War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan, code named Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan and Operation Freedom's Sentinel, followed the United States invasion of Afghanistan of 7 October 2001. The U. S. was supported by the United Kingdom and Australia and by a coalition of over 40 countries, including all NATO members. The war's public aims were to dismantle al-Qaeda and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power. Since the initial objectives were completed at the end of 2001, the war involves U. S. and allied Afghan government troops battling Taliban insurgents. The War in Afghanistan is the longest war in U. S. history. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001 on the U. S. which President George W. Bush blamed on Osama bin Laden, living or hiding in Afghanistan and had been wanted since 1998, President Bush demanded that the Taliban, who were de facto ruling the country, hand over bin Laden; the Taliban declined to extradite him unless they were provided clear evidence of his involvement in the attacks, which the U.
S. dismissed as a delaying tactic and on 7 October 2001 launched Operation Enduring Freedom with the United Kingdom. The two were joined by other forces, including the Northern Alliance – the Afghan opposition, fighting the Taliban in the ongoing civil war since 1996. By December 2001, the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies were defeated in the country, at the Bonn Conference new Afghan interim authorities elected Hamid Karzai to head the Afghan Interim Administration; the United Nations Security Council established the International Security Assistance Force to assist the new authority with securing Kabul, which after a 2002 loya jirga became the Afghan Transitional Administration. A nationwide rebuilding effort was made following the end of the totalitarian Taliban regime. In the popular elections of 2004, Karzai was elected president of the country, now named the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. NATO became involved in ISAF in August 2003, that year assumed leadership of it. At this stage, ISAF included troops from 43 countries with NATO members providing the majority of the force.
One portion of U. S. forces in Afghanistan operated under NATO command. S. command. Following defeat in the initial invasion, the Taliban was reorganized by its leader Mullah Omar, launched an insurgency against the Afghan government and ISAF in 2003. Though outgunned and outnumbered, insurgents from the Taliban - and to a lesser extent Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin and other groups - waged asymmetric warfare with guerrilla raids and ambushes in the countryside, suicide attacks against urban targets, turncoat killings against coalition forces; the Taliban exploited weaknesses in the Afghan government to reassert influence across rural areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. From 2006 the Taliban made significant gains and showed an increased willingness to commit atrocities against civilians – ISAF responded by increasing troops for counter-insurgency operations to "clear and hold" villages. Violence escalated from 2007 to 2009. Troop numbers began to surge in 2009 and continued to increase through 2011 when 140,000 foreign troops operated under ISAF and U.
S. command in Afghanistan. Of these 100,000 were from the U. S. On 1 May 2011, United States Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. NATO leaders in 2012 commended an exit strategy for withdrawing their forces, the United States announced that its major combat operations would end in December 2014, leaving a residual force in the country. In October 2014, British forces handed over the last bases in Helmand to the Afghan military ending their combat operations in the war. On 28 December 2014, NATO formally ended ISAF combat operations in Afghanistan and transferred full security responsibility to the Afghan government; the NATO-led Operation Resolute Support was formed the same day as a successor to ISAF. As of May 2017, over 13,000 foreign troops remain in Afghanistan without any formal plans to withdraw, continue their fight against the Taliban, which remains by far the largest single group fighting against the Afghan government and foreign troops. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war.
Over 4,000 ISAF soldiers and civilian contractors, over 62,000 Afghan national security forces were killed, as well as over 31,000 civilians and more Taliban. Afghanistan's political order began to break down with the overthrow of King Zahir Shah by his distant cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan in a bloodless 1973 Afghan coup d'état. Daoud Khan had served as prime minister since 1953 and promoted economic modernization, emancipation of women, Pashtun nationalism; this was threatening to neighboring Pakistan, faced with its own restive Pashtun population. In the mid-1970s, Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto began to encourage Afghan Islamist leaders such as Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, to fight against the regime. In 1978, Daoud Khan was killed in a coup by Afghan's Communist Party, his former partner in government, known as the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan; the PDPA pushed for a socialist transformation by abolishing arranged marriages, promoting mass literacy and reforming land ownership.
