Journalism
From the Centre for Investigative Journalism's Logan Symposium
“Nafeez Ahmed is one of the most courageous and interesting investigative reporters of our time....His articles can make very uncomfortable reading for the media and political elite. I recommend them.”
'Breaking' the news cycle…
Throughout his 20+ year career, Dr Nafeez Ahmed has broken exclusive investigative stories on major international security issues encompassing foreign policy, terrorism, national security, the environment, and business. He specialises in using the tools of investigative journalism and systems thinking to uncover the societal and civilisational implications of global trends for mass audiences.
His work has been published in The Guardian, VICE, Independent on Sunday, The Independent, The Times, Sunday Times, The Scotsman, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, New York Observer, Boston Globe, Toronto Star, The New Statesman, Prospect, Le Monde diplomatique, The Correspondent, Yes! Magazine, Raw Story, New Internationalist, Huffington Post UK, Al-Arabiya English, AlterNet, The Ecologist, and Asia Times, among other places.
From 2019 to 2023, Ahmed was the Special Investigations & Global Trends Reporter at Byline Times, where he used systems frameworks to research and break viral stories on climate change, energy crisis, global systems transformation, the COVID-19 pandemic, the erosion of American and British democracy, and the influence of trans-Atlantic white nationalism.
He previously broke major international stories for VICE’s science platform, Motherboard, on humanity’s biggest global challenges. His VICE reporting was regularly picked up by major international news media including CNN, NBC, CBS News, Fox News, ABC News, IB Times, The Independent, and beyond.
From 2013 to 2014, Nafeez reported via his Guardian blog, ‘Earth insight’, on the geopolitics of interconnected environmental, energy and economic crises. At this time, ‘Earth insight’ was the most popular Guardian environment blog.
Since 2015, he ran the crowdfunded investigative journalism platform, INSURGE intelligence. Nafeez was the first journalist to use the website Patreon.com to crowdfund for a journalism venture. INSURGE was funded entirely by readers through subscription-based micro-payments.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed speaks at the Center for Investigative Journalism about his experiences at The Guardian, and his efforts to break a huge whistleblower story on HSBC fraud.
INSURGE published well over 100 original long-form investigations, covering climate change, energy challenges, food crises, political corruption, national security, foreign policy, and beyond. These stories frequently impacted the mainstream news cycle, and reached millions of people worldwide.
Exclusive stories broken by INSURGE were covered by USA Today, Global Post, The Guardian, Salon, The Independent, Washington Post, The Metro, The Week, Daily Star, News Corp's news.com.au, Forward, Forbes, Business Insider, Think Progress, Clean Technica, Discovery News, Channel 4 News, Columbia Journalism Review, Gigaom, Ha’aretz, El-Horizonte (Mexico broadsheet), Contra Magazine (Germany), Rubikon News (Germany), Rebelion (Spain), Delo (Slovenia broadsheet), EnviroNews, Der Standard (Austria broadsheet) Al-Jazeera English, Future Zone, Science Post (France), and the German national press including Die Welt, News.de, General Anzeiger, FOCUS Online, WAZ (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung), Hamburger Abendblatt, Ostthuringer Zeitung, Junge Welt, German TV news channel n-TV, and Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten.
Nafeez's investigative work challenging government narratives around international terrorism has impacted official inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Disturbing and clearly evidenced... Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed traces the unholy games played with Islamist terrorists by the US, and through acquiescence by the UK, flirting with them when it suited and then turning against them.”
Nafeez's first book, The War on Freedom, which critically investigated the Bush administration's narrative of events before and after 9/11, is archived in the ‘9/11 Commission Materials’ Special Collection at the US National Archives in Washington DC – it was among 99 books made available to each 9/11 Commissioner of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States to use during their investigations. It was also the first book used by members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee to help set the lines of inquiry for the 9/11 Commission. In 2005, Nafeez testified in US Congress on his investigative work on Western sponsorship of Islamist militant groups for geopolitical purposes. That testimony was televised nationally on C-SPAN, and can be read via the Congressional Record.
“Respected terror analyst Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed pulls apart the official narrative of 7/7, pointing out its gaps and contradictions... The authorities seem to be unable to answer many of the most basic questions about the 7/7 bombings ... it has taken a study by an academic outsider, Ahmed, to assess the extent of the bombers’ international terrorist connections.”
His fourth book, The London Bombings, was launched in the House of Lords by Lord Rea and supported by two 7/7 survivors, John Tulloch and Rachel North. The London Bombings was the basis of Nafeez's special 7/7 investigative report sponsored and launched by Britain's leading human rights law firm, Garden Court Chambers, with the support of Baroness Helena Kennedy QC. The report became mandatory reading for all legal counsel in the Coroner's Inquest into the London Bombings of 7 July 2005.
“Lucid and persuasive account of how our security mandarins talked themselves into believing we could make quiet, backroom deals with terrorists. ”
In 2015, Nafeez won the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian story on the energy politics of the Ukraine crisis.
The previous year he won another Project Censored Award for his first ever Guardian article covering the heightened risk of civil unrest due to climate-induced food crises.
In December 2015, Nafeez’s work was used by the Home Affairs Select Committee during its inquiry into counter-terrorism policy, when the Committee interrogated Quilliam Foundation director Haras Rafiq. The Committee cited his reporting revealing Rafiq’s and Quilliam’s close ties with far-right and white nationalist groups such as the Gatestone Institute as well as its ties to the Republican Party.
In October 2020, Nafeez’s reporting impacted Parliamentary debate on the Government’s COVID-19 response in light of the ‘Great Barrington Declaration’. Labour Party life-peer Lord Faulkner cited information that Nafeez had exclusively revealed regarding the Declaration’s sponsorship by climate science deniers, receiving an assurance from the Health Minister that its herd immunity strategy would not be followed by Government. In 2022, his whistle-blower story revealing government pressure at Public Health England to water-down guidance so as to release elderly people untested into care homes helped lead to a court victory against the government’s decisions, which were declared unlawful.
Nafeez's media appearances include BBC Newsnight, BBC's The Big Questions, BBC News 24, BBC World Today, BBC World News with George Alagiah, BBC Radio Five Live, BBC Asian Network, Channel 4 News, Sky News, CNN, ABC News (Australia), FOX News with Sean Hannity, Bloomberg, PBS Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, Radio New Zealand, and many others worldwide.
Nafeez once had a verbal spat with the late Christopher Hitchens on the pages of Vanity Fair about Gore Vidal. This culminated in Nafeez's widely-shared longread take-down of Hitchens in the Independent on Sunday.
“Nafeez Ahmed’s understanding of the post 9/11 power game, its lies, illusions and dangers, is no less than brilliant.”