Sudanese rebels jubilant after another hollow victory in Africa's longest war

The veteran rebel Dr John Garang was in jubilant mood. His troops had just captured Kapoeta, a heavily guarded garrison town inside Sudan's southern border with Kenya. Seated under a tree, he flipped an identity card on to the table. It belonged to another man in uniform – the government commander whose bloated remains lay rotting by the town's dirt runway.

"This was a great defeat, a massive victory," said the well-spoken, grey-bearded leader.

The capture of Kapoeta on Monday will not win the war for Dr Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). Nevertheless, it represents a small but strategic victory in Africa's longest-running war, a seemingly intractable conflict aggravated this year by a deadly oil rush that Canadian, Chinese and British companies have joined.

Driven by the promise of millions of pounds, government troops in helicopter gunships have attacked civilian villages to clear oil-producing areas. In one incident, a gunship crew attacked families queuing for UN food handouts. Last Sunday, the SPLA responded by taking Kapoeta, a town it lost 10 years ago.

Rotting corpses still littered the ring of trenches around the town yesterday. Some were decapitated; others had been stripped to their underwear. Although the war is often portrayed as a fight between northern Arabs and southern Africans, many of the fallen government troops were dark-skinned – possibly southerners conscripted or drawn by the lure of a wage.

Vultures wheeled overhead as rebel troops rested on captured artillery. There were few civilians – they had fled hours earlier, after a government Antonov plane scattered bombs over the town. There were no casualties.

The Catholic church was in ruins, its blackened walls covered in a scrawl of Arabic lettering. By the altar, neatly uniformed rebels were preparing large vats of a porridge-like food. One rebel held a tin of donated cooking oil. The American government, whose flag was on the tin, presumably intended it for a hungry civilian, but skimming and the manipulation of aid have also become part of this war.

Dr Garang offered little hope for peace talks, due to resume next Monday. Sudan is blessed – or perhaps blighted – with four separate peace initiatives, variously sponsored by Kenya, Egypt and Libya, Eritrea and America.

In addition, Dr Garang says he has a "three-pronged approach" of his own, which combines fighting with talking. "It is a very complex situation," he acknowledged.

The shifting sands of rebel politics were also illustrated by the man at his side. Riek Machar was once an SPLA leader, then defected to the government, where he became a warlord notorious for human rights abuses. Now he has switched back to the SPLA again.

Although the SPLA claimed to have routed 2,500 troops, it was holding only 24 prisoners of war, including three traders and a trainee doctor. The earnest 26-year-old medic explained that he had been due to return home four days before the attack. Now he is unlikely to return to Khartoum for a long time.