This provoked opposition across rural areas. The PDPA's crackdown was met including Ismail Khan's Herat Uprising; the PDPA was beset by internal leadership differences and was weakened by an internal coup on 11 September 1979 when Hafizullah Amin ousted Nur Muhammad Tara
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war is a person, whether a combatant or a non-combatant, held in custody by a belligerent power during or after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1660. Belligerents hold prisoners of war in custody for a range of legitimate and illegitimate reasons, such as isolating them from enemy combatants still in the field, demonstrating military victory, punishing them, prosecuting them for war crimes, exploiting them for their labour, recruiting or conscripting them as their own combatants, collecting military and political intelligence from them, or indoctrinating them in new political or religious beliefs. For most of human history, depending on the culture of the victors, enemy combatants on the losing side in a battle who had surrendered and been taken as a prisoner of war could expect to be either slaughtered or enslaved; the first Roman gladiators were prisoners of war and were named according to their ethnic roots such as Samnite and the Gaul.
Homer's Iliad describes Greek and Trojan soldiers offering rewards of wealth to opposing forces who have defeated them on the battlefield in exchange for mercy, but their offers are not always accepted. Little distinction was made between enemy combatants and enemy civilians, although women and children were more to be spared. Sometimes, the purpose of a battle, if not a war, was to capture a practice known as raptio. Women had no rights, were held as chattel. In the fourth century AD, Bishop Acacius of Amida, touched by the plight of Persian prisoners captured in a recent war with the Roman Empire, who were held in his town under appalling conditions and destined for a life of slavery, took the initiative of ransoming them, by selling his church's precious gold and silver vessels, letting them return to their country. For this he was canonized. During Childeric's siege and blockade of Paris in 464, the nun Geneviève pleaded with the Frankish king for the welfare of prisoners of war and met with a favourable response.
Clovis I liberated captives after Genevieve urged him to do so. Many French prisoners of war were killed during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415; this was done in retaliation for the French killing of the boys and other non-combatants handling the baggage and equipment of the army, because the French were attacking again and Henry was afraid that they would break through and free the prisoners to fight again. In the Middle Ages, a number of religious wars aimed to not only defeat but eliminate their enemies. In Christian Europe, the extermination of heretics was considered desirable. Examples include the Northern Crusades; when asked by a Crusader how to distinguish between the Catholics and Cathars once they'd taken the city of Béziers, the Papal Legate Arnaud Amalric famously replied, "Kill them all, God will know His own". The inhabitants of conquered cities were massacred during the Crusades against the Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries. Noblemen could hope to be ransomed. In feudal Japan, there was no custom of ransoming prisoners of war, who were for the most part summarily executed.
The expanding Mongol Empire was famous for distinguishing between cities or towns that surrendered, where the population were spared but required to support the conquering Mongol army, those that resisted, where their city was ransacked and destroyed, all the population killed. In Termez, on the Oxus: "all the people, both men and women, were driven out onto the plain, divided in accordance with their usual custom they were all slain"; the Aztecs were at war with neighbouring tribes and groups, with the goal of this constant warfare being to collect live prisoners for sacrifice. For the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed. During the early Muslim conquests, Muslims captured large number of prisoners. Aside from those who converted, most were enslaved. Christians who were captured during the Crusades, were either killed or sold into slavery if they could not pay a ransom. During his lifetime, Muhammad made it the responsibility of the Islamic government to provide food and clothing, on a reasonable basis, to captives, regardless of their religion.
