What is "enemy combatant"

n. 1 (&lit enemy combatant English) 2 (context US military English) Any person in an armed conflict who may be properly detained under the laws and customs of war.JP 1-02 Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms

Enemy combatant is a term referring to a person who, either lawfully or unlawfully, directly engages in hostilities for an enemy state or non-state actor in an armed conflict. March 3, 2005

(8) The term 'enemy combatant' has historically referred to all of the citizens of a state with which the Nation is at war, and who are members of the armed force of that enemy state. Enemy combatants in the present conflict, however, come from many nations, wear no uniforms, and use unconventional weapons. Enemy combatants in the war on terrorism are not defined by simple, readily apparent criteria, such as citizenship or military uniform. And the power to name a citizen as an 'enemy combatant' is therefore extraordinarily broad. (Emphasis added) Prior to 2008, the definition was: "Any person in an armed conflict who could be properly detained under the laws and customs of war." In the case of a civil war or an insurrection the term "enemy state" may be replaced by the more general term "Party to the conflict" (as described in the 1949 Geneva Conventions Article 3).

In the United States the phrase "enemy combatant" was used after the September 11 attacks by the George W. Bush administration to include an alleged member of al Qaeda or the Taliban being held in detention by the U.S. government as part of the war on terror. In this sense, "enemy combatant" actually refers to persons the United States regards as unlawful combatants, a category of persons who do not qualify for prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions. However, unlike unlawful combatants who qualify for some protections under the Fourth Geneva Convention, enemy combatants, under the Bush administration, were not covered by the Geneva Convention. Thus, the term "enemy combatant" has to be read in context to determine whether it means any combatant belonging to an enemy state or non-state actor, whether lawful or unlawful, or if it means an alleged member of al Qaeda or of the Taliban being detained as an unlawful combatant by the United States.

In the United States on March 13, 2009, the Obama administration announced its abandonment of the Bush administration's use of the term "enemy combatant".

Enemy Combatant is a book written by a British Muslim, Moazzam Begg, and co-written by Victoria Brittain, a former Associate Foreign Editor for the Guardian newspaper, about Begg's detention by the government of the United States of America in Camp Echo, Guantanamo Bay. He was seized by Pakistani officers in Islamabad in February 2002, turned over to the U.S., and after prolonged sessions of interrogation, he was released from detention on 25 January 2005.

According to statements then made by the executive department of the U.S., Begg was an enemy combatant and al-Qaeda member, recruited others for al-Qaeda, provided money and support to al-Qaeda training camps, received extensive military training in al-Qaeda-run terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, and prepared to fight U.S. or allied troops. While Begg admits spending time at two Islamic militant training camps in Afghanistan, supporting militant Muslim fighters, buying a handgun, that he "thought about" taking up arms in Chechnya, and being an acquaintance of people linked to terrorism (most notably, Khalil al-Deek, Dhiren Barot, and Shahid Akram Butt), he denies the remainder of the allegations.

The book received several reviews. Publishers Weekly described it as "a fast-paced, harrowing narrative". "Much of the Moazzam Begg story is consistent with other accounts of detention conditions in both Afghanistan and Guantanamo," wrote John Sifton, a New York-based official from Human Rights Watch who interviewed former Guantanamo prisoners in Pakistan and Afghanistan. "It is now clear that there is a systemic problem of abuse throughout the US military's detention facilities—not merely misbehaviour by a few bad apples." The Muslim News called it an "open, honest and touching account". Begg was named best British author for the book, at the annual Muslim Writers Awards in March 2008.

But The New York Times reported "some notable gaps in Mr. Begg's memoir", in that he did not mention a previous arrest, nor some of his alleged ties to terrorism. The San Diego Union-Tribune said: "Begg has been less than forthcoming about his criminal past ... his cooperation with interrogators ... and his ties to terrorism". And Jonathan Raban, reviewing it for The New York Review of Books, wrote:

One has the sense of reading not a memoir but a résumé. Like most résumés, it feels airbrushed. It is a strategic (one might almost say a "campaign") biography ... Begg's travels [during the time the U.S. maintains he was with the Taliban] get confusing, and plotting them on an atlas only adds to the reader's puzzlement.... The gaps in his story—and they're more frustrating than downright suspicious—cease at the moment when Begg enters captivity.... Enemy Combatant has been praised in Britain for Begg's outstanding liberality of mind and evenhandedness toward his captors.... Unfortunately, these relationships are rendered in long passages of direct speech, and Begg and/or his coauthor are notably talentless at writing dialogue.... Perhaps Begg really did strike up a warm relationship with soldier Jennifer, but all one can say of the words on the page is that they are resoundingly phony. Only in bad fiction do people speak this way, and true though Begg's story may well be in its essential facts, it is very poorly served by line after line of rankly implausible writing.