CNN’s Clarissa Ward Reflects on Kabul Reporting After Evacuating: ‘One of the Most Intense Stories I’ve Ever Covered’
CNN’s Clarissa Ward took time on Sunday to reflect on everything she saw while reporting on Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban.
Ward appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources to speak with Brian Stelter, her first interview since she flew out of Kabul on Friday. Stelter welcomed her onto the show as he gave her plaudits for the vital, often dangerous coverage she provided on what the Afghanistan capital has been like since the Taliban took over.
“At this stage, honestly, I’m so exhausted and so kind of overwhelmed by everything I’ve witnessed over the last week or so that it was absolutely a wonderful feeling to hug my little boys and my husband and my parents,” Ward said. “But there’s also just a sense of, like, it’s just like collapse, basically. It’s like finally I can just let go and collapse.”
As she described the flight out of Kabul, Ward reflected on the “sadness and guilt” she felt for being able to escape Afghanistan while so many people are still desperately trying to get out. In her words, it was “guilt like why do we get to leave? Why are we so lucky and fortunate and tens of thousands of others are still pressing to try to get into that airport to try to get out safely?”
Ward went on by describing Qatar’s efforts to process everyone fleeing Afghanistan while sharing her relief that she was able to get her translator on the plane with the rest of her crew. She also spoke about the sense of uncertainty that weighed on her mind while she and her team decided to keep covering the situation in Kabul.
Explaining her decision to leave, Ward said the Kabul chaos was “one of the most intense stories I’ve ever covered.” She added that she and her team were completely exhausted by the experience, and “if we’re going to keep doing justice to this story, we need probably a fresh set of eyes on it.”
The interview concluded with Stelter asking Ward how she reckons with what she saw in Kabul. She answered by once again explaining “the hardest part of the job is the guilt, because I get to walk away.”
“When I get too tired, I get to walk away at the end of the day, get a plane, land, hug my kids, be with my family, sleep, eat, and why is that? Just because I have a little blue passport and other people don’t. And I don’t think that gets any easier, and I don’t think you ever get used to that, and especially as a mother this time — that day at the airport, 14 hours in the scorching sun and watching these women try to find a private place to breastfeed, using these little bits of cardboard to fan their babies, hearing and seeing these images of people throwing their babies across the razor wire. If that doesn’t rip your heart out and haunt you and make you question everything in this life, then I don’t know what will.”
Watch above, via CNN.
