When we turned to Aleppo, we discovered a cityscape that was more complicated than those of Raqqa, Saraqeb, and Darayya. Its battle lines crisscrossed the city, continually shifting during our period of study, making each neighborhood its own unique nucleus in an atomized space. Aleppo is the oldest and second largest Syrian city. Known for its mercantile past and modern industrial present, the city had approximately 3 million residents before the conflict began. The first wave of protests began in 2011, and the city council came into being in March 2013 and was staffed by over 550 personnel by 2016.1

Chapter 7 is about the attempts to relieve and rehabilitate Ottoman Armenians that had survived the genocide. It focuses on two cities, Beirut and Aleppo, and a region: Cilicia. The chapter relativizes the importance of international actions and insists on the importance of the scholarly works of historians that show how local networks and Armenian networks operated and looked after their co-religionists more and better than international humanitarian institutions.

Chapter 3 analyses another process which brought about empire-tribe reconciliation. This was the policy of expansion towards Deir al-Zor. The forward imperial policy was successful in expanding government authority in the frontier regions and the desert, notwithstanding that it did not take place in the way its planners envisaged, and brought about the consolidation of the state-tribe partnership while it ‘provincialized’ the Anizah and Shammar. The expansion of Ottoman direct rule towards Deir al-Zor created important reasons for the reconciliation. The reinforcement of Ottoman rule in this territory could not limit the tribal movement in these areas, but made the new administrative units dependent on nomadic collaboration. Now the Ottomans were in the tribal regions while the tribes still maintained their supremacy in the imperial countryside. As a result, the Ottoman strategy towards the nomads evolved from ‘expulsion’ into ‘containment’ in these regions as the regular troops served only as security providers and nomadic ‘goodwill’ was required for the maintenance of the new settlements. Following the consolidation of the mutasarrifate in Deir al-Zor, the Anizah branches such as the Fid’an, Seb’a and the Shammar under Faris al-Jarba’s sheikhship became the partners of empire. The expansion increased ‘mutual dependence’ and systematized the state-tribe partnership.

This final chapter presents two case studies, one where the veto was utilized while atrocity crimes were being committed, and one where the veto was threatened (expressly or implicitly) while atrocity crimes were being committed. The first case study traces climbing death tolls and growing recognition that mass atrocity crimes were occurring in Syria, while Russia, sometimes joined by China, invoked the veto on thirteen separate occasions. The vetoes blocked recognition of crimes, investigation of crimes, prosecution of crimes, as well as other measures. That a significant number of resolutions that would have condemned regime and/or opposition crimes failed to pass or were significantly delayed could not have failed to send a metaphorical “green light” to the perpetrators; thus, the vetoes are partly responsible for the still unfolding human tragedy. The second case study traces climbing death tolls in the early 2000s while the Sudanese military and Janjaweed militia committed mass atrocity crimes against the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa, and other ethnic groups in the Darfur region of Sudan. These crimes likely constituted genocide, and, at minimum, war crimes and crimes against humanity. During the key years when the crimes were occurring, China blocked by threat of the veto: initially, any imposition of sanctions on the Government of Sudan, and, permanently, any oil embargo, as well as peacekeeping that was not consensually negotiated with the Government of Sudan. Eventually, a hybrid peacekeeping mission was agreed to and deployed, but only after the height of the killing had occurred and with a weakened mandate. The Security Council’s delays and tepid approach to sanctions and peacekeeping, which significantly increased the death toll, are at least partly attributable to Chinese threats (both express and implied) to use the veto.

This chapter explores the foreign policy discourse of the old Anglosphere coalition during the fourth phase of the crisis and civil war in Syria, following the military intervention of Russia, in support of Assad. First, the chapter considers the Anglosphere response to the Russian intervention. Second, it analyses how the intervention influenced the discursive war of position in the Anglosphere. Third, it explores the impact of Donald Trump’s election in the United States, including his administration’s relationship with Russia, the unexpected decision to bomb Assad’s forces and the new discursive opportunities his presidency afforded.