeling democracy with a charismatic prime minister” is “pursuing a Hindu nationalist agenda amid a stalling economy, deep societal divisions and the challenges of the coronavirus”.

Columbia graduate who interned at NYT 

The native Afghan attended a preparatory school in Massachusetts — Deerfield Academy, which is one of the oldest secondary schools in the US, according to his LinkedIn profile. He then went to Ivy-league Columbia University to pursue his undergraduate studies in history from 2007 to 2011.

It was during his undergraduate studies that Mashal entered the world of journalism and interned with NYT’s Kabul bureau in 2010. After graduating from Columbia, he got a job at Al Jazeera English in Doha and remained there for a year. 

From 2012 to 2015, Mashal was a freelance journalist, with many bylines in news publications such as The Atlantic, Harper’s, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera English/America, Foreign Policy and others.

In 2015, Mashal returned to NYT, this time as a reporter in Kabul. A year later, he became a senior correspondent.

New role

In his new role as the South Asia correspondent based out of New Delhi, Mashal will not only report about India’s internal politics but will also be reporting about the rest of the SAARC countries – Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

In the “coming months”, he will be joining NYT’s South Asia reporter and correspondent Kai Schultz and Maria Abi-Habib, both of whom are based out of New Delhi.

Habib has also reported from Kabul and in 2012 was a finalist for the Daniel Pearl Award for an investigation into atrocities at Kabul’s main military hospital.