I think people felt like they did everything they had been told they should do to fix the problem, and it still wasn't fixed. Then you have these other parts of Sudan, [which] in actual fact have been left on the back burner for way too long, so there was this scramble, probably a year ago now, to focus on the fact that this peace agreement was basically falling apart.

During the civil war, the Sudanese government armed the Misseriya nomads as proxy. Even though both groups had coexisted quite well prior to the conflict, it all become much more difficult as a consequence.

Peacekeeping there is still just totally ineffective. The UN is now saying they are sending reinforcements in the area, but I have no particular reason to believe that they will be any stronger than the force there. In Southern Kordofan, it's mostly an Egyptian battalion, and that's really problematic because the population already doesn't trust the Egyptians; they think they're on payroll of the north. So we already have a force that is seen as compromised.

I think people felt like they did everything they had been told they should do to fix the problem, and it still wasn't fixed. Then you have these other parts of Sudan, [which] in actual fact have been left on the back burner for way too long, so there was this scramble, probably a year ago now, to focus on the fact that this peace agreement was basically falling apart.

Things always seem less dire when you're in the country than when you're outside. I don't exactly know why it is, except that people just have to get on with their life, so they do. And you don't have time to do anything other than keep going.

The south really wants Abyei; they have a core constituency who reside in the area who believe that Abyei belongs to the south. There are a number of those sons of Abyei in high positions of government in South Sudan, so it's pretty hard for South Sudan to just walk away.

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.