Strikingly consistent across all of the battles in Sudan's history has been a fundamental conflict over what are and what are not seen as legitimate aspects of Sudanese identity.

No question that the spotlight on Darfur has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. And that's deeply problematic, because it hasn't disappeared because Darfur has been solved.

It's best to think of these as two things - they're related, but there's different dynamics going on with each of them. A key difference is Abyei is contested territory. We still do not know whether Abyei is going to belong to the new country of South Sudan or effectively the new country of Sudan, the northern part. That was supposed to be decided by a referendum in January; that referendum never happened, so it was being dealt with through political negotiations.

You have to simplify - there is no other way to reach a mass audience. And you have to feed them evidence of their own success to keep them motivated.

What's really interesting, though, is that some people in the Messirya are starting to see Darfuri rebels - so non-Arab, [from the] Justice and Equality Movement - have moved over into Southern Kordofan, which is supposed to be a Messirya stronghold, and started recruiting Messirya to go and fight against the Khartoum government in Darfur. Just another example of how everything in Sudan is interlinked.

It's really difficult to get good information, and there's a reason for that. They're not letting journalists in. Whenever something really bad is happening, we always are dealing with uncertain information. Certainly what is happening there is qualitatively different from what happening in Abyei.

Every indication is that the Sudanese government will be defining it as an Arab, Muslim country. But there are also a lot of Christians and a lot of people, like the Nuba, who are not Arab. And that is why it is going to be problematic that Sudan will be defined in this way.