In the West Bank and Gaza, a contest is under way between warlords and democrats, between Islamists and secular leaders, between those who would destroy Israel and those who would live beside it, between enclaves like Jenin and Gaza and the very idea of a unified national state.
He saw his warlord hero trapped between two despots.
He has become as mercurial and interesting as his author who also, in the years when he invented this warlord, was caught between degrees of disloyalty to the tsar and the tsar's enemies.
Mohamud's election marked the first time since the 1991 overthrow of Mohamed Siad Barre – an event that plunged the country into decades of fighting, at first between clan warlords and later between security forces and al-Shabaab – that a leader was chosen inside Somalia.
Should Ashraf Ghani, an urbane former World Bank economist, be out in front with his thuggish running mate, Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord, then a deal between Abdullah Abdullah, another former foreign minister who ran last time, and Mr Rassoul is possible.
I'm guessing that Gurira was aiming for the weighty existentialism of Beckett, but these conversations between a warlord's multiple wives come off as too general and slickly littered with pop culture references.
Commanders loyal to Mr. Shirzai agree on this much: Mullah Omar remained in Kandahar until its surrender, then escaped, probably with the help of Mullah Naqibullah, a local warlord who was an intermediary between the Taliban and Mr. Karzai.
The Afghan government would be urged to take steps to solve internal conflicts between warlords.
They arise from interfactional fighting between warlords and from drug-related crime and pervasive poverty.
That philosophy has continued in the battle between warlords and representatives of Islamic courts.