The freeing of prisoners was recommended as a charitable act. On certain occasions where Muhammad felt the enemy had broken a treaty with the Muslims, he ordered the mass execution of male prisoners, such as the Banu Qurayza. Females and children of this tribe were divided up as spoils of war by Muhammad; the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War, established the rule that prisoners of war should be released without ransom at the end of hostilities and that they should be allowed to return to their homelands. There evolved the right of parole, French for "discourse", in which a captured officer surrendered his sword and gave his word as a gentleman in exchange for privileges. If he swore not to escape, he could gain the freedom of the prison. If he swore to cease hostilities against the nation who held him captive, he could be repatriated or exchanged but could not serve against his former captors in a military capacity. Ea
Crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term "crime" does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition, though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes; the most popular view is. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence is an act harmful not only to some individual but to a community, society or the state; such acts are punishable by law. The notion that acts such as murder and theft are to be prohibited exists worldwide. What is a criminal offence is defined by criminal law of each country. While many have a catalogue of crimes called the criminal code, in some common law countries no such comprehensive statute exists; the state has the power to restrict one's liberty for committing a crime. In modern societies, there are procedures to which trials must adhere. If found guilty, an offender may be sentenced to a form of reparation such as a community sentence, or, depending on the nature of their offence, to undergo imprisonment, life imprisonment or, in some jurisdictions, execution.
To be classified as a crime, the "act of doing something criminal" must – with certain exceptions – be accompanied by the "intention to do something criminal". While every crime violates the law, not every violation of the law counts as a crime. Breaches of private law are not automatically punished by the state, but can be enforced through civil procedure; when informal relationships prove insufficient to establish and maintain a desired social order, a government or a state may impose more formalized or stricter systems of social control. With institutional and legal machinery at their disposal, agents of the State can compel populations to conform to codes and can opt to punish or attempt to reform those who do not conform. Authorities employ various mechanisms to regulate certain behaviors in general. Governing or administering agencies may for example codify rules into laws, police citizens and visitors to ensure that they comply with those laws, implement other policies and practices that legislators or administrators have prescribed with the aim of discouraging or preventing crime.
In addition, authorities provide remedies and sanctions, collectively these constitute a criminal justice system. Legal sanctions vary in their severity; some jurisdictions have penal codes written to inflict permanent harsh punishments: legal mutilation, capital punishment or life without parole. A natural person perpetrates a crime, but legal persons may commit crimes. Conversely, at least under U. S. law, nonpersons such as animals cannot commit crimes. The sociologist Richard Quinney has written about the relationship between crime; when Quinney states "crime is a social phenomenon" he envisages both how individuals conceive crime and how populations perceive it, based on societal norms. The word crime is derived from the Latin root cernō, meaning "I decide, I give judgment"; the Latin word crīmen meant "charge" or "cry of distress." The Ancient Greek word krima, from which the Latin cognate derives referred to an intellectual mistake or an offense against the community, rather than a private or moral wrong.
In 13th century English crime meant "sinfulness", according to etymonline.com. It was brought to England as Old French crimne, from Latin crimen. In Latin, crimen could have signified any one of the following: "charge, accusation; the word may derive from the Latin cernere – "to decide, to sift". But Ernest Klein rejects this and suggests *cri-men, which would have meant "cry of distress". Thomas G. Tucker suggests a root in "cry" words and refers to English plaint, so on; the meaning "offense punishable by law" dates from the late 14th century. The Latin word is glossed in Old English by facen "deceit, treachery". Crime wave is first attested in 1893 in American English. Whether a given act or omission constitutes a crime does not depend on the nature of that act or omission, it depends on the nature of the legal consequences. An act or omission is a crime if it is capable of being followed by what are called criminal proceedings. History The following definition of "crime" was provided by the Prevention of Crimes Act 1871, applied for the purposes of section 10 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1908: The expression "crime" means, in England and Ireland, any felony or the offence of uttering false or counterfeit coin, or of possessing counterfeit gold or silver coin, or the offence of obtaining goods or money by false pretences, or the offence of conspiracy to defraud, or any misdemeanour under the fifty-eighth section of the Larceny Act, 1861.
