Camps for/in War

Abstract

Camps play important roles in wars, one being detention of prisoners-of-war whose status is regulated in international humanitarian law. Insurgents and rebels also tend to establish training camps, typically in neighbouring countries. Camp-like facilities such as ‘strategic hamlets’ are also a central element in counter-insurgency warfare, intended to separate the guerrillas from the peasantry, but such arrangements may also be used for social engineering, for example, collectivisation and other attempts to ‘capture’ the ‘uncaptured peasantry’.