On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Jim Dixon wrote:
Conventionally, in order to be a prisoner of war you have to be a soldier. To be considered a soldier, you have to be in uniform and you have to be part of an organized military force, meaning that you have a rank and, unless you are the commander in chief, you have a superior to report to. This is an essential requirement, because PoWs are supposed to be handled through their own chain of command.
In addition, in order to be covered by the parts of the Geneva Convention dealing with POWs, you have to be soldiering for a signatory state. Afghanistan signed the Covention a few decades ago but I don't know if the Taliban would be covered.
In the second world war, people out of uniform but carrying guns were often just shot out of hand. If taken prisoner, they weren't treated as prisoners of war but as spies, bandits, or terrorists. Some of us remember the chief of police in Saigon dealing out summary justice during the Tet offensive on this basis: the VC wasn't in uniform, so he just shot him, right in front of all of those cameramen.
Those fighting on behalf of the Taleban appear to be an unorganized militia - no uniforms, no ranks, no saluting, just guns and lots of spirit. You can't make them PoWs because they don't recognize any chain of command.
The reverse of this BTW is that civilians defending their homes against "unlawful combatants" are in the best position. They aren't bound by the Geneva Convention either and can use "expanding rifle ammo" (dum-dums) and other goodies. If civilians are defending against irregulars (say Al Quida troops on the streets of New York) they don't have to accept surrender offers and can be pretty much as nasty as they want. DCF ---- War was invented to restore to men in agrigultural societies the legitimate excuse to get away from home that hunting had provided in hunter-gatherer societies.