In the early hours of 3 August 2014, fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, otherwise known simply as IS) attacked the Sinjar region of northern Iraq. In pick-up trucks flying the pseudo-state’s infamous black and white flags, hundreds of heavily armed black-clad men sped northwards from Baaj, a village just beyond the southern reach of Sinjar.

Starting as a civil uprising calling for liberal reforms in March 2011, the struggle in Syria rapidly deteriorated into a proxy-led armed conflict involving multiple state-sponsored and non-state actors, including foreign militias and local armed groups. The current state of affairs in Syria and the uncertainty regarding its future raise numerous questions for scholars of both international law and politics. The combination of legal and political issues was used in this volume to tackle and evaluate questions of justice within the context of a changing political reality in Syria. This volume contributes uniquely to the scholarship on the Syrian war, raising voices not often heard within this research context from the region and beyond. The volume is divided to three sections: Part I sets the factual and legal framework for the Syrian conflict; Part II focuses on the implications of the conflict for the Syrian neighbourhood; and Part III analyses possible post-conflict scenarios. Together, they address the key themes and questions of the conflicts.

The Syrian war’s most fundamental characteristic is the systematic disregard for the most basic rules of international law – and notably international humanitarian law – displayed by its belligerents. The result has been unparalleled human suffering, the scale, complexity, and severity of which are yet to be fully understood. This chapter looks briefly at the unrest that preceded the Syrian conflict before focusing on those violations of international humanitarian law which quickly became hallmarks of the Syrian war. It gives particular focus to two violations of international humanitarian law: the conducting of indiscriminate attacks, including attacks by governments and armed groups; and the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield and the investigations to determine the perpetrator(s). Finally, it asks whether the Syrian conflict represents a nadir in the international community’s response to a war where international humanitarian law is breached with impunity and, if so, whether the value of the law of wars has been eroded.

This section wraps the book's analysis of the conflict in Syria and points to the indeterminacies that still remain. They include, among others, the shape and form of the emerging political structure of Syria, how the refugee crisis will be resolved, and whether international justice could be achieved. The conclusions of the volume portray guidelines for political or legal attempts that will be made to resolve those indeterminacies. It is the mapping and analysis of how the fundamental norms of the international community were brutally violated and the difficulties of restoring justice at the moment, while also elaborating on the developments within the political arena in which all of these events take place, that provide keys for coping with future challenges for both Syria and the international community.

The conclusion of the Syrian war suggests an international failure to prevent a mass calamity and to protect those millions of innocent civilians Irrespective of the developments within Syria, it is already clear that the implications of this conflict will accompany us for years to come and it is not unthinkable that a new chapter of this war will be ignited again in the future.