This introductory chapter offers a short history of the eight-year conflict in Syria, covering the arrival of the Arab Spring, the transformation of a long-overdue revolution into a full-scale armed conflict, and the evolution of the situation on the ground to date. This chapter prefaces the contemporary violence with a few historical events, surfacing atrocities committed in the 1980s that have never been the subject of any genuine accountability process as well as the entrenchment of authoritarianism under the House of Assad. It describes how the arrival of the Arab Spring reawakened long-dormant revolutionary impulses, which amplified the government’s repression. This, in turn, provoked an armed resistance and a full-scale conflict, which opened space for the arrival of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The chapter recounts this history with reference to several key events and factors: the response of the international community, the opposition’s perpetual rearrangements, the appearance of ISIL, the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity (including the infringement of the taboo against chemical weapons), the humanitarian catastrophe that ensued, forms of foreign intervention (aid, arms, and air strikes), and failed peace processes. In addition to recounting the involvement of major Western powers in the Syrian battlespace, it also touches upon the impact of spillover conflicts in the subregion. Others will write the definitive history of this tragedy; the goal here is to touch upon key milestones as this conflict unfolded and to set the scene for the efforts to promote justice and accountability for the atrocities underway.
