Ms Fatima Gailani was appointed as the President of the Afghan Red Crescent Society in 2005. She was born in 1954 in Kabul and is the daughter of Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani, the leader of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, who fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. She lived in exile during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and acted as spokesperson in London for the Afghan Mujahideen. After her return to Afghanistan she was chosen as a delegate to the Emergency Loya Jirga (Grand Council) of June 2002 and was appointed as a constitution-drafting and -ratifying commissioner. Ms Gailani is the author of two books (The Mosques of London and a biography of Mohammad Musa Shafiq).

The armed conflict in Afghanistan since 2001 has raised manifold questions pertaining to the humanitarian rules relative to the conduct of hostilities. In Afghanistan, as is often the case in so-called asymmetric conflicts, the geographical and temporal boundaries of the battlefield, and the distinction between civilians and fighters, are increasingly blurred. As a result, the risks for both civilians and soldiers operating in Afghanistan are high. The objective of this article is to assess whether – and if so how much – the armed conflict in Afghanistan has affected the application and interpretation of the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution – principles that form the core of legal rules pertaining to the conduct of hostilities.

An effective legal regime governing the actions of armed non-state actors in Afghanistan should encompass not only international humanitarian law but also international human rights law. While the applicability of Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions to the conflict is not controversial, how and to what extent Additional Protocol II applies is more difficult to assess, in particular in relation to the various armed actors operating in the country. The applicability of international human rights law to armed non-state actors – considered by the authors as important, particularly in Afghanistan – remains highly controversial. Nevertheless, its applicability to such actors exercising control over a population is slowly becoming more accepted. In addition, violations of peremptory norms of international law can also directly engage the legal responsibility of such groups.

The following article focuses on the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Rules for the Mujahideen** to determine their conformity with the Islamic jus in bello. This code of conduct, or Layha, for Taliban fighters highlights limiting suicide attacks, avoiding civilian casualties, and winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the local civilian population. However, it has altered rules or created new ones for punishing captives that have not previously been used in Islamic military and legal history. Other rules disregard the principle of distinction between combatants and civilians and even allow perfidy, which is strictly prohibited in both Islamic law and international humanitarian law. The author argues that many of the Taliban rules have only a limited basis in, or are wrongly attributed to, Islamic law.

The Layha is the code of conduct (manual) and regulations of the Mujahids of the Islamic Emirate. The following document is the second edition of the Layha, published in 2010. It has been originally written in Pashto and translated into English for informational use by the International Committee of the Red Cross. This is not an official translation. Readers will find the original text on: http://alemarah-iea.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=9&Itemid=24. The first Layha was published in 2006. This Code of Conduct replaces the 2009 version.

The Islamic law on rebellion offers a comprehensive code for regulating the conduct of hostilities in non-international armed conflicts and thus it can be used as a model for improving the contemporary international legal regime. It not only provides an objective criterion for ascertaining existence of armed conflict but also recognizes the combatant status for rebels and the necessary corollaries of their de facto authority in the territory under their control. Thus it helps reduce the sufferings of civilians and ordinary citizens during rebellion and civil wars. At the same time, Islamic law asserts that the territory under the de facto control of the rebels is de jure part of the parent state. It therefore answers the worries of those who fear that the grant of combatant status to rebels might give legitimacy to their struggle.

This article looks at the tension between principles and politics in the response to the Afghan crisis, and more specifically at the extent to which humanitarian agencies have been able to protect themselves and their activities from overt instrumentalization by those pursuing partisan political agendas. After a short historical introduction, it focuses on the tensions around the issue of ‘coherence’ – the code word for the integration of humanitarian action into the wider political designs of the United Nations itself and of the UN-mandated military coalition that has been operating in Afghanistan since late 2001. The article ends with some more general conclusions on the humanitarian–political relationship and what Afghanistan ‘means’ for the future of humanitarian action.

The Review asked Alberto Cairo, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) orthopaedic programme in Afghanistan since 1992, to make his own selection of pictures from the ICRC's photo library collection, which covers its activities in conflicts throughout the world from the 1860s to the present day.1 There are now more than 115,000 photos available in digital format.

Neutrality as a guiding principle of humanitarian action was roundly rejected by most actors in Afghanistan's latest conflict. One party to the conflict commandeered assistance and aid organizations into a counter-insurgency campaign, and the other rejected Western aid organizations as agents of an imperialist West. The murder in 2003 of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) water engineer Ricardo Munguia, because of what he symbolized, cast doubt on whether the ICRC could be perceived as neutral in this highly polarized context. Rather than abandon a neutral stance, however, as so many aid organizations did, the ICRC persevered and, through some innovative and sometimes risky initiatives, managed to show both sides the benefits of having a neutral intermediary in conflict. Today, the ICRC continues to expand its reach to Afghans in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

Non-international armed conflicts are not only prevalent today, but are also evolving in terms of the types that have been observed in practice. The article sets out a possible typology and argues that Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions may be given an expanded geographical reading as a matter of treaty law. It also suggests that there is a far wider range of rules – primarily of a binding nature, but also policy-based – that apply in Common Article 3 armed conflicts with regard to the treatment of persons in enemy hands and the conduct of hostilities.