One of Ours

...While [PFC Keith Matthew Maupin's] captors don't explicitly reference the 3rd Geneva Convention or other international covenants by name, they certainly incorporate these principles as they're found in Islamic law:

"We have taken one of the U.S. soldiers hostage," the narrator [of the video depicting Maupin] said.

"He is in good health and being treated based on the tenets of Islamic law for the treatment of soldiers taken hostage. We will keep him until we trade him for our prisoners in the custody of the U.S. enemy. We want them to know -- and the whole world to know -- that when we took him in, he came out of his tank holding a white flag and he lay face down on the ground, just like other soldiers."

Analysis: This is interesting for a few reasons. First, the conventional wisdom has been that the Iraqis would not follow the laws of war in their insurgency. That has been true in some situations, like the mutilation of the four contractors two weeks ago in Fallujah. However, both the Iraqi armed forces and the Iraqi insurgents appear to be following some codes of conduct with respect to the treatment of U.S. soldiers in captivity. Self-interest is probably animating this decision by the Iraqis. They probably want to encourage reciprocity, given the large numbers of Iraqi soldiers and insurgents in U.S. custody. The Iraqis may also be concerned about reprisals, both from U.S. forces and from the Iraqi justice system if they're ever captured.

Of course, the Iraqi insurgents continue to violate the law of war in many other situations...They often hide in protected sites like mosques and schools and hospitals, putting Iraqi civilians in the crosshairs as a consequence. Iraqi insurgents use indiscriminate IEDs which are as likely to kill Iraqis or foreign civilians as U.S. soldiers. And the list goes on. But this story adds at least one counterexample of where the Iraqis are following the law of armed conflict...