Adnan Sarwar is an award-winning conflict journalist and analyst specialising in Pakistan and Afghanistan. An Emmy winner and Iraq War veteran, he spent two years in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan producing documentary work for HBO, BBC, and Channel 4 while writing essays for the Financial Times after the fall of Kabul. His reporting combines rare field access—gained through fluency in Punjabi and conversational Urdu/Hindi—with frontline military experience from two Iraq War deployments. Winner of The Bodley Head/Financial Times Essay Prize and Premio Luchetta Award for Reportage, his work examines the Taliban, extremism, conflict migration, and the complex identities of British Muslim communities navigating questions of loyalty.

Currently completing a Certificate covering Political Philosophy, Politics, History and Economics at the University of Oxford, he is systematically building academic frameworks around his two decades of military and journalism experience. His research focuses on relations between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, with ongoing language study to deepen his field capability. A former editor at The Economist, he has reported from the Middle East, South Asia, Europe and Africa for the Financial Times, BBC, ITV, Vice, Channel 4 and Sky. He produces rigorous, accessible analysis from ground-level observation and strategic understanding—combining the credibility of lived experience with the frameworks of formal scholarship to illuminate one of the world's most complex regions—South Asia.

All photography by Adnan Sarwar.