If the new mission in Abyei, Sudan, is to be successful in protecting personnel and civilians, the Security Council will have to continue to respond assertively and back the mission up in both rhetoric and resources.
The Sudanese government's strategy of forced displacement seems to have worked.
Arguably the worst place in the world to be today is in the south-western borderlands between Sudan and the soon to be new country of South Sudan.
What most reports will not tell you is that the current governor of South Kordofan is a man named Ahmad Haroun. Prior to serving as governor, Haroun served as the Minister of State for the Interior, where he was assigned the "Darfur Security Desk."
How to understand the conflict over Abyei.
At a meeting at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, DC yesterday the head of UN Peacekeeping Alan Le Roy called the Sudanese Armed Forces incursion into Abyei a "clear breach of the Comprehensive Peace Accord."
On Saturday, the northern Sudanese army invaded the border town of Abyei, rolling tanks through the streets and firing mortar rounds into the United Nations' compound. The Sudanese Armed Forces took the strategic town of Abyei with little struggle from the south's Sudan People's Liberation Army forces stationed in the town.
Negotiations resumed today in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum between top officials from Sudan’s north and south. These leaders, representing two regions of the same country, will soon begin relating to each other as diplomats from two different nations.
The man the International Criminal Court acuses of having facilitated the Darfur genocide by plying arms to militias allied with the Sudanese government may be doing the same thing in the Abyei region.