Al Qaida fighters and foreign mercenaries who joined the Taleban have no claim to a definition as a soldier.
And I think you've hit the crux of the matter there SirRealist. These guys are mercenaries, coming from various nations to fight a war. And as such they cannot be deemed to be legitmate combatants under law of war. They represented NO NATIONAL ENTITY, but were merely people who were employed by a group of indiviudals, primarily Bin Laden, to conduct operations against a national entity, the US, via terrorism and targeting non-combatants.
Thus, I would opine that you're quite correct, and that the final disposition will be that they are declared to be mercenaries. A humorous example would be if Bill Gates hired thousands of people to wage war against the US, in retaliation for the MSFT lawsuit, they would be considered mercenaries, not legitimate combatants, since they represent a cause, not a national entity (though many have opined that Bill would like to believe MSFT is a nation unto itself).
The Taleban fighters, on the other hand, were part of the government of Afghanistan. But even as such, many non-Afghans were hired by the Taleban to fight for them, and they can be declared as mercenaries by the current Afghan government.
Hawk |
