The “quality” press is full of interesting and useful; articles that try to help us make some sense of the situations (there are many) in the Middle East: The Economist reports on the unravelling of the ceasefire in Syria and on Saudi Arabia’s domestic problems with its own “game of thrones;” meanwhile the Financial Times explains the Saudi-Iranian disputes over oil prices and 
why and how the West and Russia are at odds, again, over Syria; and the always influential Foreign Affairs discusses corruption, ineptitude and mismanagement in Iraq. It’s all enough to make anyone go “Hmmm.”
In the interests of helping you make some sense of it all, I offer this from a Middle Eastern editorial cartoonist …
… it seems to me that there is no way anyone wants to be in the middle of all this, and, left to their own devices, the “locals” may, eventually, sort it all out in a quite satisfactory, albeit bloody, manner.
But it begs a question for the “leaders” in our grandiloquently named Global Affairs ministry: why on earth would anyone with the brains the gods gave to green peppers, least of all Canada, want to support anyone in the entire region except Israel and Jordan?
Only one type of Kurd in play? That cartoon is optimistic!
The maelstrom otherwise known as the middle east appears to have no limits on man’s inhumanity to man! I wonder how many eons will go by before all life will be obliterated in that region or, at last, peace will reign. Sad.