There's a lot of expectation in the Middle East that post-Obama there will be a sort of tougher U.S. line on Assad, there will be more intervention and so forth. But I don't know if that's going to be fulfilled. If there is more intervention, then I think it's going to go the same way as these other interventions that we've seen in Iraq, we've seen, to a degree, in Syria, we've seen in Libya, you know, that they do really badly. They make bad situations worse.

I don't think the whole of Iraq would be under al-Sadr, but I think he would be the predominant force on the Shia side. Quite contrary to his sort of maverick, firebrand image, he's shown a propensity to deal with the other side, to look for compromises, to negotiate. You might have a loose federation [in Iraq].

It's always sort of amazing, sitting in Baghdad, to watch visiting dignitaries being received in the Green Zone by politicians who have usually very little support and seldom go outside the Green Zone.

You know, if you want to meet a lot of Iraqi leaders, the best places are the hotels in Amman or in London. In general the government here is amazingly unpopular.

There are sort of Kurdish districts there in Mosul, or there used to be, but the Kurds mostly fled or were driven out. The same is true of the Christians.

One of the problems with the media covering this place is that there are stereotypes of news, one of which is "war rages" and the other is "peace dawns." And there isn't much in between. When I talk to foreign journalists, often they are gritting their teeth because they've been asked for a piece about how shops are reopening and restaurants are reopening and so forth - happy pieces. And it just ain't so.

Mosul stands rally at a sort of juncture of sectarian and ethnic differences.