SUDAN:If peace ever comes to Sudan then the tiny villages spread through the hills and crags of northern Darfur have the most to gain. The children of settlements like En Siro have no school, its clinic has no medicine and its people live far beyond the reach of the aid agencies which provide a lifeline to millions elsewhere.
The only way in and out is by helicopter. The roads here are riddled with gunmen claiming to represent one rebel faction or another. "Bandits" might be a better description. Later this month, rebels and government officials will sit down in the Libyan capital Tripoli in the latest attempt to thrash out a peace.
Cmdr Ibrahim Abdullah Al "Hello", who holds En Siro for one of the largest factions of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), will not be there.
"Libya is not a suitable place for peace talks because the government of Libya is not neutral and has stood beside the Sudanese government in the past," he said, sitting on a rickety bench in what was once a classroom.
Darfur's conflict has long seemed desperate. From En Siro, it looks impossible.
Government Antonovs overfly the village regularly and reports of bombing trickle in by satellite phone from elsewhere in northern Darfur.
This is the scenario that greets Nelson Mandela's roving band of ambassadors, known as the Elders. They arrived in Khartoum on Sunday night for their first international mission, promising to help smooth the path to peace.
Although the former South African leader is too frail to travel, the party includes a former American president, Jimmy Carter, a Nobel laureate, Desmond Tutu, and assorted other diplomats and entrepreneurs such as Sir Richard Branson.
In meetings with Sudanese ministers, aid workers and a fragile African Union peacekeeping mission, they hope to lay the groundwork for the talks and the rapid deployment of a 26,000-strong joint AU-UN hybrid force.
Their arrival coincided with a tragic weekend for the African troops.
Huge numbers of gunmen - suspected to be linked to the rebel movement - overran their base in the town of Haskanita on Saturday evening. Ten soldiers have been confirmed dead and as many as 50 are still missing.
That attack was followed by a government bombing raid against rebel targets in the town of Kuma.
Commenting on the rebel attack, Mr Tutu said: "it just shows how desperate the situation is, how desperately we've got to find a peaceful solution so that incidents of that kind don't happen."
For now the conflict seems trapped in a catch-22 bind. Several rebel leaders say they will not attend peace talks until there is security on the ground, but security on the ground seems unlikely before any talks.
Speaking before the weekend of bloodshed, Cmdr Ibrahim said his leader, Abdulwahid Mohamed el Nur, would not attend talks before the hybrid force was on the ground.
"If he goes to Libya without peace we will still be fighting," he said. "The root of the problem is still here - the insecurity." And that insecurity is getting worse.
In four years of conflict the old analysis of rebels against an Arab government supported by a proxy army of Janjaweed militias broke down. Today Arab tribes are fighting Arab tribes across southern Darfur.
Meanwhile, rebel groups continue to fragment across northern Darfur.
More than 27 splinters are now vying for control of anti-government sentiment. No one will say it publicly, but privately many aid workers and UN officials believe Sudan is descending into the sort of anarchy seen in Somalia.
"We talk about rebel groups and rebel commanders but what we are really dealing with is one man and a bunch of gunmen with some pick-ups. These are warlords," said one observer.
The result is a growing swathe of Darfur that resembles En Siro, where people live out of sight and beyond the reach of help. Already this year more than 170,000 people have been forced from their homes, according to the latest UN figures.
Maurizio Giuliano, public information officer with the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the aid response was now in danger of being swamped.
"Insecurity is going up. We have fragmentation of groups and we have more actors to talk to now to guarantee our security as we move around," he said.
"Humanitarian needs are going up and there is a worry that we will eventually be overtaken by the situation."
For now the international community is pinning its hopes on the talks, and on the arrival of the hybrid force.
But while many Darfuris expect well-drilled American and European troops to save them from violence, Khartoum insists the force be predominantly African.
That gives AU officers like Lieut Col Stephen Van Neel, whose South African soldiers are responsible for the northern reaches of Darfur, a major headache.
"I sincerely hope that these expectations will be met," he said in his air-conditioned office in the town of Kutum. "If they are not then we will have probably an even bigger problem than before."
Peace will have to come quickly if the hybrid force is not to suffer the same fate as the once heralded AU peacekeepers.