Portside

An Iraqi politician once said that the problem in his country was that parties and movements were “too weak to win, but too strong to lose.” This is increasingly the pattern for the whole region and is spreading elsewhere. It carries with it the possibility of an endless cycle of indecisive wars and an era of instability that has already begun.

He was short in stature, elderly, frail, and couldn't hear particularly well, but what struck me most were his eyes. They were cloudy and rheumy, yes, but there was something else, something deep and troubled, beyond the merely physical, swirling inside them. His eyes were haunted.