SUDAN:With his copper-tone skin and government-issued, Chinese-made Kalashnikov, Mohamed Ali Adam is far from the stereotypical image of a Darfur rebel commander.
His Arab Falata tribe is one of the most feared in South Darfur, responsible for raping, looting and murdering its way through village after village.
Yet he is among a growing number of Arab gunmen switching sides as they grow disillusioned with the Khartoum government.
"If I remember the actions which we did, I feel very sorry and sometimes I cry," he said, sipping sweet, black tea with half a dozen Sudan Liberation Army commanders deep inside the mountainous rebel stronghold of Jebel Mara.
Once they would have tried to kill each other.
Now Commander Adam ventures regularly into the hillside town of Gorolang Baje - home to the Fur people that gave Darfur its name - to take orders from his superiors.
His presence here is a sign that the widely accepted view of the Darfur conflict is breaking down.
No longer is it a case of rebels drawn from the black, farming tribes pitted against an Arab-dominated government and their light-skinned Janjaweed allies.
The picture is far more complex and hopes of a resolution even further away, according to analysts.
Darfur is riddled with tribal tensions, many of which the government has been able to exploit for its own ends, mobilising Arab tribes against the settled non-Arab tribes. But that is not the whole story.
Several Arab tribes have kept out of the conflict altogether.
In places, Arab tribes have turned on each other as they compete for land plundered from non-Arab tribes.
And at the end of last year a new rebel grouping emerged. The Popular Forces Army draws its strength from Arab tribes opposed to the government.
"The level of complexity has always been there beneath the surface," said one aid official in the South Darfur capital of Nyala. "What we are seeing, though, is the divisions come to the surface and overall security is getting worse." Splits among rebel groups emerged last year after the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement.
One arm of the SLA, the one which signed up for peace, is now allied to the government and is spearheading an offensive against their old comrades who are holed up in Jebel Mara.
Adam (23), who commands a unit of 70 non-signatory SLA soldiers, is clear about why he split from Khartoum seven months ago.
He said the government promised his people land amid the fertile slopes of Jebel Mara, where apple orchards and orange groves prosper far from the dusty, desert plains that comprise the rest of Darfur.
But four years on, he said he wondered why he took up arms. He found himself fighting people from the Fur tribe - a people whose language he spoke and who he had always considered good neighbours.
"Also the government, when we went for our money, they said they had no files," he added, grinning at the memory.
Now, as he listed the villages he helped burn - Hamada, Durbo, Baliserif, Debenera, Jafaina - he said he felt only regret.
Other nomadic fighters have found that their looted cattle and camels are virtually worthless. The fighting has cut off their traditional migration routes and they cannot reach markets.
Tusher Mohamed Mahdi, a member of the Arab Jalul tribe, defected with his band of 150 Janjaweed.
They gave themselves up at an SLA checkpoint after running out of food and money.
"The government told us they needed us but they just wanted us to do their work as if we were slaves," he said.
They have found willing comrades in the branch of the SLA that considers the Jebel Mara its heartland.
Hamis Mohamed Adam, the SLA's political officer in Gorolang Baje, said: "There were so many serious things, sad stories, burning villages, killing people, but if someone is wrong, and has discovered that they are wrong what can we do then? We can only forgive them." The shifting allegiances make the search for peace an even more pressing priority, said Mohamed Guyo, of the Institute for Security Studies in Nairobi.
"There is always a chance for peace if there is the political will and the international community brings its pressure to bear," he said.
"But if things continue as they are, with rebel groups fragmenting and other militias switching sides, then it becomes more and more difficult to imagine a resolution."