---
title: "Legal Implications of the Status of Persons in Resistance (ARIS)"
id: "9210"
type: "page"
slug: "aris-legal-status-of-persons-in-resistance"
published_at: "2026-08-03T17:17:31+00:00"
modified_at: "2026-08-03T17:17:31+00:00"
url: "https://theresistancehub.com/aris-legal-status-of-persons-in-resistance/"
markdown_url: "https://theresistancehub.com/aris-legal-status-of-persons-in-resistance.md"
excerpt: "Legal Implications of the Status of Persons in Resistance is the ARIS volume that asks a question the rest of the series leaves open: when a US service member supports a foreign resistance movement, what is that person legally? The..."
---

# Legal Implications of the Status of Persons in Resistance (ARIS)

**Legal Implications of the Status of Persons in Resistance** is the ARIS volume that asks a question the rest of the series leaves open: when a US service member supports a foreign resistance movement, what is that person legally? The answer turns out to depend on what the movement itself is at that moment, which changes as the movement grows. This page records what the document is, what it contains, where it came from, and links the full text hosted by The Resistance Hub.

// Document Record

| Full title | Legal Implications of the Status of Persons in Resistance |
| --- | --- |
| Series | Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies (ARIS) |
| Publishing body | The United States Army Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, National Security Analysis Department |
| Edition | Not printed on the document. No edition statement appears anywhere in the front matter. |
| Date | Not printed on the document. The publication line gives the publisher and Fort Bragg but no year. A later ARIS volume, The Science of Resistance, lists this study as 2015 in its series catalogue, which is a sibling document and not the document itself. |
| Named staff | Paul J. Tompkins Jr., USASOC Project Lead. Erin N. Hahn, Editor. Erin N. Hahn and W. Sam Lauber, Contributing Authors. |
| ISBN | Not printed on the document |
| Pages | 226 pages in the hosted PDF |
| Language | English |
| Rights | Printed on the copyright page, verbatim: “This publication is a work of the United States Government in accordance with Title 17, United States Code, sections 101 and 105. Reproduction in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose of the United States government.” |
| Disclaimer | The document prints its own legal disclaimer: it does not constitute legal advice, is not a comprehensive picture of the law applied to any specific situation, and government counsel should be sought for interpretation or guidance on a course of action. |

## What this document is

The problem the authors set themselves is that a US military member’s legal status while supporting a resistance movement is not a fixed property of the service member. It is derived from the international legal status of the movement being supported, and that status changes as the movement evolves. A soldier advising a civil society organisation and a soldier advising a recognised belligerent are doing structurally similar work under entirely different bodies of law.

Their solution is the resistance continuum, a five-stage scale running from nonviolent legal resistance, through nonviolent illegal political acts, rebellion, insurgency, to belligerency, ordered by increasing intensity, duration and organisation. For each stage the study sets out three things side by side: the characteristics that place a movement there, the corresponding legal status of the people involved, and what third-party involvement means. That last column is the operationally important one. Supporting rebels violates host nation sovereignty and cuts against the international norm of noninterference. Recognising a group as a belligerent imposes a duty of neutrality on third states, and supporting either side after that point constitutes an act of war.

The study is careful about the difference between colloquial and legal usage, and it is worth reading for that alone. The American Civil War is called a rebellion in ordinary speech but is a classic case of belligerency in the framework, because of the intensity and duration of hostilities. The document also notes how deliberately governments choose their vocabulary: when a standing government describes its opponents as armed gangs, it is asserting that the violence is ordinary crime rather than a noninternational armed conflict, and therefore that it has conceded no legitimacy. The categorisation is itself a contested political act, and the status of individuals follows from it.

Theory is anchored to cases. Movements placed on the continuum in the study include civil society organisations in Zimbabwe, the US civil rights movement, Solidarity in Poland, the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, Brazil in 2013, Honduras after the 2009 coup, Mexico in 1929, Mali from 2006 to 2009, the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1998, the American Civil War, and Iraqi Kurdistan in the early 1990s. Some scenarios are hypotheticals built on real events, and the study marks which is which.

The final substantive chapter turns inward to US domestic constraints, covering the War Powers Resolution and the record of presidential compliance with it, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the difference between Title 10 and Title 50 authorities, the distinction between covert and clandestine activity, and what counts as traditional military activity or routine support. Covert action in Syria is used as the current-issues case. Three appendices carry acronyms, a glossary, and a long primer on the law of armed conflict covering sources of law, the four principles of military necessity, distinction, proportionality and humanity, the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, individual status on the battlefield, direct participation in hostilities, and the category of unlawful combatant.

## Contents

Seven chapters, three appendices and a bibliography. Chapter descriptions follow the subsection headings printed in the document’s own table of contents.

