Redefining Ceasefires
Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria

Uses original evidence and first-hand interviews to demonstrate how ceasefires serve as tools for wartime order and statebuilding.

Marika Sosnowski (Author)

9781009347228, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 May 2023

220 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.46 kg

'This is the most interesting scholarly work on Syria I've read in years. Marika Sosnowski's outstanding analysis of primary documents and interviews shows how ceasefires – commonly understood as the first step towards peace – easily become a tool to reframe structural and systemic violence in the context of a power imbalance.' Bente Scheller, Heinrich Böll Foundation

Since 2012, ceasefires have been used in Syria to halt violence and facilitate peace agreements. However, in this book, Marika Sosnowski argues that a ceasefire is rarely ever just a 'cease fire'. Instead, she demonstrates that ceasefires are not only military tactics but are also tools of wartime order and statebuilding. Bringing together rare primary documents and first-hand interviews with over eighty Syrians and other experts, Sosnowski offers original insights into the most critical conflict of our time, the Syrian civil war. From rebel governance to citizen and property rights, humanitarian access to economic networks, ceasefires have a range of heretofore underexamined impacts. Using the most prominent ceasefires of the war as case studies, Sosnowski demonstrates the diverse consequences of ceasefires and provides a fuller, more nuanced portrait of their role in conflict resolution.

1. Beyond violence: towards a more nuanced understanding of ceasefires
2. Redefining ceasefires in civil war
3. Ceasefires in the Syrian context
4. Different types of ceasefires
5. How ceasefires affect rebel governance
6. How ceasefires affect citizenship and property rights
7. How ceasefires affect aspects of the sovereign state
8. Ceasefires: order amid violence
Appendix 1. List of interviews
Appendix 2. English translation of Homs ceasefire agreement
Appendix 3. English translation of Busra al-Sham ceasefire agreement
Appendix 4. English translation of al-Waer ceasefire agreement.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC]