Nigeria, April 4 -- The toll of war is not counted in victories, but in mothers who forget how to laugh, in children who learn the language of sirens before they learn their own names.

It is measured in ash settling softly on cities that once sang, on olive groves that whispered peace, on the fragile idea that reason might yet prevail.

And still, the drums beat.

Who leads the mighty to the edge of ruin? What gravity pulls an empire-vast, armed, assured toward a narrow strip of earth, a stubborn geography soaked in memory and myth? A tiny piece of real estate, yet heavy enough to bend history, to drag giants toward their own undoing.

Is this how Armageddon begins not with clarity, but with conviction?

Power, we are told, is absolute. ...