For the purpose of section 243 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992, a crime means an offence punishable on indictment, or an offence punishable on summary conviction, for the commission of which the offender is liable under the statute making the offence punishable to be imprisoned either or at the discretion of the court as an alternative for some other punishment. A normative definition views crime as deviant behavior that violates prevailing norms – cult
Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term Geneva Convention denotes the agreements of 1949, negotiated in the aftermath of the Second World War, which updated the terms of the two 1929 treaties, added two new conventions; the Geneva Conventions extensively defined the basic rights of wartime prisoners, established protections for the wounded and sick, established protections for the civilians in and around a war-zone. The treaties of 1949 were ratified, by 196 countries. Moreover, the Geneva Convention defines the rights and protections afforded to non-combatants, because the Geneva Conventions are about people in war, the articles do not address warfare proper—the use of weapons of war—which is the subject of the Hague Conventions, the bio-chemical warfare Geneva Protocol; the Swiss businessman Henry Dunant went to visit wounded soldiers after the Battle of Solferino in 1859.
He was shocked by the lack of facilities and medical aid available to help these soldiers. As a result, he published his book, A Memory of Solferino, on the horrors of war, his wartime experiences inspired Dunant to propose: A permanent relief agency for humanitarian aid in times of war A government treaty recognizing the neutrality of the agency and allowing it to provide aid in a war zoneThe former proposal led to the establishment of the Red Cross in Geneva. The latter led to the 1864 Geneva Convention, the first codified international treaty that covered the sick and wounded soldiers in the battlefield. On 22 August 1864, the Swiss government invited the governments of all European countries, as well as the United States and Mexico, to attend an official diplomatic conference. Sixteen countries sent a total of twenty-six delegates to Geneva. On 22 August 1864, the conference adopted the first Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field".
Representatives of 12 states and kingdoms signed the convention: For both of these accomplishments, Henry Dunant became corecipient of the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. On 20 October 1868 the first, attempt to expand the 1864 treaty was undertaken. With the'Additional Articles relating to the Condition of the Wounded in War' an attempt was initiated to clarify some rules of the 1864 convention and to extend them to maritime warfare; the Articles was only ratified by the Netherlands and North America. The Netherlands withdrew their ratification; the protection of the victims of maritime warfare would be realized by the third Hague Convention of 1899 and the tenth Hague Convention of 1907. In 1906 thirty-five states attended. On 6 July 1906 it resulted in the adoption of the "Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field", which improved and supplemented, for the first time, the 1864 convention, it remained in force until 1970. The 1929 conference yielded two conventions that were signed on 27 July 1929.
One, the "Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field", was the third version to replace the original convention of 1864. The other was adopted after experiences in World War I had shown the deficiencies in the protection of prisoners of war under the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907; the "Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War" was not to replace these earlier conventions signed at The Hague, rather it supplemented them. Inspired by the wave of humanitarian and pacifistic enthusiasm following World War II and the outrage towards the war crimes disclosed by the Nuremberg Trials, a series of conferences were held in 1949 reaffirming and updating the prior Geneva and Hague Conventions, it yielded four distinct conventions: The First Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field" was the fourth update of the original 1864 convention and replaced the 1929 convention on the same subject matter.
The Second Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea" replaced the Hague Convention of 1907. It was the first Geneva Convention on the protection of the victims of maritime warfare and mimicked the structure and provisions of the First Geneva Convention; the Third Geneva Convention "relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War" replaced the 1929 Geneva Convention that dealt with prisoners of war. In addition to these three conventions, the conference added a new elaborate Fourth Geneva Convention "relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War", it was the first Geneva Convention not to deal with combatants, rather it had the protection of civilians as its subject matter. The 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions had contained some provisions on the protection of civilians and occupied territory. Article 154 provides that the Fourth Geneva Convention is supplementary to these provisions in the Hague Conventions.
