The countdown has begun in Sudan. This week’s legal decision on the boundaries of Abyei—an oilrich, contested region along the disputed North-South border within Sudan—is the first major test of recent commitments made in Washington by the two parties to Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA. Although senior representatives of the ruling National Congress Party, or NCP, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, or SPLM, have committed themselves to accept the ruling, how each side responds is a crucial litmus test of each side’s will to implement the CPA, and, by extension, a barometer for the efficacy of the Obama administration’s engagement on Sudan.1