WASHINGTON — When the National Security Council, the most buttoned-up part of a buttoned-up Obama administration, is aggressively trying to get the word out about a violent, murky conflict in a distant land, it’s worth listening to. It’s also worth asking, why single out this crisis?

Such is the case with the ethnic and tribal clashes that are rippling through a remote, sprawling part of South Sudan known as Jonglei State. Administration officials say they are deeply concerned about the violence, all the more so because there is so little reliable information coming out of a region that is inaccessible in the best of times.

Rather than monitor events quietly from their offices in the Old Executive Office Building, as they do with more widely publicized conflicts like the one in Syria, senior N.S.C. officials have invited in humanitarian and advocacy groups for briefings. They have written blog items. And they have discussed their fears with American and foreign journalists.

“More than 100,000 people have been displaced,” said Grant T. Harris, senior director for African Affairs at the council. “The international community doesn’t know where these people are.”