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.

Something I've learned over time, and trying to remind myself this week as I am back in New York and feeling pretty anxious, is that 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.

o this idea that we fail to stop these things because there's not awareness about them, or that we need better early warning information, I'm increasingly skeptical of.

There's a huge misconception that it's all about the oil, and the truth is there's actually not much oil left in Abyei. The misperception arose because when the peace agreement was signed in 2005, Abyei accounted for a quarter of Sudan's oil production. Since then, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague defined major oil fields to lie outside Abyei. They're in the north now, not even up for grabs, and they account for one percent of the oil in Sudan. The idea that it's "oil-rich Abyei" is out of date.

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.

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.

I try not to cover Sudan from afar. I feel really uncomfortable writing about Sudan when I'm not there. It always looks different. When you're outside Sudan it's easy to lose sight of how much of what happens is driven by local politics. And when you're in America in particular, there's this sense that what D.C. has to say is the only thing that counts. Unsurprisingly people in Sudan don't feel the same way.