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.

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.

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.

Southern Kordofan is not a disputed territory. It is, and will remain, in the north, where the Nuba Mountains are. People believe there was a genocide there in 1990s. The Nuba, who are northerners, fought with the south in the north-south war. But they have their own individual interests, and they will remain in the north after the south splits.

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.

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.