Leaving aside the narrow framing of the international courtroom, this chapter focuses on the Congolese district of Ituri, caught in the crossfire of larger national and international forces. The collapse of the sprawling Congo nation in the 1990s prompted outside intrusions from Rwanda and Uganda, spreading conflicts across the entire territory. Military stalemates stirred competing national rebel movements, with patronage relations to Congo’s eastern neighbors and to global trading networks. In the midst of country-wide conflict and regional politics, the ICC Prosecutor selected a single outlying district for his criminal investigation. While the trials would reduce complex events and causes to the actions taken by three men placed on trial, the wider matrix of forces continued to shape the overall conflicts. Under international pressure to rebuild the Congolese state, the main national factions bargained over power-sharing political transitions. The fate of local players in Ituri remained outside the national discourse, even as it drew attention from the UN and NGOs about increasing ethnic violence.

Chapter 1 describes the ways in which Assyrians located themselves in urban centers such as Baghdad and Kirkuk, and how they negotiated around their ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic grievances, either personally or communally, within the larger Iraqi context. Communities like the Assyrians began to emerge from the periphery, disrupting the existing patriarchal order and igniting socioeconomic tensions with Arab nationalists, Baʿthists, and conservatives, who felt particularly threatened by those affiliated with communism and the left – notably minorities and women. In 1959 violence erupted in Mosul and Kirkuk, and in 1963 a right-wing coup toppled the Qasim government, paving the way for the rise of the Baʿth Party.

Leaving aside the narrow framing of the international courtroom, this chapter focuses on the Congolese district of Ituri, caught in the crossfire of larger national and international forces. The collapse of the sprawling Congo nation in the 1990s prompted outside intrusions from Rwanda and Uganda, spreading conflicts across the entire territory. Military stalemates stirred competing national rebel movements, with patronage relations to Congo’s eastern neighbors and to global trading networks. In the midst of country-wide conflict and regional politics, the ICC Prosecutor selected a single outlying district for his criminal investigation. While the trials would reduce complex events and causes to the actions taken by three men placed on trial, the wider matrix of forces continued to shape the overall conflicts. Under international pressure to rebuild the Congolese state, the main national factions bargained over power-sharing political transitions. The fate of local players in Ituri remained outside the national discourse, even as it drew attention from the UN and NGOs about increasing ethnic violence.