Susman stayed at her job at the Associated Press, focusing on the wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo (then known as Zaire, the shift happened while she was there), and political upheavals in Nigeria, Cameroon, and elsewhere. One of her most famous stories from this time was a piece on General Butt Naked, a much-feared Liberian warlord whom she tracked down in 1997. The next year, she became the Africa correspondent for "Newsday" from Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1999, Susman won her first in a series of awards, first prize for international reporting from the New York Association of Black Journalists for her coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone, including stories on a rebel attack on the capital, Freetown, and interviews with assault survivors. That same year, her child soldiers series from Africa received a Citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club. With fellow "Newsday" writer, Geoffrey Mohan, reporting from South America, she won Sigma Delta Chi for Foreign Correspondence from the Society of Professional Journalists for another series on the use of children as soldiers in Liberia and Sierra Leone, efforts to rehabilitate them, and challenges to their recovery. This work also garnered an award from the National Association of Black Journalists for "outstanding coverage of the black condition."