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David Brady deposited Distinction Between Civilian and Non Civilian in the group
War Studies on Humanities Commons 5 years, 3 months ago
Throughout antiquity there has always been the tension between differentiating being civilians and non-civilians in conflict. In some of the earliest recorded times in history we have stories of the Israelites marching around Jericho and bringing its walls down, barbarian tribes facing off with Romans, peasants storming castles, and modern era minutemen arising against the British. The common factor amongst these illustrations is at any given moment these combatants morphed between civilian and non-civilian rolls fluidly causing one to ask the question, then, as well as today, was the distinction between civilian and non-civilian accurate, or still accurate, in internal conflict? This situation seems not to be new in overall history but in the modern era we have grown accustomed to uniformed armed conflict, the idea of non-uniformed conflict catches us by surprise leaving us unprepared to deal with not just the armed conflict but the humanitarian relief that can come due to the conflict itself. In like manner, we have grown accustomed to international conflict and find it difficult to grasp intra-national or internal conflict when differentiating between civilian and non-civilian. In today’s world there is little difference between civilian and non-civilian in internal conflict.