Chapter

Armed conflict and terrorist organizations

Charles Garraway

Counter-terrorism strategies in a fragmented international legal order : meeting the challenges

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2013

p. 425-453

English

In a memorandum of 7 February 2007, President Bush clearly spoke of a US conflict with al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world and drew a distinction between that conflict which was outwith the constructs of the Geneva Convention and the separate conflict with the Taliban, acting as the de facto government of Afghanistan, which he acknowledged was defined by the terms of the Geneva Conventions, even though he held that Taliban fighters did not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention. But how does this bifurcation of conflict fit into the traditional legal construct? Can one have an armed conflict against a transnational terrorist group and if so, what are the applicable rules?

• Full text : restricted access (ICRC)

• Counter-terrorism strategies in a fragmented international legal order : meeting the challenges / ed. by Larissa van den Herik and Nico Schrijver