Terrorists should be treated as prisoners of war

Terrorists are not engaged in a war. Their actions are aimed at destruction of civil society and of nations across the globe. Furthermore, the Geneva Convention has no role to play here. It exists to control wars between nations in a way which respects human dignity and minimises long-term harm. Wars between nations have a foreseeable end, and the Convention is an important means of aiding reconciliation and cooperation in the future: it is harder to build a relationship with a state which has brutally tortured your soldiers upon capture. However, a war against terrorists will often have no end: it is inconceivable, for example, either that Al Qaeda will successfully achieve the reestablishment of the Caliphate or that the West will quash all terrorist activity. Reconciliation and future cooperation are meaningless here.

There is no moral duty to respect the dignity of these individuals. States should do whatever possible to protect their own citizens. The Geneva Convention is about reciprocity: it is in the interest of our own citizens to treat enemy combatants is a humane manner so that if our soldiers are caught they will receive similar treatment. There can be no guarantee of reciprocity from ‘terrorists’ as a whole, or even specific terrorist groups given the cellular nature of the organisations and the disparate nature of the command structures. Furthermore, terrorists specifically use poor treatment of hostages as a tool in their campaign. Given this, it is in the interests of our own citizens to use whatever means possible to fight terrorism; compliance with the Geneva Convention undermines this.

Treating captured terrorists well would not aid the war on terror. Most of the terrorism encountered today aims to destabilise states for ideological reasons. Treating captives well will not stop Al Qaeda wanting to re-establish the Caliphate and so will not remove the ideological reasons for attacking certain states.

Poor treatment is not a significant recruitment tool: whilst some people may be encouraged to join terrorist groups as a result of such behaviour, those who are outraged by human rights abuses in this context should be equally concerned about the violation of human rights which occurs when a terrorist detonates a bomb, or flies into a building, killing large numbers of innocent civilians. The ideology invoked exists independently of the way in which suspects are treated, as discussed above, and indoctrination with such beliefs is the real tool in the recruitment process.

Compliance with the Geneva Convention does undermine our ability to get valuable information: the Convention not only prohibits torture, but also mental coercion, threats, insults or disadvantageous treatment in the pursuit of intelligence. Each form of interrogation is valuable in certain circumstances. For example, torture may not be effective to collect evidence about a plot from scratch, but it may be an effective means of forcing suspects to disclose one or two specific details. Disadvantageous treatment or threats may also provide useful incentives for suspects, particularly those concerned about the welfare of their families. In a ticking bomb scenario, a state which fails to take such actions is arguably responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians which occur as a result.

Prisoners of war can be detained for the duration of hostilities, and are only entitled to return home at the end of the war. Given the open-ended nature of the war on terror, it is very likely that treating terrorist detainees as POWs will mean they are never released. Better instead to treat them as criminals accused of terrorist offences, and to put them through a proper trial process.