{"id":198708,"date":"2007-10-16T22:03:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-17T03:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/10\/16\/are-blackwater-and-other-mercenaries-security-contractors-unlawful-combatants\/"},"modified":"2007-10-16T22:03:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-17T03:03:00","slug":"are-blackwater-and-other-mercenaries-security-contractors-unlawful-combatants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/10\/16\/are-blackwater-and-other-mercenaries-security-contractors-unlawful-combatants\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Blackwater and Other Mercenaries Security Contractors Unlawful Combatants?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-blackwater15oct15,0,3330051.story?coll=la-home-center\">There are a number of who think so<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The designation of lawful and unlawful combatants is set out in the Geneva Convention.Lawful combatants are nonmilitary personnel who operate under their military&#8217;s chain of command. Others may carry weapons in a war zone but may not use offensive force. Under the international agreements, they may only defend themselves.<\/p>\n<p>The amount of force being used in Iraq by security firms like Blackwater has raised questions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I would also add that under the UN convention on mercenaries (see my posts <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2007\/10\/afghanistan-clamps-down-on-mercenaries.html\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2007\/08\/problem-with-mercenaries.html\">here<\/a>), some of the activities, like protecting military supply convoys in a war zone are clearly illegal.<\/p>\n<p>While the US hass not ratified the convention (Neither has the UK) the position of one of the <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">many<\/span> countries that has might very well be to treat these folks as common criminals, or worse.<\/p>\n<p>Some readings Islamic law call for the prompt execution of mercenaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are a number of who think so. The designation of lawful and unlawful combatants is set out in the Geneva Convention.Lawful combatants are nonmilitary personnel who operate under their military&#8217;s chain of command. Others may carry weapons in a war zone but may not use offensive force. Under the international agreements, they may only &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1032,1179,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crimes-against-humanity","category-mercenaries","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}