evidence: To allow the people of Abyei to decide whether they want the area to remain part of Sudan or be restored, 98 years after it was transferred by the stroke of a colonial pen, to South Sudan. A dispute between Khartoum and Juba over voter eligibility prevented the referendum being held as scheduled in early 2011, when residents of what was then the autonomous region of southern Sudan voted in a separate referendum which paved the way for its secession in July of that year. Most of Abyei’s permanent residents belong to the Ngok Dinka community, which largely supported southern rebels in the 1983-2005 civil war against Khartoum. This conflict was in part sparked by the failure to honour a 1972 peace accord provision that Abyei hold a self-determination referendum. [...] In terms of natural resources, water (notably the River Kiir, also known as the Bahr al-Arab), pasture and some arable land are Abyei’s main assets. Perhaps the most valuable commodity there now is political capital: neither Juba nor Khartoum can afford to lose what has become a zero-sum game. For South Sudan, and most Ngok Dinka, Abyei is historically and culturally part of the south, as well as a cause the Juba government uses to unite its disparate peoples.