And it's true, you hear things in Damascus and, after a few hours, the human double-take stops operating.

After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career — in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad — watching the people within those borders burn.

People turn to violence, because they have no other avenue left.

The Syrian army is tired of corruption. It is tired of party nepotism. It is becoming very angry with those it blames for the war.

In one way, I fear all Damascus is a dungeon. Or do you have to live here to appreciate that?

The word 'democracy' and the name of Assad do not blend very well in much of Syria.

And it's true, you hear things in Damascus and, after a few hours, the human double-take stops operating.