Adnan won The Bodley Head/Financial Times Essay Prize for British Muslim Soldier, an essay on identity. From Kabul, he wrote Among the Taliban on the group’s return to power and an eye witness dispatch from the site of the devastating earthquakes in Gayan. From northern Iraq he wrote for The Economist on foreign fighters joining the Kurds, from Calais for New Lines Magazine on people-smuggling gangs. He wrote about the Iraq War of 2003 for The Outpost (Beirut), Five Dials (a literary magazine from Hamish Hamilton), The Guardian, the Telegraph, 1843 magazine and The White Review. He was an editor at The Economist for three years.

Selected writing

Awards

2013, Financial Times, British Muslim Soldier, Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize winner published as an ebook by Vintage

Migration

2025, il Nord Est, The Pakistanis in the Park

2021, New Lines Magazine, The Gangs of Calais

Afghanistan

2022, Financial Times, We may not agree with the Taliban but we should help Afghanistan

2021, Financial Times, Among the Taliban: a soldier-turned-writer’s journey through Afghanistan 

2021-2, Substack, Diary from Afghanistan from Hairatan, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kabul, Kandahar & Bamyan 

2015, Financial Times, Martyrs, flowers and warrior poets (on the poetry of the Taliban)

Iraq

2018, 1843 Magazine (The Economist), Saddam Hussein: My part in his downfall

2018, Five Dials (Hamish Hamilton), Then and Now, a soldier returns

2016, The Economist, Why an ordinary man went to fight Islamic State 

2013, The Outpost (Beirut), An Iraqi near the Sandpit, on the Iraq war of 2003

2013, The White Review, To sing the love of danger (Iraq war)

Salman Rushdie

2013, Marginalia Review of Books / Los Angeles Review of Books, I’m sorry, Salman, on meeting Salman Rushdie