As it happened, a new prophet had arisen in Nuerland, named Wut Nyang. Wut Nyang had been talking about how Riek was left-handed and how, around the turn of the century, the most famous of all the Nuer prophets, Ngundeng, had foretold that a left-handed man would be the salvation of the Nuer. Others claimed that Ngundeng said there would be peace once civil war came to Bor.Amid such portents, unmarked planes started dropping mysterious bundles to the Nasir forces. Then, in late September 1991 - for the first time in eight years - Khartoum allowed a barge filled with grain to sail up the river to Nasir from the government-held town of Malakal.

Garang was quick to accuse Riek of collaborating with the government against him At the time, Riek and Lam denied it. But Lam later told me that they had indeed held their first meeting with the government negotiators that October. He added that the meeting was facilitated by the SPLA's old friend Tiny Rowland "Yes," said Rowland, when I asked him about this. "I thought it was time they came to an agreement with the government But Garang is an extraordinarily difficult chap It wasn't just Riek Machar who broke away. There were a lot of us."One of Riek's own men was scared by the growing anti-Dinka feeling in Nasir. Captain Michael Manyon Anyang was a Dinka himself, a former circuit judge in his early thirties and the SPLA's "relief coordinator" in Nasir.

Michael spent his spare time studying Dinka and Nuer traditional law. Whenever the aid workers went to Nairobi, he asked them to pick up law books for him He had been an outspoken critic of the split. He started visiting the UN camp in the evenings, telling the aid workers he was afraid Then one day in November, he disappeared. Riek's security chief told the aid workers that he had been caught trying to set a landmine in the UN camp.