The Sudans: Big fight over a small place MORE than two years after Sudan's southerners voted for a country of their own, some people in lands along the new border with the old rump Sudan remain in limbo. Acuil Akol comes from Abyei, a triangle of contested territory whose residents are mostly Ngok-Dinka, an offshoot of South Sudan's largest tribe. He and his neighbours were meant to have a vote in 2011 to decide whether to join the south. But rows over who is entitled to vote have delayed it. Tired of waiting, he is now leading efforts to stage an unofficial referendum to "tell the world what we want." Ngok-Dinka like him, most of them crop-growers as well as cattle people, are opposed by the Misseriya, a tribe of Arab nomads who graze their cattle in Abyei for only a few months a year and want it to stay with the north. They will not take part in the coming vote, due by the end of October. It will have no legal force and its outcome will not be recognised by the governments of north or south. Yet it could reignite fighting between former civil-war foes. The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, noted in 2007 that "what happens in Abyei is likely to determine whether Sudan consolidates the peace or returns to war." Despite claims to the contrary, Abyei does not have much oil. But the grazing is good, even during the dry season, making it valuable for pastoral people. Moreover, some of South Sudan's leaders come from the area and are loth to give it up. In the north, too, Abyei's status has gained symbolic importance. Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president, promised the Misseriya that he would never cede their pastures. He has defied repeated deadlines set by foreign peacemakers to find a solution, and has ignored a supposedly binding decision in 2009 by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Netherlands. When the north has felt its control of the territory to be challenged it has sent in its army or allied militias to drive out tens of thousands of the Ngok-Dinka. The south and its backers sympathise with their Dinka cousins, but were not prepared to delay secession for their sake. Instead they have quietly built up their military presence nearby, while they wait to see if there will be a fight. Aly Verjee, a regional expert at the Rift Valley Institute, a think-tank, likens Abyei to Cyprus, a divided island state that long soured relations between Greece and Turkey. With neither side in Sudan prepared to admit past mistakes, says Mr Verjee, "there is little the international community can do." For Abyei's people, first promised a vote on self-determination in 1972, a home-made referendum may be the best they can hope for.