| Chapter | What it covers |
| --- | --- |
| 1. Introduction | Purpose and structure for analysis, how to interpret the resistance continuum, and a summary of the major concepts. Contains the two continuum figures, one of legal thresholds and one placing historical movements along the scale. |
| 2. Overview of Sources of Law | The law of armed conflict, the Geneva Conventions, Common Article 2 and Common Article 3, and the Additional Protocols. |
| 3. Nonviolent Resistance | The use of legal processes as a form of resistance, with worked examples of resisting a government through existing legal process and of interference with the legitimate exercise of political process. Resistance through illegal political acts. In each case, the status of the resistance and the status of US personnel supporting it. |
| 4. Rebellion | The status of the resistance, the standing government and US personnel where violence is short-term, isolated and suppressible by law enforcement, so that international humanitarian law does not yet apply. Rebellion in context: Honduras, Brazil and Mali. |
| 5. Insurgency | Factors that determine an insurgency, recognition and its effect on the status of parties, and why recognition does not limit state authority to suppress. The effect of international humanitarian law on insurgents, on military personnel conducting unconventional warfare, on the standing government, on personnel conducting counterinsurgency, and on individuals captured by insurgents. Case: the Kosovo Protection Forces. |
| 6. Belligerency | Implications for participants, the status of standing government personnel and foreign troops supporting them, protections for those supporting belligerents, and the role of the United Nations system. Case: Iraqi Kurdistan. |
| 7. Domestic Legal Constraints | The War Powers Resolution and presidential compliance, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, Title 10 and Title 50 authorities, covert against clandestine, traditional military activities and routine support, and current issues including covert action in Syria. |
| Appendix A | Acronyms. |
| Appendix B | Glossary. |
| Appendix C | Background on international law and the law of armed conflict. Sources of law, custom, treaties, domestic law and judicial decisions. The relationship between law of war, law of armed conflict, international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The four principles: military necessity, distinction, proportionality, humanity. The Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocols I, II and III, and objections to them. Common Articles 2 and 3. Conflict status. Individual status on the battlefield, covering lawful combatants and prisoners of war, retainees, other militias and volunteer corps, persons accompanying the armed forces, levee en masse, civilians and other protected persons. Direct participation in hostilities and the ICRC criteria for determining it. Unlawful combatants, enemy combatants and detainees. |
| Bibliography | Full source list. |

## Provenance and lineage

Unlike the two Undergrounds volumes, this is not a revision of a Special Operations Research Office study. It is original ARIS work, and it appears in the earlier volumes of the series under Future Studies with the working title *The Legal Status of Participants in Irregular Warfare*, which is how to identify it in older ARIS catalogues.

The document prints no date and no edition. The publication block names the publisher and Fort Bragg and then stops. This page therefore records both fields as not printed. The only dating evidence available from inside the ARIS series itself is the catalogue page of *The Science of Resistance*, which lists this title as 2015. That is a sibling document, not this one, so it is offered here as a cross-reference rather than as the document’s own statement.

Named staff: Paul J. Tompkins Jr. as USASOC project lead, Erin N. Hahn as editor, with Hahn and W. Sam Lauber as contributing authors. The acknowledgments credit Colonel Frank N. Sanders for supporting the project and reviewing numerous drafts, Professors Robert P. Barnidge and Steven I. Vladeck for edits and comments, and Hale Laughlin and Joe Tonon at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The letter of introduction argues that the volume belongs on the desks of commanders, planners and policy makers rather than only on a lawyer’s shelf, on the ground that legal status sets the practical boundaries of any unconventional warfare campaign.

The research was performed at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory by its National Security Analysis Department, under the supervision of the USASOC Special Programs Division. The copyright page carries the standard ARIS disclaimer that the analysis and opinions are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the US Army or the Applied Physics Laboratory. Corrections are invited by post to USASOC G-3X, Special Programs Division, 2929 Desert Storm Drive, Fort Bragg, NC 28310.

## How The Resistance Hub uses it

This study is the primary source behind our own explainer, [applying international law to resistance and irregular combatants](/international-law/)
, which works through the same distinction between combatant and civilian status in contemporary terms and extends it to cyber operations and remotely piloted systems. Read the two together: the article covers the current argument, this document covers the framework the argument rests on.

The continuum is also why we are careful with vocabulary in reporting. Whether a situation is a rebellion or an insurgency is not a stylistic choice, and our coverage of contested transitions such as [Syria’s transitional government](/syrias-transitional-government/)
 depends on getting that threshold right. For definitions of the terms used here see the [irregular warfare and resistance glossary](/irregular-warfare-resistance-glossary/)
, for the wider doctrinal picture see [resistance core concepts](/resistance-core-concepts/)
 and the [Resistance Operating Concept](/resistance-operating-concept/)
, and for the rest of the series see the [ARIS archive](/assessing-revolutionary-and-insurgent-strategies-aris/)
.

## Download

[Download the PDF →](https://theresistancehub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/ARIS_LegalStatus_IrregularWarfare.pdf.pdf)
PDF · 2.0 MB · 226 pages · English

The document states that all ARIS products are available from USASOC at soc.mil under the ARIS link. For scholarly citation, prefer the [official USASOC ARIS index](https://www.soc.mil/ARIS/ARIS.html)
 as the canonical source. The copy hosted here is a mirror provided for readers who need the text immediately. Note the document’s own instruction that it is not legal advice and that counsel should verify any change in the law since publication, which matters more than usual given that the document prints no date.

// Editorial Standards

**Sources used on this page:** the hosted PDF itself, specifically its title page, copyright page, disclaimer, acknowledgments, letter of introduction, table of contents and Chapter 1 continuum figures, read directly on 3 August 2026; the series catalogue printed in the ARIS volume *The Science of Resistance*; and the USASOC ARIS publication index at soc.mil.

Every bibliographic field above is transcribed from the document’s own front matter. Where the document prints nothing, this page says so rather than inferring a value. **Updated: August 2026.**

Manage Consent

To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.

Functional   Functional  Always active

The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.

Preferences  Preferences

The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.

Statistics  Statistics

The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.

Marketing  Marketing

The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.

- [Manage options](#)
- [Manage services](#)
- [Manage {vendor_count} vendors](#)
- [Read more about these purposes](https://cookiedatabase.org/tcf/purposes/)

AcceptDenyView preferencesSave preferences[View preferences](#)

- [{title}](#)
- [{title}](#)
- [{title}](#)

Manage consent