Despite the length of these documents, they were found over time to be incomplete. In fact, the nature of armed conflicts had changed with the beginning of the Cold War era, leading many to believe that the 1949 Geneva Conventions were addressing a extinct reality: on the one hand, most armed conflicts had
International law
International law is the set of rules regarded and accepted in relations between nations. It serves as a framework for the practice of stable and organized international relations. International law differs from state-based legal systems in that it is applicable to countries rather than to individual citizens. National law may become international law when treaties permit national jurisdiction to supranational tribunals such as the European Court of Human Rights or the International Criminal Court. Treaties such as the Geneva Conventions may require national law to conform to respective parts. National laws or constitutions may provide for the implementation or integration of international legal obligations. International law is consent-based governance, as there is no means of enforcement in a world dominated by sovereign states; this means that a state may choose to not abide by international law, to break its treaty. However, violations of customary international law and peremptory norms can lead to military action or other forms of coercion, such as diplomatic pressure or economic sanctions.
The current order of international law, the equality of sovereignty between nations, was formed through the conclusion of the "Peace of Westphalia" in 1648. Prior to 1648, on the basis of the purpose of war or the legitimacy of war, it sought to distinguish whether the war was a "just war" or not; this theory of power interruptions can be found in the writings of the Roman Cicero and the writings of St. Augustine. According to the theory of armistice, the nation that caused unwarranted war could not enjoy the right to obtain or conquer trophies that were legitimate at the time The 17th, 18th and 19th centuries saw the growth of the concept of the sovereign "nation-state", which consisted of a nation controlled by a centralised system of government; the concept of nationalism became important as people began to see themselves as citizens of a particular nation with a distinct national identity. Until the mid-19th century, relations between nation-states were dictated by treaty, agreements to behave in a certain way towards another state, unenforceable except by force, not binding except as matters of honor and faithfulness.
But treaties alone became toothless and wars became destructive, most markedly towards civilians, who decried their horrors, leading to calls for regulation of the acts of states in times of war. The modern study of international law starts in the early 19th century, but its origins go back at least to the 16th century, Alberico Gentili, Francisco de Vitoria and Hugo Grotius, the "fathers of international law." Several legal systems developed in Europe, including the codified systems of continental European states and English common law, based on decisions by judges and not by written codes. Other areas developed differing legal systems, with the Chinese legal tradition dating back more than four thousand years, although at the end of the 19th century, there was still no written code for civil proceedings. One of the first instruments of modern international law was the Lieber Code, passed in 1863 by the Congress of the United States, to govern the conduct of US forces during the United States Civil War and considered to be the first written recitation of the rules and articles of war, adhered to by all civilised nations, the precursor of international law.
This led to the first prosecution for war crimes—in the case of United States prisoners of war held in cruel and depraved conditions at Andersonville, Georgia, in which the Confederate commandant of that camp was tried and hanged, the only Confederate soldier to be punished by death in the aftermath of the entire Civil War. In the years that followed, other states subscribed to limitations of their conduct, numerous other treaties and bodies were created to regulate the conduct of states towards one another in terms of these treaties, but not limited to, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 1899; because international law is a new area of law its development and propriety in applicable areas are subject to dispute. Under article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, international law has three principal sources: international treaties and general principles of law. In addition, judicial decisions and teachings may be applied as "subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law", International treaty law comprises obligations states expressly and voluntarily accept between themselves in treaties.
Customary international law is derived from the consistent practice of States accompanied by opinio juris, i.e. the conviction of States that the consistent practice is required by a legal obligation. Judgments of international tribunals as well as scholarly works have traditionally been looked to as persuasive sources for custom in addition to direct evidence of state behavior. Attempts to codify customary international law picked up momentum after the Second World War with the formation of the International Law Commission, under the aegis of the United Nations. Codified customary law is made the binding interpretation of the underlying custom by agreement through treaty. For states not party to such treaties, the work of the ILC may still be accepted as custom applying to those states. General principles of law are those recognized by the major legal systems of the world. Certain norms of international law achieve the binding force of peremptory norms as to include all states with no permissible derogations.
