''Machiavellian" is probably not a word many humanitarians would embrace, but Dorsa Nazemi-Salman says she's learnt valuable lessons from the Renaissance diplomat, whose name is a byword for treachery and cunning.
They're lessons she applies every day in her work for the International Committee of the Red Cross in South Sudan, where a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince sits at her bedside.
This 38-year-old humanitarian from Perth isn't plotting any cynical or unscrupulous power plays, but she needs to get inside the heads of those who might be. Otherwise, she says, she can't manoeuvre her team safely around the frontlines of South Sudan's brutal, unpredictable civil war, trying to save lives.
"Machiavelli's insight into how a leader should possess or manage his state is all about the balance of power and influence … And in many ways a humanitarian's world is also about power and influence. I don't have power, but the authorities do. I have influence ... so how do I bring these two together?"
South Sudan is not for the faint-hearted – and neither is the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC. Fortunately for both, as I discovered during the fortnight I spent shadowing her for Dateline, Dorsa is anything but.
Growing up in Iran, she was the only girl playing street soccer in her neighbourhood. She was 17 when she arrived in Australia, speaking no English, but quickly caught up, eventually landing a job with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in Canberra.
Six years ago, to her mother's chagrin, she exchanged office finery for the more practical attire of an ICRC field delegate in Uzbekistan - and hasn't looked back since.
One of Dorsa's colleagues told me: "It's in our DNA to go anywhere, any time", and her CV is certainly proof of this. The ICRC operates in 80 different conflict zones around the world, and Dorsa arrived in South Sudan last year after postings that included Afghanistan and Nigeria.
South Sudan was supposed to be a good news story for humanitarians, but that's not how things have worked out. The world's newest nation, in 2011 it celebrated its independence from Khartoum after decades of civil war, thanks in part to a tireless campaign by sympathetic Western activists, including actor George Clooney.
US president George W. Bush had been happy to support the struggle of the beleaguered Christian south against the Muslim north – and South Sudanese President Salva Kiir is rarely seen without the stetson he was given by his Texan patron.
At the end of 2013, South Sudan was plunged into its own civil war, after a power struggle between Kiir and his vice-president exploded into a bloody tribal conflict.
Since then, things have gone from terrible to catastrophic. Fighting has engulfed the whole country, and the original battlelines and alliances have splintered, with dozens of armed groups battling one another for power, territory and sometimes just cattle.
United Nations reports on South Sudan are a litany of heart-breaking statistics. A third of the population has been displaced internally or is living in refugee camps outside the country. Forty-five per cent of those who remain need humanitarian assistance; 1.5 million people are on the brink of famine.
This is where Dorsa has chosen to work. It's a decision that weighs heavily on her family, for whom one particularly scary statistic stands out – South Sudan is now the most dangerous place in the world for humanitarian workers. Twenty-eight were killed there last year, including a Red Cross driver.
Dorsa's colleagues planted a guava tree in the driver's memory in the fortified compound that's now her home. She's the Red Cross sub-delegate responsible for what was the state of Jonglei (both the government and the rebels have redrawn state boundaries, so the ICRC work with the old divisions), one of the most volatile regions in South Sudan.
Outside of Jonglei's capital, Bor, there's no phone signal and no roads. Dorsa and her staff travel everywhere by air, and in the wet season they're sometimes stranded at muddy landing strips. In Bor, the Red Cross compound needs to be self-sufficient; there's no mains electricity or running water in town.
"I've been in some remote places but … we're the only four-storey building in town and we're surrounded by mud huts. It's completely dark at night."
Even with an 8pm curfew, barricaded behind walls topped with razor wire, Dorsa knows they're never truly safe. In 2016, aid workers at a residential compound in the capital, Juba, were raped by marauding government soldiers. Last year, three NGO compounds in Bor were attacked and robbed. Dorsa is responsible for the dozen or so staff sleeping under her roof, and she wakes in the middle of every night to check in with the security guards.
"It is a huge burden on your shoulder and it keeps you - well, it certainly keeps me awake at night. I have learned to survive on very little sleep."
Dorsa and her colleagues need to take risks that others don't, because of the unique mandate of the ICRC – helping victims of armed conflict. It doesn't matter if they're civilians or soldiers, and it certainly doesn't matter what side they're from. The basic template for the ICRC was set during its origin story.
When Swiss businessman Henri Dunant witnessed the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino in 1859, he was horrified by the suffering of wounded soldiers left on the battlefield. He organised a massive relief effort by talking the local population into caring for the casualties of both sides, without discrimination.
The book he later wrote about this experience called for the formation of voluntary national relief organisations to nurse wounded soldiers, and advocated international treaties to guarantee the neutrality and protection of both the wounded and medics. Soon after, the ICRC was born – along with its crucial role as guardian of international humanitarian law.
A map of Jupa in South Sudan Source: Maps
More than 150 years and three Nobel peace prizes later, in a world where warfare between states has largely been supplanted by fighting that involves so-called "non-state actors" (there are 6000 different armed groups in Syria alone), there's never been a greater need for a neutral, independent and impartial player on the frontlines.
In Jonglei, that would be Dorsa - although on a hot, cloudless morning in early December, her own greatest need is caffeine. She's trying to balance two coffee plungers as she gingerly climbs aboard an ICRC boat on the Bahr al-Zaraf, a tributary of the White Nile. It's going to be a three-hour trip downriver to the town of New Fangak, where Dorsa has an appointment with the rebel governor of this region.
Getting to know civilian and military leaders from all sides of the conflict is the groundwork for much of what Dorsa does. As one of her colleagues told me, "we cultivate a relationship with weapon bearers".
Trust is in short supply during a civil war, but nothing here is possible without it – and it's what keeps her safe in a country where, as Dorsa says, "you'd be quite naive to think that danger is not around the corner". In many parts of the world this means dealing with people we might think of as "the bad guys" – al-Qaeda, Islamic State, al-Shabab. But the ICRC doesn't see "bad guys" or "good guys", it sees people with power and influence who control access to people who need help, whether they're wounded, imprisoned, starving or in danger.
