WITNESS: Five years on, what good can reporting Darfur do?

Opheera McDoom is the Reuters correspondent in Sudan. She was one of the first foreign correspondents to begin covering the Darfur conflict in 2003, witnessing all the twists and turns the story has taken over the years. In the following story, she gives some of her own impressions of covering the war which swept western Sudan's Darfur region as the conflict's fifth anniversary passes without any resolution in sight.

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - An elderly Darfuri woman stood in front of the charred remains of her house. She tapped me on my shoulder and held out a wizened hand full of seeds.

"How am I supposed to eat this?" she pleaded.

Totally humbled, I was speechless, unsure how to help.

Now her face haunts my nightmares.

It will be five years on Tuesday since war broke out in Darfur, since rebels seized a town and prompted a Sudanese counter-insurgency reckoned by foreign experts to have killed 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.

I have been writing on Darfur for 4 1/2 years.

More than ever, I am wondering how much difference my reporting can make.