150 XI. SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE SHAHABUDDEEN 1. Some time ago, yet not far from where the events in this case happened, a "breakdown of law and order" occurred. There "were savage and pitiless actions into which men were carried not so much for the sake of gain as because they were swept away into an internecine struggle by their ungovernable passions". The turmoil saw "the ordinary conventions of civilised life thrown into confusion". Sadly, it seems, people took "it upon themselves to begin the process of repealing those general laws of humanity which are there to give a hope of salvation to all who are in distress, instead of leaving those laws in existence, remembering that there may come a time when they, too, will be in danger and will need their protection”. 1 2. That last reflection of a great thinker of antiquity was later expressed in the saying by Westlake "that the mitigation of war must depend on the parties to it feeling that they belong to a larger whole than their respective tribes or states, a whole in which the enemy too is comprised, so that the duties arising out of that larger citizenship are owed even to him".2 The development of a sense of that "larger citizenship" has been disappointingly slow. Since the ancient chronicler spoke of the "general laws of humanity", then lacking legal force but still recognisable, it has taken over two thousand years for those "laws" to assume the shape of binding norms applying world-wide. To what extent did they govern in this case? And, with what consequences? 3. I agree with the conclusions reached by the Appeals Chamber, and very largely with its arguments, subject to reservations on some aspects (including the relationship between the Rome Statute and the development of customary international law). I propose to explain my position on some of the points on which my reasoning may not be the same. A. Whether There Was an International Armed Conflict 4. As is observed in paragraph 83 of the judgement of the Appeals Chamber, the "requirement that the conflict be international for the grave breaches regime to operate 1 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, tr. Rex Warner (Middlesex, 1961), p. 211, speaking of the island of Corcyra. 2 The Collected Papers of John Westlake on Public International Law, ed. L. Oppenheim (Cambridge, 1914), p. 274.