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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There's a bigger question again about how to do prevention. It's not simply about putting out the early warning. The early warning was put out on Abyei; everybody knew that this was coming. This was intentional, and still it happened. So 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. I think it's about how you move that information into the policy process.