The battle for Sierra Leone's capital Freetown appears to be nearly over, at least for the time being, with west African soldiers having driven rebels from much of the city.
But the way ahead is strewn with uncertainty, with trust a commodity in short supply in an impoverished country where rich diamond deposits attract a host of unscrupulous adventurers.
Freetown is a city where anarchy is rife, guns are permanently cocked and those holding them are jittery. Official and unofficial roadblocks proliferate.
The regional power broker, Nigeria, which provides the bulk of the Ecomog regional force protecting the Freetown government, is showing signs of wanting to curtail its military involvement.
The rebels, ejected from the capital in February 1998 after nine months of sharing power with renegade soldiers and more recently in January, have shown over the years that they have staying power. They are estimated to number up to 20,000.
"We must recognise that the rebels are with us, that they are Sierra Leoneans. The number of people who want to negotiate increases," Ms Zainab Bangura of the Campaign for Good Governance lobby group said.
But for many, among them President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the key question is with whom. "With whom do you negotiate? What is the premium I should give away, (the release of the rebel leader) Cpl Foday Sankoh?" said one close aide to Mr Kabbah.
Cpl Sankoh, the Revolutionary United Front leader who took up arms in 1991 and has fought successive governments, is in government hands and has been sentenced to death. Rebel commanders in the field, such as Mr Sam Bockarie, still express loyalty to Cpl Sankoh. A demand for his release underpinned the rebel advance into the capital.
"For the moment, I am fighting for the release of Cpl Foday Sankoh. Peace is unlikely so long as he is not free," Mr Bockarie told the French-language magazine Jeune Afrique.
Mr Kabbah, who won 1996 multi-party elections, signed a peace deal with Cpl Sankoh in 1996. It unravelled, with each side accusing the other of breaking it.
Cpl Sankoh's rebels joined forces with army dissidents who ousted Mr Kabbah in May 1997. Mr Kabbah has the support of a coalition of up to 30,000 militiamen, who now sport AK47s and grenade-launchers.
"Now there is only a military solution," Mr Kabbah said during a visit by Nigeria's foreign minister on Monday. "We have to push the rebels far, far from Freetown."
But time may be running out.
Nigerian troops overwhelmingly dominate the 15,000-strong Ecomog force which has largely regained control of Freetown since the rebels entered on January 6th.
But Nigeria's involvement in the war is unpopular at home, where the loss of scores of lives and vast expense are seen by many as a waste at a time when low oil export prices have forced government spending cuts in Africa's most populous nation.
"It is the government's ardent wish for the restoration of peace and normalcy in Sierra Leone so that Nigerian troops in that country could be withdrawn before May 29th," Nigeria's military ruler, Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar, told the Canadian Foreign Minister, Mr Lloyd Axworthy, in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Wednesday.
The battle for Freetown has killed more than 3,000 people, according to those who have been burying the bodies. They described most of the dead as males in civilian clothes.