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Combat medic
Combat medic or field medic is a US term for military personnel who have been trained to at least an EMT-B level, are responsible for providing first aid and frontline trauma care on the battlefield. They are responsible for providing continuous medical care in the absence of a available physician, including care for disease and battle injuries. Combat medics are co-located with the combat troops they serve in order to move with the troops and monitor ongoing health. Other countries have similar services, but this article is concerned with the US provision. In 1864, sixteen European states adopted the first-ever Geneva Convention to save lives and alleviate the suffering of wounded and sick persons in the battlefield, as well as to protect trained medical personnel as non-combatants, in the act of rendering aid. Chapter IV, Article 25 of the Geneva Convention states that: "Members of the armed forces specially trained for employment, should the need arise, as hospital orderlies, nurses or auxiliary stretcher-bearers, in the search for or the collection, transport or treatment of the wounded and sick shall be respected and protected if they are carrying out these duties at the time when they come into contact with the enemy or fall into his hands."
Article 29 reads: "Members of the personnel designated in Article 25 who have fallen into the hands of the enemy, shall be prisoners of war, but shall be employed on their medical duties insofar as the need arises." According to the Geneva Convention, knowingly firing at a medic wearing clear insignia is a war crime. In modern times, most combat medics carry a personal weapon, to be used to protect themselves and the wounded or sick in their care. During World War II, for example, medics serving the European and Mediterranean areas carried the M1911A1 pistol while those serving the Pacific theater carried pistols or M1 carbines; when and if they use their arms offensively, they sacrifice their protection under the Geneva Conventions. Surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey directed the Grande Armée of Napoleon to develop mobile field hospitals, or "ambulances volantes", in addition to a corps of trained and equipped soldiers to aid those on the battlefield. Before Larrey's initiative in the 1790s, wounded soldiers were either left amid the fighting until the combat ended or their comrades would carry them to the rear line.
During the American Civil War, Surgeon Jonathan Letterman, Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, realized a need for an integrated medical treatment and evacuation system, equipped with dedicated vehicles, organizations and personnel. The Letterman plan was first implemented in September 1862 at the Battle of Maryland; the United States Army’s need for medical and scientific specialty officers to support combat operations resulted in the creation of two temporary components: the U. S. Army Ambulance Service, established on June 23, 1917 and the Sanitary Corps, established on June 30, 1917. Officers of the Sanitary Corps served in medical logistics, hospital administration, patient administration, resource management, x-ray, laboratory engineering, physical reconstruction, gas defense, venereal disease control, they were dedicated members of the medical team that enabled American generals to concentrate on enemy threats rather than epidemic threats. On August 4, 1947, Congress created the Navy Medical Service Corps.
In the United States, a report entitled "Accidental Death and Disability: The Neglected Disease of Modern Society", was published by National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council. Better known as "The White Paper" to emergency providers, it revealed that soldiers who were wounded on the battlefields of Vietnam had a better survival rate than those individuals who were injured in motor vehicle accidents on California freeways. Early research attributed these differences in outcome to a number of factors, including comprehensive trauma care, rapid transport to designated trauma facilities, a new type of medical corpsman, one, trained to perform certain critical advanced medical procedures such as fluid replacement and airway management, which allowed the victim to survive the journey to definitive care; the International Committee of the Red Cross, a private humanitarian institution based in Switzerland, provided the first official symbol for medical personnel. The first Geneva convention called for "Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field," adopted the red cross on a field of white as the identifying emblem.
