The lasting impression will be of a government riven with rivalries, personal hatreds and dark manoeuvrings.
The 1977 files describe a country that was tired and riven by industrial conflict.
As for the elite, what little is known suggests a regime riven by bickering.
Mr Cobain said the UUP was "riven with personal and policy difficulties" and was "politically exhausted".
The group, although riven by internal disputes, is sponsored by the Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani.
CNN: Kurds' ambitions add explosive element to Syria equation
Military and oil interests are dominated by one ethnic group, the Dinka, themselves riven by differences.
Once a united force, the army is now riven with factions that mistrust each other.
Like the country's politicians, Pakistan's cricket establishment has been riven by scandals and feuding.
But now sponsors and advertisers are growing wary of association with a sport riven with drug abuse.
Thailand, riven by conflict between the elected government and powerful protesters (see article) is especially vulnerable.
India has long been a unified but loosely knit land riven by numerous political, racial and religious divides.
The Chinese bureaucracy, while in direct charge of more of the national economy, is riven by factional infighting.
The Reliance group of companies has faced challenging times as a company riven by family feuds and disputes.
It is racked by financial scandal, riven by rivalries within, and unable to produce a fresh, plausible programme.
The surface of this snow-white moon is riven with cracks - dubbed tiger stripes - at its south pole.
Cycling was riven with doping before and during the Armstrong era and the sport itself is now thoroughly tainted.
FORBES: Lance Armstrong Says Bye-Bye To Tour Titles But It's Much Bigger Than That
Also, the party has been riven by internal disputes and hit by defections.
He was forced to say he would resign, and the party is now a badly broken thing, riven by infighting.
Failure to act could result in Syria becoming a failed state, riven by extremist violence and sectarian conflict, he said.
That is particularly worrying, since the next Congress is likely to be even more ideologically riven than the present one.
Talking to reporters this month, the prime minister, Phan Van Khai, dismissed suggestions that the party was riven by disputes.
The process has been riven by angry disputes between Ennahda and the opposition parties, partly over Ennahda's alleged laxity towards salafis.
The western province of Darfur is also riven by a war between the government and rebel forces that erupted in 2003.
Meanwhile, the only overtly Islamist party, Saadet, which had previously been nibbling away at AK's pious base, is riven by internal squabbles.
As the PA has become riven by factional infighting, support for Hamas has steadily grown in Gaza, its influence now exceeds the PA's.
Some fear that the enforcement will be selective, turning the law into a weapon to marginalise factions in the riven military-political establishment.
In this it is hardly alone: few countries are ethnically homogeneous, and all too many are riven by ethnic or religious animosity.
Like any big organization, the Democrat Party is riven by personality clashes.
Riven since colonial times by ethnic divisions and handicapped by challenging geography, several of the Andean countries have long suffered poverty and instability.
The common market to which all countries in the region bar Panama belong has been riven by dissension since its founding in 1963.
应用推荐