SUDAN: A two-month-old peace deal has made no difference to people's lives, writes Rob Crilly in Abu Shouk
Peace in Darfur looks much the same as war when viewed through the 80-year-old eyes of Klatuma Ali Mohamed.
She squats in the doorway of her simple mud-plastered hut amid the sprawling misery of Abu Shouk camp for people displaced by three years of conflict, and explains that a two-month-old peace deal has made no difference to her life.
"I don't think I will ever return to my village, there's nothing to go back to," she says quietly in Arabic. "I had a small farm and a simple home, but it is gone for ever."
Government planes bombed her village before the Janjaweed militia rode in on camels, killing her three elderly sisters and forcing the only survivor of the family on a seven-day trek to the relative safety of Abu Shouk.
That was three years ago. Now, Mohamed says women fear leaving the camp to collect firewood and that families are struggling to survive on meagre food rations.
Outside her dusty compound, women queue for hours at the 49 waterholes that serve a population of 55,000.
This is the scene that greeted Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern this week as he led an Irish delegation to see for himself the extent of the humanitarian disaster.
Hundreds of children scamper barefoot through the dust and sand of a swollen camp that has turned a green corner of Darfur into a parched hellhole, stripped of the vegetation that might once have supported life.
The picture is repeated in scores of camps across Darfur.
No one really knows the true extent of the tragedy, but latest estimates suggest that 300,000 people have died and 3.6 million have been affected by the fighting since Darfuri tribes rose against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
Earlier this year came a brief ray of hope. Government ministers and rebel commanders signed a peace deal in the Nigerian capital Abuja, after two years of stop-start negotiations and a week of arm-twisting by American officials.
However, the deal was signed by only one rebel faction, that led by Minni Minawi, who draws his strength from the Zaghawa tribe.
In this part of Darfur, the camps are filled with members of the Fur tribe whose leader, Abdel Wahid Mohamed Nur, refused to sign the deal.
Issa Ahmied Ali, one of the Fur sheikhs who wields considerable influence in Abu Shouk, says the deal was devised by the government to divide the rebels of the Sudan Liberation Army along tribal lines.
"The story you have heard from this woman is typical," he says, squatting in the dust of Mohamed's bamboo-fenced compound.
"We have nothing to go back to and we reject the peace deal because it does not guarantee our rights, there is no compensation for the things we have lost and it does not offer us any sort of peace."
There is another loser in the deal. The already-beleaguered African Union (AU) forces whose stretched manpower is supposed to police the camps and provide some protection for Darfuri civilians and aid organisations, have found themselves accused of giving up their neutrality.
They have been subjected to angry demonstrations and asked to stay out of Abu Shouk - and many other camps - after the AU's role in brokering the peace deal led Fur leaders to conclude that the force was allied with the government or the rival SLA faction.
The result is a headache for the humanitarian workers who face a constant battle to keep aid supplies coming into the camps.
Hugo Palacios, camp co-ordinator for the Spanish Red Cross, says relations between the aid agencies and camp residents have reached an all-time low as political leaders try to strengthen their grip on the displaced populations.
"We are seeing civil unrest in the camps which is becoming a real concern and is becoming one of the biggest challenges in Abu Shouk," he adds.
Other challenges were described by tribal and women's leaders during a meeting with Mr Ahern.
Many complained they were struggling to feed their families since the United Nations World Food Programme was forced to halve rations due to funding constraints.
Several of the women said security around the camp had declined in recent months, increasing the risk of rape if they ventured outside.
Mr Ahern said he was deeply moved by the stories he heard during his visit, particularly that of a mother and her three children.
"The children were all decked out in their finery for our visit, but when you see the very basic conditions that they live in, it reminds us how lucky we are where we live in the western world, and how these people have to put up with such difficulties, living under a cardboard roof with the rainy season about to arrive," he said.
Despite its flaws, said Mr Ahern, the Abuja peace agreement was "the only show in town" and offered the best hope for improving the lives of Abu Shouk's residents.
"We always have to be careful in this, because depending on who you talk to they will tell you the peace agreement is a good agreement, but others will tell you it's not for them, but I think it's fair to say the peace agreement has the support of a large majority of the Sudanese people."
In the meantime, he said he would raise the issue with his European colleagues of the UN World Food Programme funding and the lack of resources available to the AU troops, in an attempt to bring a quick peace dividend to the displaced people of Darfur.