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One of CNN’s most prominent foreign correspondents on Wednesday recounted how she and her camera crew were detained by a Sudanese warlord for 48 hours during her reporting in the war-torn Darfur region earlier this month.
In an article posted on CNN’s website, Clarissa Ward, the network’s chief international correspondent, said that her crew was headed to the town of Tawila, a northern Darfur settlement under the control of members of the Sudan Liberation Movement, where they hoped to report on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the region.
But when they arrived at an agreed-upon meeting spot in a neighboring town, Ward and her crew were confronted by members of a rival militia who fired rounds in the air, took their driver to the local jail and interrogated the journalist and the others in her party. They would be held for nearly two days by the militia in an open area before the group let them go, convinced they weren’t spies. They left Sudan shortly thereafter.
“We had come to Darfur to report on the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, never intending to become part of the story,” the British-American journalist wrote.
Ward’s harrowing account comes as Sudan’s brutal civil war continues to deteriorate. The conflict, which has become a proxy war for various Arab and African countries, has seen millions of people displaced and exacerbated the risk of famine and mass starvation in the country. Aid groups have struggled to maintain operations in the country given the intensity and brutality of fighting.
Both main parties to the conflict — the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which emerged from the remnants of the Islamist Janjaweed forces that ravaged Darfur’s Christian communities in previous conflicts — have been accused by international observers of major human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against of humanity.
The United States and other countries have pledged to provide humanitarian assistance to refugees and displaced persons affected by the conflict. They have also worked to facilitate peace talks between the warring sides, but those talks have failed to secure even brief respites in the fighting.
