Anjana Sankar K

IWMF Neuffer Fellow - Bylines at The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The National

United Arab Emirates

I am an international journalist based in Abu Dhabi with over 20 years of frontline reporting experience, specialising in conflict, migration, and human rights across the Middle East, Europe and South Asia. My work spans war zones—from Ukraine, Gaza, Syria, and Yemen to the U.S.–Mexico border —where I’ve uncovered stories of displacement, political upheaval, and humanitarian crises. As a former senior journalist at The National and former bureau chief at Khaleej Times, I’ve led newsrooms, directed regional coverage, and produced in-depth analysis on geopolitical developments. I was selected as the 2024 IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow and was placed at the New York Times, and The Boston Globe. I was also a visiting scholar at MIT, focusing on forced migration and human rights. Whether embedded with military units or documenting refugee journeys, I aim to break down complex issues through nuanced and objective storytelling.

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Portfolio
Nytimes
07/24/2024
Netanyahu Offers Full-Throated Defense of Gaza War

The Israeli prime minister portrayed the war in Gaza as a "clash between barbarism and civilization" and declared "we will win." He called antiwar protesters outside the Capitol "Iran's useful idiots."

Khaleej Times
Kids bear brunt of Yemen conflict

According to the UN, an estimated 1.8 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished. Three-month-old Mohammed's feeble yet agonizing cries tear through the stuffy hospital room in Mukalla, an erstwhile Al Qaeda territory in South Yemen. He is three months old. But his scrawny, malnourished body looks like a skinny bag of bones.

Khaleej Times
A ticking time bomb off Yemen coast

After almost 18 months of hard negotiations, a UN expert team has got permission to visit the ship and assess its safety. Yemen's protracted conflict and the massive hunger crisis it has spawned is one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

Khaleej Times
Houthi landmines wreak mayhem

Victims recall brush with explosives; UAE-backed de-mining effort makes steady progress. "Look at me. I am alive but half-dead," says 54-year-old Ali Ahmed, clutching his pair of crutches. Ahmed lost his left leg when he accidentally stepped on a mine laid by Houthis before they retreated from Aden when coalition forces moved into the interim-capital to restore the legitimate government of Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

Gulfnews
10/08/2015
Young refugee children learn to cope in a foreign land

Munich: As you enter the blue concrete dorm building run by Caritas for unaccompanied minor refugees, in the heart of the Munich city, the rustic beat of a Pashtun song greets you in the hallway. Huddling on a couch at the entrance of an indoor volleyball court, Jaan Mohammad, 14, from Afghanistan is flipping through his mobile playing his favourite songs.

Gulfnews
05/27/2015
A month on, Nepal is still on shaky ground

It is seven in the morning. The first rays of sunshine have landed on the rugged mountains overlooking a cluster of villages that are already awake. There is a slow trickle of people up a steep road leading to a patch of flat ground.

Khaleej Times
Godhra puts its troubled past behind and eyes development

The small town in eastern Gujarat has long buried its ignominious past. The narrow streets that wind through the busy wholesale market on the Gidhwani Road in Godhra is clogged with traffic and sweaty men. Trucks filled with swollen sacks of rice and onions callously rattle past rickety bikes and rickshaws wheezing in the dusty, hot weather.

Khaleej Times
Rahul woos farmers; Modi wave missing?

In a 40-45 minute speech, Gandhi went all guns blazing against the BJP and his chief opponent Narendra Modi. The temperature hovered around 42 degrees and the midday sun was piercing through the colourful shamianas (tents) covering the open ground in Ramseen - a remote village in the Jalore district of Southern Rajasthan.

Khaleej Times
No compromise in war against Al Qaeda in Yemen

Yemeni Forces are being trained to drive Al Qaeda out. The sweeping views of Mukalla from atop the rugged mountains wrapping the southern coastal stretch look picture perfect. But for the heavily armed Yemeni forces manning the military outposts from a vantage point, it is crucial to keep round-the-clock watch over the port city that was once rampaged and ruled by Al Qaeda up until 2016.