Temporality and Terrorism in International Humanitarian Law

Extract

It is widely agreed that the United States’ armed conflict against al Qaida and its allies—if it is legally an armed conflict at all—does not fit neatly within contemporary jus as bellum and jus in bello (international humanitarian law, or IHL) regimes. The thinking goes that transnational conflicts with non-state terrorist groups and tactics do not correspond well to the categories comprising those regimes, and wide debate then proceeds about whether and how it is appropriate nevertheless to apply them.