6 - How Ceasefires Affect Citizenship and Property Rights

Summary

This chapter uses the literature on political order to take a rather radical approach to local ceasefires in Syria. By conventional definitions of a ceasefire, local ceasefires would be considered highly successful in that they completely stopped violence. However, this narrow view overlooks the broader picture in that it was the Syrian regime that created the violent conditions that preceded these local ceasefire deals in the first place. The only way out for these communities was through agreeing to the ceasefire’s terms. The specific terms of the agreements were then used to reassert the states sovereignty over citizenship and property rights. Consequently, hiding behind their supposedly successful mask, these local ceasefire deals in Syria spurned some of the more overt violence of the war and have been structurally violent in terms of their ability to re-allocate rights to property and citizenship.