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This, the third book of the OUP Series on Minority Rights Law, focusses on minorities in the Middle East. Written at a time of great turmoil and also hope in the region, the book seeks to examine important minority questions that are central to the events that have unfolded across the region from 2011 to date. The Middle East is a region that raises contentious political, legal, and historical debates. Coming closer to a contemporary understanding of the region challenges, confuses, and demands the critical questioning of numerous assumptions in the public realm. Our analysis is contained in six chapters divided in two parts. The first part examines fundamental underpinning concepts to the discussion and provides an overview of the region, while the second offers a detailed analysis of the history, identity, legal provisions, and remedies available to minorities in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. In offering this analysis we suggest not one, but multiple geographies, and not a fixed, immovable space, but one which, through its historical social formation, has been continually transformed, in more recent centuries through the invidious interference from outside. In examining the shifting constructions of religious, linguistic, and ethnic minorities in the region, the focus of this book lies on two primary questions; first, how the sociopolitical groups definable as minorities engage (or are excluded from) sites of power and, secondly, how state practice on minorities intersects and informs modern constitutionalism and international law.

This book provides an analytical overview of the establishment and functioning of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the newest and most controversial of the UN-sponsored international criminal courts. In 2005, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated in a huge blast that reverberated across Lebanon and the region. The Tribunal was established with a mandate to try the perpetrators of the Hariri killing, as well as those responsible for other killings that are ‘connected’ to this core crime. Individuals associated with the Hezbollah group have been indicted to be tried in the court in The Hague — but in their absence as their locations are unknown. The Tribunal is the UN's first attempt at addressing terrorism in an international criminal court, and the first attempt to set up international trials following crimes committed in the Middle East region. The court's narrow mandate and unique procedures have led many to question what kind of precedent it will set in a volatile region. This book looks at how the court was established, its foundational principles based on the Statute of the International Criminal Court and Lebanese domestic law, and the possible further development of its case law.

The Ottoman–Russian wars of the eighteenth century reshaped the map of Eurasia and the Middle East, but they also birthed a novel concept—the prisoner of war. For centuries, hundreds of thousands of captives, civilians and soldiers alike, crossed the legal and social boundaries of these empires, destined for either ransom or enslavement. But in the eighteenth century, the Ottoman state and its Russian rival, through conflict and diplomacy, worked out a new system of regional international law. Ransom was abolished; soldiers became prisoners of war; and some slaves gained new paths to release, while others were left entirely unprotected. These rules delineated sovereignty, redefined individuals’ relationships to states, and prioritized political identity over economic value. In the process, the Ottomans marked out a parallel, non-Western path toward elements of modern international law. Yet this was not a story of European imposition, or imitation—the Ottomans acted for their own reasons, maintaining their commitment to Islamic law. For a time even European empires played by these rules, until they were subsumed into the codified global law of war in the late nineteenth century. This story offers new perspectives on the histories of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, of slavery, and of international law.

Since the “surge” in Iraq in 2006, counterinsurgency effectively became America's dominant approach for fighting wars. Yet many of the major controversies and debates surrounding counterinsurgency have turned not on military questions but on legal ones: Who can the military attack with drones? Is the occupation of Iraq legitimate? What trade-offs should the military make between self-protection and civilian casualties? What is the right framework for negotiating with the Taliban? How can we build the rule of law in Afghanistan? This book tackles these legal issues from the vantage point of counterinsurgency strategy. The text explains why law matters in counterinsurgency: how it operates on the ground and how law and counterinsurgency strategy can be better integrated. Counterinsurgency, the book notes, focuses on winning over the population, providing essential services, building political and legal institutions, and fostering economic development. So, unlike in conventional war, where law places humanitarian restraints on combat, law and counterinsurgency are well aligned and reinforce one another. Indeed, following the law and building the rule of law is not just the right thing to do, it is strategically beneficial. Moreover, reconciliation with enemies can both help to end the conflict and preserve the possibility of justice for war crimes. Following the rule of law is an important element of success.