SUDAN:The war-weary residents of south Darfur's regional capital woke yesterday to the sound of a fighter jet roaring overhead.
While thousands of people around the world marched in solidarity with Darfur's plight, it was business as usual in the dusty town of Nyala.
A month of diplomatic wrangling and a day of action has made little difference to life here.
The only people marching were hundreds of soldiers practising their drill on the football pitch.
All morning a Mig fighter made low-altitude passes across the town to ear-splitting effect.
Officially the show of strength was to welcome a visiting minister from Khartoum.
Across town, where 55,000 people live in a sprawling aid camp, the reason seems more sinister.
"When the aeroplanes came it was frightening for the women and the children," said Sheikh Abdallah Sharif Bashir, sitting on a wool carpet spread beneath the flimsy grass roof of his community's mosque.
"It's very dangerous but the government wants us to know they are still in charge."
Yesterday, as usual, the camp's women gathered early at the wells. The water holes run dry by mid-morning at this time of year. Things will not ease until the rains in June.
After four years of war and a crisis that the international community seems powerless to solve, this camp built on sand is taking on the trappings of permanence.
Hand pumps have been replaced by generators and motors that suck water to the surface.
Everywhere piles of mud bricks lie drying in the 45C heat.
Gradually the stick-built shacks are being replaced by brick-built hovels.
This month has seen frantic diplomatic manoeuvring to ease the suffering in Sudan's western region.
The government of Omar al-Bashir has agreed to host a growing contingent of UN personnel in support of an overstretched African Union peacekeeping force.
Meanwhile the US and UK are talking up the prospect of sanctions.
However, UN officials and Sudan analysts say there can be little progress until a shaky peace deal signed last year by a single rebel group and the government gains wider support.
Last week, António Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said 100,000 peacekeepers would make no difference if the warring parties refused to sign up to peace.
The people of Otash agree.
Sheikh Abdallah led 40 villages to the relative safety of Otash in December after they came under attack from Janjaweed fighters.
Now he wants to lead them home but he says nothing has changed yet.
"It is impossible to go home. It is not safe," he said yesterday.
Like many of his Zaghawa tribe he carries a dagger strapped beneath the billowing robes of his white jalabiya - protection, he said, against Janjaweed raiders who steal cattle and women from the camp at night.
"We will be here until there is peace," he said.
For now, if anything, life in Darfur is becoming more precarious.
More than four million people remain reliant on handouts for survival, but aid agencies say they face intolerable risks from bandits and rebel splinter groups.
Robberies, carjackings and looting happen almost daily.
A car and driver with the Irish aid agency Goal were snatched from close to their base in the North Darfur capital of El Fasher a fortnight ago. The driver was later released.
"It's as if they've gone shopping - when they need a vehicle they go looking for one," said one aid worker based in Khartoum.
Locals say the traditional ways of avoiding bloodshed have broken down.
The government has used tribal rivalries to pursue its own agenda in Darfur, paying off some leaders but sidelining others.
The result, says Ibrahim Ahmed Adam, a lecturer at Nyala University, is a breakdown in trust as traditional leaders lose the respect of their communities.
"There always used to be tribal tensions but the sheikhs used to control things," he said. "Now they can't."