Earlier, the extraordinary repression of irregular fighters for “national liberation” had been the norm, on the premise that they existed outside legal categories or were ordinary criminals. The history of overseas colonialism, like the American treatment of native peoples, was a grim record of the consequences of such treatment. Before—and during—the wars that led to so many new states after World War II, counterinsurgent empires and genocidal settlers had regularly played by no rules. Now those states had a vote on the laws of war. In the 1977 protocols, there was much confusion over what
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