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.
Rebecca HamiltonI think fundamentally the bigger question is, what are we expecting peacekeepers to do? Are they actually, as the traditional conception would have it, keeping peace, in which case they're not there to actively intervene and stop violence? When we send them into these places, do we expect they will respond forcefully?
Rebecca HamiltonDuring 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.
Rebecca HamiltonIt'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.
Rebecca HamiltonPeacekeeping 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.
Rebecca HamiltonThere'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 The idea that it's "oil-rich Abyei" is out of date.
Rebecca Hamilton