This symbol was meant to signify to enemy combatants that the medic qualifies as a non-combatant, at least while providing medical care. Islamic countries use a Red Crescent instead. During the 1876–1878 war between Russia and Turkey, the Ottoman Empire declared that it would use a red crescent instead of a red cross as its emblem, although it agreed to respect the red cross used by the other side. Although these symbols were sponsored by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the Magen David Adom, Israel's emergency relief service, used the Magen David. Israeli medics still wear the Magen David. To enable MDA to become a recognized and participating member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Protocol III was adopted, it is an amendment to the Geneva Conventions relating to the Adoption of an Additional Distinctive Emblem and authorizes the use of a new emblem, known as the third protocol emblem or the Red Crystal. For indicative use on foreign territory, any national society
Western Sahara
Western Sahara is a disputed territory on the northwest coast and in the Maghreb region of North and West Africa controlled by the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and occupied by neighboring Morocco. Its surface area amounts to 266,000 square kilometres, it is one of the most sparsely populated territories in the world consisting of desert flatlands. The population is estimated at just over 500,000, of which nearly 40% live in Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara. Occupied by Spain until the late 20th century, Western Sahara has been on the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories since 1963 after a Moroccan demand, it is the most populous territory on that list, by far the largest in area. In 1965, the UN General Assembly adopted its first resolution on Western Sahara, asking Spain to decolonize the territory. One year a new resolution was passed by the General Assembly requesting that a referendum be held by Spain on self-determination. In 1975, Spain relinquished the administrative control of the territory to a joint administration by Morocco and Mauritania.
A war erupted between those countries and a Sahrawi nationalist movement, the Polisario Front, which proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic with a government in exile in Tindouf, Algeria. Mauritania withdrew its claims in 1979, Morocco secured de facto control of most of the territory, including all the major cities and natural resources; the United Nations considers the Polisario Front to be the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people, maintains that the Sahrawis have a right to self-determination. Since a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire agreement in 1991, two thirds of the territory has been administered by the Moroccan government, with tacit support from France and the United States, the remainder by the SADR, backed by Algeria. Internationally, countries such as Russia have taken a ambiguous and neutral position on each side's claims, have pressed both parties to agree on a peaceful resolution. Both Morocco and Polisario have sought to boost their claims by accumulating formal recognition from African and Latin American states in the developing world.
The Polisario Front has won formal recognition for SADR from 46 states, was extended membership in the African Union. Morocco has won support for its position from several African governments and from most of the Muslim world and Arab League. In both instances, recognitions have, over the past two decades, been extended and withdrawn according to changing international trends; as of 2017, no other member state of the United Nations has officially recognized Moroccan sovereignty over parts of Western Sahara. However, a number of countries have expressed their support for a future recognition of the Moroccan annexation of the territory as an autonomous part of the Kingdom. Overall, the annexation has not garnered as much attention in the international community as many other disputed annexations. Western Sahara is located on the northwest coast in West Africa and on the cusp of North Africa, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean to the northwest, Morocco proper to the north-northeast, Algeria to the east-northeast, Mauritania to the east and south.
The land is some of the most inhospitable on the planet. The land along the coast is low flat desert and rises in the north, to small mountains reaching up to 600 metres on the eastern side. While the area can experience flash flooding in the spring, there are no permanent streams. At times a cool off-shore current can produce heavy dew; the interior experiences extreme summer heat with average highs reaching as high as 43–45 °C in July and in August. The earliest known inhabitants of Western Sahara were the Gaetuli. Depending on the century, Roman-era sources describe the area as inhabited by Gaetulian Autololes or the Gaetulian Daradae tribes. Berber heritage is still evident from regional and place-name toponymy, as well as from tribal names. Other early inhabitants of Western Sahara may be the Bafour and the Serer; the Bafour were replaced or absorbed by Berber-speaking populations which merged in turn with the migrating Beni Ḥassān Arab tribes. The arrival of Islam in the 8th century played a major role in the development of the Maghreb region.
Trade developed further, the territory may have been one of the routes for caravans between Marrakesh and Tombouctou in Mali. In the 11th century, the Maqil Arabs settled in Morocco. Towards the end of the Almohad Caliphate, the Beni Hassan, a sub-tribe of the Maqil, were called by the local ruler of the Sous to quell a rebellion. During Marinid dynasty rule, the Beni Hassan rebelled but were defeated by the Sultan and escaped beyond the Saguia el-Hamra dry river; the Beni Hassan were at constant war with the Lamtuna nomadic Berbers of the Sahara. Over
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