The founding father of the laws of armed conflict, Hugo Grotius assumed a ceasefire to be a temporary state of affairs that did not alter the legal state of war. He wrote that if hostilities resumed after a ceasefire is declared, there is no need for a new declaration of war to be made since the legal state of war is ‘not dead but sleeping’. While the official legal state of war may be sleeping’, Grotius’ metaphor perhaps does not imply that nothing happens. Even during sleep, much can and does occur that we are temporarily unaware of. However, ceasefires continue to be largely considered in relation to how to better bring warring parties to the negotiating table, hostilities to a halt and/or their influence on peace processes. The argument advanced in this book is that ceasefires in fact rarely only ‘cease fire’. Consequently, the book offers a more nuanced examination of two core questions: what ceasefires actually are and what areas they affect.

Despite the longevity and the relative simplicity of the concept of a ceasefire, there has been little agreement, and much confusion, around their nomenclature. This chapter is primarily devoted to better understanding and interrogating these definitions. It moves away from the conventional view of ceasefires that focusses primarily on their success at reducing violence and battle related deaths or their ability to lead to a peace agreement, and instead traces the genealogy of the literature on conflict resolution and the state to the scholarship on the construction of order beyond the state to argue that ceasefires should not only be considered military tools but types of wartime order that have statebuilding implications.

This chapter describes the concept of wasta as it is understood in Syria. It begins by showing that self-perceived wasta is a reliable indicator of whether people objectively have wasta. This is because both self-perceived and objective wasta exist due to a combination of money and connections. It then describes how wasta's meaning has changed over time. After that, it discusses similar concepts that exist in other context, such as guanxi in China. Finally, it discusses how changes in wasta reflect the wartime political order.